Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/146

 no voice in their decision, but I shall feel some pride when I find that they are discussed and disposed of to the honour of the University under rules for the framing of which I have myself in a measure to answer. The other principal events of the academical year have been brought before us in the report just read by the Registrar. The number of candidates for the higher instruction continues as large as could be expected; the number of failures to pass the examinations is greater than can be desirable. Many youths I believe stand for the Matriculation Examination just, as they say, to "try their luck," but this endeavour to get through examinations on the lowest possible terms cannot but exercise a rather demoralizing influence. In the interests of the University and of sound scholarship we must hope that a somewhat stricter discrimination will gradually be used by school-masters in giving their pupils the qualifying certificates. The defects I have noticed are most conspicuous in the case of the private schools. The number of candidates from these schools steadily increases, which is in itself a very gratifying fact; but the proportion of passes is miserably low, showing how great room there is for improvement in the matter and the method of their teaching. It is perhaps due in no small measure to the system to which I have adverted that so many students fail in the further examinations requisite for obtaining their degrees. In the Previous Examination this year only about one-fourth of the candidates passed, and even from an institution like the Deccan College, only fourteen candidates out of seventy were successful. In the First Examination for the B.A. degree the results were more satisfactory, but still less than half the candidates passed. In the Second Examination for this degree the successful candidates were about two-sevenths of the whole,—a small proportion I cannot but think, considering the known ability and zeal of the Professors in the several colleges. The truth seems to be partly that preliminary training is defective, and partly that youths of inferior abilities, who are not likely ever to be successful students, are not weeded out with sufficiently rigorous kindness. The aptitude for scholarship is not universal, and disappointment must often result from setting naturally dull boys to tasks which call for at least an average measure of intellectual acuteness. In the professional examinations, or at least in those for Medicine and Engineering, the proportion of successful candidates has been much larger. The teaching must be deemed highly effective, and the students having a well-defined and