Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/16

6 quite without engagements. In the lecture world there is a manifest survival of the fittest.

When the course ends there is a formal examination, open to all students who have attended a specified proportion of lectures and done the requisite home work. Certificates are awarded to the successful candidates, the results depending upon the term work as well as the examination. I have not myself much faith in academic labels, but these certificates have a certain value in stimulating the students to carry their work to completion.

Where university extension is still untried, half courses, of six lectures each, are sometimes given by way of experiment, but in this case no examinations are held and no certificates are awarded.

The statistics of the movement show that it is still increasing in popularity. All of the numerals which sum up its activity, attendance, lecturers, courses, have much more than doubled within the past five years. The figures of 1889-'90 show that nearly four hundred courses were given, and that these were attended by over forty thousand people. During the winter of 1890-'91 the attendance was over forty-five thousand. It is estimated that about ten per cent take the examinations. A number of new and interesting developments have attended this growth. Besides the regular fall and spring terms there are also summer meetings at both Oxford and Cambridge, which have been a most pronounced success. One can scarcely overestimate the advantage of even this brief residence at the universities themselves. It is no inconsiderable education simply to be in Oxford. The tastes which are thus encouraged make possible better things in the winter courses following. The Cambridge summer meeting is, on the whole, more scientific in its scope, and the numbers in attendance are consequently small, but are increasing as the opportunity becomes better known.

At Oxford the meetings have always been of a more popular character. The students are numbered by hundreds and even of late years by the thousand. The meetings only began in 1888, when the session lasted for but ten days. Yet there were nine hundred students present. Since then the sessions have lengthened and the attendance has likewise grown. For obvious reasons the students are largely drawn from the teaching class, the greater number being women. The opportunity of hearing such men as Max Müller brings even an increasing company of Americans to these summer meetings.

While the expense is kept as small as possible, the question of ways and means is too much for many of the poorer extension students, and scholarships are being founded to enable these to taste Oxford for at least a few weeks.

There are many other features of the English work, such as