OXFORD UNIVERSITY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13894, 4 May 1907, Page 9

OXFORD UNIVERSITY.

APPEAL FOR £250,000. LITERARY AIvD SCIENTIFIC STUDIES, Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, May 2. Lord Curzon has. issued an appeal for £250,000 to strengthen tho endowments and to equip Oxford University on modern lines in literary and scientific studies. Lord Curzon was recently elected Chancellor of tho University of Oxford. Tho London Daily Mail of March 20 states:— ... Sooner or later tho nation will have to faco the question of the serious financial embarrassment of its older universities. Last month we published an appeal from tho Duko of . Devonshire on behalf of Cambridge University. The duko stated that in all a capital sum of nearly £1,500,000, apart from any question of a Pension Fund for professors, was required for immediate educational purposes. Now Oxford University is eontcmjlating a similar Whilo some of the colleges are rich, tho university is notoriously poor. It fails, or barely succeeds, to make both ends nicet.

Tho sum urgently required to enable Oxford to nieet the educational demand of tho present day, to keep pace with tho general advance of tho outside world, and also to maintain her existing institutions, is a minimum of a quarter of a million. In Iho paet the .colleges have. roado great efforts to> assist the university, but further endowments are wanted. When raised, the required sum will bo appropriated to specific needs, in something like tho following soale:— Science .* £100,000 Additional buildings ... 50,000 Bodleian Library 50,000 Modern languages 50,000 History 20,000 Total £250,000 As in the case of Cambridge, it will be seen that this amount doee not provide any fund for tho pensioning or other additional remuneration of tho staff, although this is a serious problem which requires to bo solved.

It is not a little curious to reflect, when one remembers the wording in which Mr Cccil Rhodes couched his great bequest to his At ma Mater, that it is the introduction of the Rhodes scholars more than anything elso which has lod Oxford to "wake up" to tho educational need of the hour. It

has been brought home by Rhodes students to professors "living secluded from 'th 4 v;orld," and "a3 children in commercial matters," that Oxford lacks facilities for training in certain subjects which receive the utmost attention from every modern, and, indeed, nearly all other, universitieo.

At Oxford, for instance, the student who intends to make engineering; his profession cannot qualify himself for admission to the Institute of Civil Engineers. Many of the Rhodes scholars wish to he engineers, and Oxford, feels that eho'must meet their case and tliat of the hundreds of others who require the training which at present thaj have to seek elsewhere than at Oxford.

There aro row about 2CO Rhodes scholars at the university. They conic from all the colonics, from tiie TJuiicd States, and from Germany; and they have created a new atmosphere. Oxford realises that, while maintaining the old traditions of culture, she must also offer to these young men the advantages of up-to-date equipment.

A study which has grown, and which grows enormously, is that of English. Hero again the demand; of the Rhodes scholars, Anglo-Saxon and German, are a spur to action; but the whole Empire is demanding teachers in this world-wide language, and Oxford's poverty is n bar to the provision of adequate instruction in this as in other 'modern languagos. Hie dream- of a professorship of Japanese is another that only increased funds can realise,