Part 16

The School of Medicine has grown continuously; and its progress is associated with the great names, to mention no others, of Sir George Humphry, Sir George Paget, and Sir Michael Foster. In 1883 were founded the professorships of surgery, physiology, and pathology. The diploma of public health was instituted in 1875, and the diploma in tropical medicine--the first of its kind in the kingdom--in 1904. The latter diploma is destined to a brilliant future in Cambridge; and the University, together with the schools of tropical medicine in London and Liverpool, is doing much to raise the scientific standard of research in a study so vitally important to the teeming populations of our tropical possessions. The students attending the School of Medicine in Cambridge number nearly four hundred, despite the high standard of the attainments necessary for qualification. In 1904 important new buildings, with provision for bacteriology, pathology, and public health, were opened by the King.

The year 1869 was marked by the foundation of the Slade professorship of fine art, and the professorship of Latin. The endowment of the latter chair is but £300 a year, half provided by the University and half by the friends of the late Dr. Kennedy, the famous headmaster of Shrewsbury School. That the University should have had to wait till 1869 for the foundation of a chair of Latin, and that the parsimonious contribution of £150 a year was all that could be spared towards the stipend of the professor, scarcely lends colour to the prevailing belief that the University, kindly and naturally as she may be disposed towards the old learning, squanders on the teaching of ancient languages resources which ought to be otherwise employed. In 1875 the Historical Tripos was founded; and the School of History, starting under the influence of Seeley, has become one of the most popular avenues to an honours degree. A professorship of ancient history was founded in 1898.

The Historical Tripos already provided in some measure for the study of political science and political economy as component parts of a liberal education. But latterly the need for a more thorough study of economic conditions has been felt to be imperative for those who look forward to a career in the higher branches of business or in public life; while, as regards the professional economist, it has been realized that his work as a student must be carried much farther than has hitherto been customary, if he is to attack with success those problems which bring his science close to reality and to the needs of the practical man. A Tripos in Economics has therefore been established, the first examination for which was held in 1905. The advanced portion of it includes such subjects as modern methods of production, transport and marketing, trusts, the recent development of joint-stock companies, railway and shipping organization and rates, banking systems, stock exchanges, investment markets, international aspects of credit and currency, tariffs and bounties; and it is expected that, as in the second parts of most other triposes, a mass of new work, the result of current research, not yet available in text-books, will be placed before the students.

The Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos dates from 1886. It provides for the study of English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. A colloquial test has recently been added. The Semitic Languages Tripos was established in 1878; the Indian Languages Tripos was founded in 1879, and merged in the Oriental Languages Tripos in 1895. The University founded a professorship of Sanskrit in 1867; and a chair of Chinese has existed since 1888. The University possesses the finest Chinese library in the world outside of China, the gift of Sir Thomas Wade. Provision is made for the teaching of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hausa, Burmese, and the Indian vernaculars of Bengali, Hindustani, Marathi, and Tamil. The teaching of living Oriental languages for the benefit of practical students is carefully co-ordinated under a recently appointed director of studies; and not only are the most necessary languages taught in their living forms by competent scholars, but these latter are assisted by a staff of carefully selected native _répétiteurs_. Towards the expenses of this work the University contributes about £2,800 a year. A professorship of Anglo-Saxon was founded in 1878.

In 1871 the chair of experimental physics was founded, a chair held in succession by Clerk Maxwell, Lord Rayleigh, and J. J. Thomson; and in 1874 the famous Cavendish laboratory, the munificent gift of its late chancellor to the University, was opened. The laboratory was designed by Maxwell; and the chancellor himself, soon after its completion, provided all the instruments which were immediately required. In 1894 the area of the laboratory was increased, the cost being defrayed, in part, by a sum of £2,000 saved by Professor Thomson out of fees received from students; but the constant pressure on the available space by research students coming from all quarters of the globe rendered further extension urgently necessary, an extension which Lord Rayleigh’s generous gift of the Nobel Prize has now enabled the University to undertake. Astronomy has a traditional home in Cambridge; and the observatory, which in 1706 found a strange temporary site over the gateway of Trinity College, began to be built on its present site in 1822. The observatory, which takes its regular share of the work mapped out for the observatories of Europe, has received important additions in the shape of both building and equipment in recent years.

