B.—7a,

12

student is the exception. This high proportion may at first sight seem ground for legitimate pride ( and jself-congratulation, but closer scrutiny suggests that it is capable of a less favourable interpretation : that it may be a symptom of weakness rather than of strength. It may mean, and in our opinion does mean, that the University in New Zealand is working at a lower level and with inferior ideals. It is quite clear from our inquiry that in New Zealand there is, as the London University Commission found was the case in England, " confusion in the public mind between university education and a university degree : people believe that every one who has the latter has in some way or other also had the former, and that the examinations that have been passed are a proof of it."* There are, 110 doubt, certain subjects which cannot be memorized —e.g., mathematical problems, composition, and unseen translation in such a foreign language as Latin, in which the examinee has to produce a result of his own out of his own thought; but apart from these subjects (which are usually avoided, if possible, by the candidate who wants to get through on easy terms) it is true to say that external written examination is a test of memory alone, and that the crammer will always be able to produce a higher percentage of passes in such a test than the real teacher. In other words, examination separated from teaching does not by itself adequately test the quality of the work, and " can be more effectively and easily prepared for by means that are not really educational." This idolatry of pure examination is a modern product, the result of the unfortunate accident wliich in 1836 placed a purely examining body on the University throne in London; but to-day the belief in the potency of examinations has been almost universally discredited, and London University is now a teaching institution and no longer a mere examining body. The European educational institution known as the University came into existence in the early Middle Ages, and was in origin simply a society or guild, 011 lines similar to the craft-guilds of the time. Like them, it consisted of full members, masters of the craft, and apprentices who were learning the craft and aspiring to mastership. The test in each case was the same — viz., ability to perform the skilled work which was the raison d'etre of the guild. In the case of the University the craft was teaching, and the apprentice proved his ability by disputing or maintaining 111 debate some philosophical, ethical, or theological thesis with several of the most learned of the masters. Like the craft apprentice, he had to go through several years of probation before he was admitted to the test. This disputation, which has left its mark 011 university nomenclature in the term " wrangler," applied to members of the First Class in the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge, is the lineal ancestor of the viva voce examination which once formed an important and necessary part of degree examinations, but is now little more than a vestigal survival. This conception of the university as a society or corporation consisting of teachers and learners prevailed everywhere in Europe, and in the distant lands colonized from Europe, right down to the establishment of the so-called University of London hi the first half of the nineteenth century. Even then there was at first no other idea. In 1826 University College was founded as the University of London for students who were debarred from entering the old universities either by religion or by poverty. It was a teaching university that was planned : a non-teaching university was an idea that had never occurred to any one. Before, however, the university could get its charter a rival teaching institution, King's College, also intended for poor students, was started by a number of persons who wished to have university life informed by Christian teaching of the Anglican type. No one at the time conceived the possibility of having two universities in one city ; the choice therefore seemed to lie between selecting one as the university and placing both under an independent Examining Board, whicn should " perform all the functions of the Examiners in the Senate House of Cambridge." The latter was chosen as the line of least resistance, and the Examining Board was established with the title of "jThe University of London." It was at first confined to examining students trained in the two colleges, but pressure was soon brought to bear by other teaching institutions 111 various parts of the country which, as the Examining Board was independent of the two London colleges and not a federated institution

The. University originated as an association of tsachers and students.

London University originally planned as a teaching university.

* London University Commission, 1913, seo. 86, p. 37.