Post-War University Education

Abstract

WHILE possible changes in university education after the War are being considered, I should like to urge the importance of one problem which has hitherto obtained little prominence. Anyone who had much contact with students before the War could not fail to be impressed by the specialized nature of most of their knowledge. For example, a graduate in classics was often completely ignorant of scientific thought, while a graduate in any of the sciences, as a rule, knew little of humanistic subjects beyond some French and German. Moreover, there is little doubt that this increasing departmentalization of the universities was encouraging the tendency, so disastrous at the present time, whereby what is scientific is divorced from humanistic purposes. The regulation at some universities compelling an honours student to take one or two classes outside his honours group, while good in theory, fails in practice, because these other classes are much too narrow in their aims and are, in fact, often the first-year courses for students who propose taking honours in them.