In 1875 the professorship of mechanism and applied science was established; and in 1878 the first engineering workshops were built in the University, and fitted with machine tools and other necessary equipment. In 1894 the new engineering laboratories were opened during the tenure of the professorship by Dr. Ewing, now director of naval education. In 1894, also, the first examination for the Mechanical Sciences Tripos, which gives a degree in honours to students of engineering, was held. In 1899 the generosity of Mrs. Hopkinson and her family made possible the addition of a much needed new wing to the laboratory. The buildings of the department now contain lecture-room accommodation which seats about 360 students simultaneously, a drawing-office for a class of ninety, two rooms for elementary heat and mechanics, a boiler-room, an engine-room with ten heat-engines of different types, arranged so that the measurement of all quantities concerned may be systematically made by the students, a large room for dealing with strength of materials and with hydraulics, a dynamo-room fitted with various kinds of dynamos, a motor-room fitted with motors of all the usual types, and several other rooms for special purposes. The greater part of the staff have had practical engineering experience of some kind; and it is usual during the long vacation for one or two members of the staff, as well as a number of the students, to go into a drawing-office or into works in order to keep in touch with practice. The school numbers at present more than 250 students, and supplies young engineers with a scientific training to various public services, as well as to mechanical and electrical firms.

The University chemical laboratory was built in 1887; and, while planning it, the professor of chemistry spent some months in visiting the newest laboratories on the Continent and in America. The importance of botany has of late years so greatly increased that its study is represented in Cambridge by a professor, a reader, and two University lecturers, besides demonstrators, assistant demonstrators, and attendants. In 1904 botany was housed in a separate building of its own, the finest devoted to that science in the United Kingdom, and one of the finest in Europe. The physiology of plants, bacteriological research, and the cultivation of hybrids and seedlings, are completely provided for. The extensive botanic garden belonging to the Senate is at the disposal of the staff and the students, the more distinguished of whom, after completing their degree course in Cambridge, start on a course of research in this country or abroad. The importance of the department as touching agriculture on its scientific side can hardly be overestimated.

The professorship of agriculture was founded in 1899, and endowed for a term of years by the munificence of the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a body which, with commendable breadth of view, recognizes alike the importance of applied scientific instruction for the artisan and of scientific investigation in all forms of the national activity. The department of agriculture is conducted on the most practical and progressive lines. It provides instruction in the principles of agriculture for the sons of landowners, farmers, and others. It conducts experiments on crops and live stock, making every effort to secure the intelligent co-operation of farmers. The University experimental farm, for the use of which the department is indebted to the generosity of a member of Clare College, has an area of 140 acres. The County Councils of Cambridgeshire and nine neighbouring counties co-operate in the work and assist it by subsidies. The field experiments of the department extend over ten counties. Parties of farmers visit the experimental plots every season in order to see the results of the experiments and to discuss them with members of the staff; and reports which summarize these results are widely distributed in the districts concerned. Of the suitability of Cambridge as a site for a school of agriculture, and of the importance of the work undertaken by the school, it may be well to leave the late professor to speak for himself.

‘I have but recently become a member of the University, and, like a good many others, I at one time doubted the possibility of founding a thoroughly satisfactory school of agriculture in one of the old English Universities. But I no longer doubt; and as one who, before coming to Cambridge, was a teacher or student in five British Universities, I will venture to say that nowhere else do such opportunities exist. Apart altogether from the exceptional facilities for the study of science possessed by the University, and apart, too, from the exceptional practical skill of the farmers in the surrounding counties, the old University appears to me to be more disposed to extend a helping hand to agriculture than many of her younger sisters; and nowhere has a more friendly reception been given than at Cambridge to the new organization fostered by the activity of the Board of Agriculture....

‘American experience leaves no room for doubt that modern scientific methods are capable of greatly increasing the prosperity of agriculture, and that the farmer has no better ally than the laboratory worker. But, if we wish to make these benefits ours, we must cease to be satisfied with imported information; ... we must aim at securing for agriculture the services of British specialists, men who will give their whole time to the study of one subject under the conditions which prevail in our own country. To the extent of our resources this has been the policy of our agricultural department in Cambridge.

‘We are in the centre of the finest land in England; we already have an organization by which we reach the farmer; we know his wants; and the University has supplied us with well-qualified teachers of applied science. If we were in possession of suitable laboratories, properly equipped for research, we should find competent investigators and willing assistants among the younger members of the University who are always ready to engage in original work, either with the view of gaining knowledge or in order to qualify themselves for appointments.’

