Presidency by your Government, and even if such work could be undertaken by this University, it is probably wiser to leave it in the hands of Government. Little objection can, however, I think, be taken to a scheme of University Extension Lectures. Already in some of our colleges assistance is being afforded to students who are studying for the Master of Arts Degree, but not as yet by means of special lectures. But nothing has as yet been done to provide the means of acquiring extended knowledge, except in the arts, to students otherwise than through the regular curricula of affiliated institutions. This is not the place to discuss the practical difficulties of such a scheme, but it is the place in which to say that provision for imparting knowledge in this way is gradually becoming a necessity of higher education in this Presidency and to invite attention to the subject. The revenues of the University will be ample. I cannot conceive a more appropriate way of spending the surplus of money derived from examination fees than in providing means for the further education of the examinees outside the beaten paths of the University, through lectures, be they in connection with a University course or in subjects not as yet included in the University curricula. By such a measure students of this University might from time to time hear courses of lectures by distinguished scholars and scientists of Europe. I feel the necessity for keeping the tests in branches of knowledge outside the University courses under the immediate control of Government, but I am also persuaded that that system is in part only a provisional system as regards higher knowledge, and that if education in such subjects is ultimately to be placed on a sure basis, the University must, in the fulness of time, provide the means of testing such students by examinations and of honoring those who distinguish themselves therein by Degrees or Licenses—in other words that this University should in time confer Degrees or Licenses on such specialists as Chemists, Agriculturalists, Musicians, as well as on Lawyers, Physicians, Engineers, and Schoolmasters.
Improved schemes of University study.
Gentlemen, I have told you that your organisation as an University is capable of a beneficent evolution, and such an evolution has already affected the courses of study, which were laid down for you at the beginning. But you should be for ever grateful that the scheme of higher education marked out for you was at once modelled on more scientific lines than those which till then prevailed in some of the leading Universities of Great Britain, Your fathers were not limited to instruction in ancient Languages, and Letters, or in Mathematics, but they were at
