other machinery exceeds a lakh of rupees a year, or nearly Rs. 400 per graduate per annum!
Figures for 1920
Rs
Vice-Chancellor 31, 400
Establishment (office) 28,500
Providend Fund Contribution 1, 300
Bonus & gratuities tund 1,900
Travelling Allowance of non-official members . 15,000
Printing charge ( excluding books ) 23,000
Travelling allowance of official members (approximately) 19,000
1,20,000
The above figure does not include the recurring expenditure on and the annual interest on the capital value of the university buildings proposed. Such a huge expenditure can be justified only if the new Universities succeed (a) in making the education of our youth more thorough and liberal and (b) in promoting research more effectively than was possible under the old universities. But so long as they merely act as examining machines and reproduce the work of the Calcutta University in its old unregenerate age of imitation of the old unregenerate London University, and before its recent assumption of direct post-graduate teaching in many and specialised branches and its organisation of research, these new Universities have no reason for existing[1].
Now, it should never be forgotten that each of these two desirable ends involves a further expenditure of money, and when in the fulness of time these ends are achieved ( as we hope ), the heavy cost of duplication of machinery, buildings, etc., referred to above, will not be decreased in any way.
(a) Of the work of improving the efficiency of teaching, the Colleges must bear the brunt; the central or administrative body of the University can contribute but little to it, and that too only by the inspection of the Colleges, wise regulation of the courses, and judicious direction of examinations with a view to influence the teaching in the right direction. Therefore, the creation of a new University, while the colleges are as much starved as before, cannot in itself improve the teaching and raise the efficiency of the education given. On the contrary, by diverting the public funds into mere duplication of the examining machinery, it automatically deprives the colleges of the means of strengthening themselves, and postpones their much needed improvement.
II. The Evil of Small Classes
(b) When the new Universities undertake post-graduate ( or Honours ) teaching and organise research, they will no doubt become teaching bodies, and universities in the true sense of the term. But it should be always remembered that such teaching requires a vast expenditure, ( at Calcutta, on the Arts side only, about 3 lakhs of Rupees a year, of which only a small portion is recovered from tuition fees ). Another and equally important point is what few people other than actual teachers know, viz., that in order that post-graduate teaching may be fruitful there ought to be annually produced a large body of graduates to pick out of, large Honours classes to select capable research students from. A few hundred graduates of mediocre merit and no ambition to distinguish themselves by the advancement of learning cannot supply the necessary material for a research class, with them for the audience even M. A. teaching degenerates into mere mechanical preparation for passing an examination, higher than the Intermediate or the Bachelorship in theory, but not differing in quality. The Patna University supplies the intellectual needs of an entire province, but last year only one student secured Honours in History. The situation is
- ↑ Where an old federal university has grown unwieldy in the size of its constituency it must be split up, or where a province (like Burma) is apt to be neglected by reason of its distance from the seat of its old university, it ought to have a provincial university of its own. Here the gain in efficiency outweighs the expenditure involved in duplication of machinery, but not where universities are multiplied in the same province with a small English-educated population.