In considering the development of all these departments, and the foundation of the chairs and other teaching posts made necessary by them, it must be remembered that the professorships already existing before 1850 included, among others, those of chemistry, anatomy, botany, geology, mineralogy, medicine, physic, political economy, moral philosophy, modern history, Arabic, and music; that these chairs had, before the Commission of 1850, no very important duties attached to them; and that in the last fifty years each has been adapted to its place in the University system, and each has in turn become a new centre of activity round which, to use a convenient term unfamiliar in Cambridge, a ‘faculty’ has crystallized. To many important developments it has been possible to allude only in the most cursory manner. The merest mention must suffice for the diploma in geography; the diploma in mining engineering, with its provision for practical experience in mines in this country or abroad; the diploma in forestry, which is a logical outcome of the development of the botanical and agricultural schools; the provision for military studies, and the Day Training College for teachers. The latter has both a primary and a secondary department, and the certificate given by the University in the theory, history, and practice of education, and for practical efficiency, attracts teachers in great numbers from all parts of the country.

* * * * *

Development so wide and so rapid as that which we have sketched has been of necessity costly. The expenditure since 1862 on buildings devoted to science alone must have considerably exceeded £300,000, the greater part having taken place in the latter years of the period; and it must be remembered that the University has had also to equip and maintain the observatory, the cost of which is not included in the amount just mentioned, and to spend large sums on the University library. Except in one or two cases, in which a special benefaction fund had been appropriated to adornment by the desire of the benefactor, these buildings have been erected with the strictest regard to economy. The amount expended cannot be said to be an inordinate sum for a modern University to have spent on scientific buildings and equipment. Yet even this expenditure would have been impossible without external help.

The cost of the maintenance of the buildings erected and of the very inadequately paid staffs, now presses on the limits of the available income; and it is contended that but little more can be attempted for many years, if ever, without external aid. We will proceed, then, to a rough analysis of the resources of the University and colleges, and of the allotment of these resources. Before doing so, however, it may be well to state that the colleges provide adequately, but not extravagantly, for the teaching of classics and mathematics, for elementary teaching in many other subjects, and for individual assistance to the student and supervision of his work in the subjects taught in the University. The collegiate system also ensures a close contact and intercourse between teacher and student not otherwise or elsewhere attainable. The University, in its teaching aspect, may be regarded as an organization for providing instruction in all those branches of knowledge the teaching of which cannot be economically undertaken by the colleges. Thus, for the teaching of science, and for the provision of costly laboratories, the University is responsible; and the higher and more specialized teaching in most other departments is also provided by the University. The ancient endowments are, in the main, college endowments; but the history of the development of modern subjects is also the history of the development of the University; and it is the University rather than the colleges which is at present in need of substantial financial help. But to suppose that the colleges do not heartily co-operate in the University teaching would be erroneous; at the present time one college may be better organized than another for this particular purpose, but the colleges may safely be trusted soon to come into line.

The corporate income of the seventeen colleges is, roughly, £310,000 per annum. This, with a sum of about £52,000 (called the Tuition Fund), received annually from the lecture and laboratory fees of the 3,200 students, and £30,000 received annually by the University for degree and other fees, constitutes the whole available income for college as well as University purposes, if we except certain Trust Funds for the endowment of some professorships, and those funds of the nature of charities of which the colleges are merely administrators.

The corporate income of the colleges consists of (1) endowments, usually in the form of estates, which bring in £220,000 a year; (2) fees, rent of rooms, profits on kitchens, and so forth, which bring in £90,000. But the colleges are great landowners and have the outgoings of landowners. Though the expenses of the estate management are only about 7 per cent. of the revenues arising from the estates, yet £130,000 a year are spent on management, repairs, and improvements on the estates, rates and taxes,[17] interest on loans, and the maintenance of the costly college buildings in Cambridge. Many of the latter are national monuments of surpassing interest, the proper care of which is a duty to the nation. When allowance has been made for the inevitable expenditure under these heads, there is left only £180,000 for all other purposes. The fellowships and the stipends of the heads of houses absorb £78,000; and the contributions of the colleges towards scholarships, as determined in the main by statute, and as distinct from any separate endowment, account for £32,000.

