Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/55

 severity of the matriculation test, the University establishes a higher standard of education for those whose means and prospects do not lead them to aspire to a University training. I hope, therefore, that in future, as hitherto, the University will be firm in maintaining the strictness and severity of the matriculation test.

There has lately been somewhat of a controversy between my honourable and valued friend the Vice-Chancellor and an official on the other side of India with reference to the merits of the systems pursued in the three Universities of India. I am not going to enter at all into a comparison of those systems, or of the merits or distinctions of the three Universities. I will only say that I am amply and fully satisfied with the statement which the Vice- Chancellor has made as to the position and the merits of the University of Bombay. But there is one thing that he brings to notice which is peculiar to this University, and which I hope this University will be firm in maintaining; and that is, that whereas in the other Universities the examinations are not conducted solely at the head-quarters of the University, but at various towns and other places throughout the country, and are conducted by means only of written papers without any oral examination, that in the case of the Bombay University, over and above an examination upon paper upon fixed subjects, there is also a probing and searching oral examination which must test the merits of the candidates, all of whom have to appear for their examination in Bombay. This, too, I hope will be maintained. It gives to you, gentlemen (turning to the new graduates), to whom I have had the pleasure to-day of presenting the certificates of the degrees you have obtained,—it gives you the power of saying to all who see that certificate in your possession,—"I not only have obtained a degree which shows that I have acquired a certain amount of knowledge, but that certificate has been given to me after a more searching and a more difficult test than that which is applied by any other University in India.

Well, Sir, there was another point which struck me in the report which the Registrar has just read, and I think it is one which ought to give us all unmixed satisfaction; and that is, that in the list of those whom he has read out to us as having successfully passed the matriculation examination, we find that there is not a part of this Presidency—that there is scarcely a district—which has not sent up its successful candidates to represent it within the walls of the University. It might well be expected that in a