IS OXFORD WORTH WHILE?

Hawera Star, Volume L, 25 October 1930, Page 9

IS OXFORD WORTH WHILE?

A New Angle on ’Varsity Life

T AST week-end I wont down to Oxford for an undergraduate party. I have reached tho ago when most, of my friends in the University are dons, says a writer in the “Daily NewsChroudcie. ” They go on, term after term —hospitable, malicious, unchanged. It was an l unusual experience to see so many undergraduates, most of them in, the last days of their last year, ini the absurd, white bow ties that are supposed to convey an academic appearance. It set me wondering whether Oxford had been worth while. When parents and school masters ask themselves and each other that question they often mean only one thing-: Is the money spent on university education. a sound capital investment? Prom three to four years of a young man’s life, at an age when lie might bo earning a certain amount of money, are occupied instead in spending it. Tho amount, of course, varies a great deal from one man to another, but I suppose that it costs on the average about £IOOO to take a degree. Is. there a corresponding increase in the graduate’s earning,capacity? Would the money have been better employed at some technical training college. rProm this point of view, as far as I can judge from my own experience and that of my friends, Oxford is certainly not worth while. When I went down the only job I could get was that of teaching elementary classics to turbulent little boys at the salary of £l6O a year. Of my contemporaries' only one is earning “real: money”; he is a film star at Hollywood, incidentally he was sent down for failing to pass his preliminary schools.

Another scholar who took a double first and was president of the «J uni or Common . Room has become a curate. Another friend who had an exemplary career in all branches of University life was for a month last year actually starving until he was discovered; another, who had a brilliant reputation among his fellow-undergradu-

ates, lives' in a dingy bed-sitting-room and does occasional reviews for journals of precarious financial stability. But, of course, that is a marrow and silly way to regard education. A much more pertinent question is: Do Oxford and Cambridge maintain a tradition of genuine culture? To judge by the blank faces- and blanker conversation of the young man in a London ballroom one would suspect that they did not. But there is another side. Oxford is architecturally a city of peculiar grace and magnificence, and it is impossible for anyone, however deep his apparent preoccupation with hunting or golf or bridge, to live there for three or four years without being influenced by it.

The truth i s that Oxford is simply a very beautiful city in which it. is convenient to segregate a certain number of tho young of the nation' while they are growing up. It is absurd to pretend that a boy of eighteen, however sound he has been as a school prefect, is a fully grown man. Those who choose .or "are obliged to. begin regular, remainerativc, responsible work at the moment they leave school, particularly if they have had a. fairly carefully tended adolescence, often show signis of a kind of arrested development. It i s just because Oxford keeps them back from their careers 1 that it is of most value.

It gives them another four years in which to grow up gradually. It puts them out of the Vay of their fellowcitizens while they are making fools of themselves. They can learn to get drunk or not to get drunk; they can edit their own papers and air their opinions: they can .learn how to give parties; they can find out, before They are too busy, what really amuses and excites them; and they can do all this in a town by themselves. After that they can begin on the dreary and futile .mbs that wait for most of them, witn a great deal more chance of keeping their sense of humour .and self-respect.