An analysis of the distribution of the fellowship money may conveniently be deferred for the moment; but it may be stated that the sum spent on scholarships finds, inside the University at least, many critics. The expenditure on scholarships is undoubtedly, however, in the main, a fulfilment of the intentions of their founders, and, if we may judge by the recent expenditure of County Councils, is in accordance with public feeling. After deduction of fellowships and scholarships, there is left of the corporate income a sum of £70,000. Of this sum, £32,000,[18] or nearly one-half, is paid as a direct contribution to the University; but, as will be seen immediately, the colleges contribute to the University in many other ways. Of the £38,000 remaining, £4,000 goes to supplement the Tuition Fund of £52,000 received from the students as fees; the sum of £56,000 so obtained is applied to the provision of college and University lecturers. A large proportion of these fees is paid to the scientific departments of the University; and of the fees so paid the greater part is assigned as a contribution to the maintenance of the several departments, and not, directly at least, to the payment of lecturers.

Deducting the sum of £4,000, contributed by the colleges to the Tuition Fund, we have left over of the corporate income a sum of £34,000, or about £2,000 per college, available for the payment of college officers and servants, the expenses of the college libraries, printing, and other expenses. If, then, it can be shown that the £78,000 spent on the fellowships is not extravagantly allotted--and of this more below--it is clear that the colleges can contribute but little more than they do at present to the University teaching.

An idea of the serious effect of the fall of agricultural rent on the college incomes may be gathered from the fact that one of the larger colleges has in the last thirty years suffered a loss of revenue amounting to £10,000 a year.

We now turn to the question of the fellowships. The sum of £78,000 was in 1904 divided among seventeen heads of houses and about 315 ordinary fellows. Of this sum the heads of houses received among them, as far as can be ascertained, the not excessive amount of £15,000, very unequally divided. The average stipend of a fellow is thus about £200 per annum. When the last Commission sat, the maximum stipend of a fellow was fixed at £250; and it was thought that this sum would usually be reached. But, except in the case of one or two colleges, which are the fortunate possessors of town property, the maximum is now never reached; and in certain cases the value of a fellowship has fallen to less than £100 per annum. Of the 315 fellows, some 245 were in 1904 resident and some 70 non-resident. Of the residents, about 225 were holding some University or college office, educational or administrative. Of the non-residents, and of the residents who were holding no office, the greater number had earned their fellowships by holding some qualifying position, such as a lectureship for a given number of years, usually twenty. Among the non-residents, in addition to fellows who hold their fellowships as a pension, were to be found students who are prosecuting research away from Cambridge; such students are, as a rule, liable to be summoned to reside, as college exigencies may demand. Several other non-residents are fellows who have but recently received appointments away from Cambridge; their fellowships will, under the new statutes, lapse in a year or two.

The analysis shows that the number of ‘prize fellowships’ is small; and it is believed that they are steadily vanishing. To assist the reader in obtaining a general idea of what is done with the fellowships, the combined result in the case of two colleges is here given. The two colleges in question have been chosen because the writers happen to be in a position to account for the occupant of every fellowship in each college. As will be seen, the two colleges render most valuable assistance to the University; and they have practically rid themselves of the burden of prize fellowships imposed on them by the Commission of 1856. The two colleges dispose, according to the University calendar of 1905-6, of forty fellowships between them. Of these, five are pension fellowships; five are held by professors in the University, as part of their stipend; twelve are held by University lecturers, demonstrators, or other University officers; eleven are held by college officers or lecturers; five are held by research students in Cambridge; two junior fellowships are held by non-residents. One of the latter was recently appointed to a professorship in another University, and his fellowship has just lapsed; the other holds a prize fellowship. It is unlikely that, when his fellowship lapses, another prize fellow will be elected in his place. There are in residence at each of the two colleges a number of University lecturers and officers, and of college lecturers, for whom no fellowship can be found. Speaking generally of the fellowships allotted to college teaching, it may be said that, with the help of a portion of the Tuition Fund, they enable the colleges to provide the college lecturers with stipends on which an unmarried man, occupying rooms in college, may comfortably live. When we turn to the University lectureships, there is often another tale to tell.

The University income, which has to bear almost the whole cost of modern developments, is made up of the following items: matriculation, degree, examination, and other fees, £30,000; direct contributions from colleges, £32,000; income from endowments, £2,000--£64,000 in all.

In 1904 the University, in the course of its ordinary work, expended £65,300, distributed roughly as follows:

£

Officers, secretaries, and servants 4,100

Maintenance of business offices, registry, senate house, and schools 1,300

Rates and taxes 3,400

Obligatory payments from income 1,300