Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/84

80 colleges have received more than 40,000,000l. from this source alone; private effort supplied nearly 7,000,000l. in the years 1898-1900.

Next consider the amount of state aid to universities afforded in Germany. The buildings of the new University of Strassburg have already cost nearly a million; that is, about as much as has yet been found by private effort for buildings in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol, Newcastle and Sheffield. The government annual endowment of the same German university is more than 49,000l.

This is what private endowment does for us in England, against state endowment in Germany.

But the state does really concede the principle; its present contribution to our universities and colleges amounts to 155,600l. a year; no capital sum, however, is taken for buildings. The state endowment of the University of Berlin in 1891-3 amounted to 168,777l.

When, then, we consider the large endowments of university education both in the United States and Germany, it is obvious that state aid only can make any valid competition possible with either. The more we study the facts, the more statistics are gone into, the more do we find that we, to a large extent, lack both of the sources of endowment upon one or other or both of which other nations depend. We are between two stools, and the prospect is hopeless without some drastic changes. And first among these, if we intend to get out of the present slough of despond, must be the giving up of the idea of relying upon private effort.

That we lose most where the state does least is known to Mr. Chamberlain, for in his speech, to which I have referred, on the University of Birmingham, he said: "As the importance of the aim we are pursuing becomes more and more impressed upon the minds of the people, we may find that we shall be more generously treated by the state."

Later still, on the occasion of a visit to University College School, Mr. Chamberlain spoke as follows:

"When we are spending, as we are, many millions—I think it is 13,000,000l.—a year on primary education, it certainly seems as if we might add a little more, even a few tens of thousands, to what we give to university and secondary education" (Times, November 6, 1902).

To compete on equal grounds with other nations we must have more universities. But this is not all—we want a far better endowment of all the existing ones, not forgetting better opportunities for research on the part of both professors and students. Another crying need is that of more professors and better pay. Another is the reduction of fees; they should be reduced to the level in those countries which are competing with us, to say, one fifth of their present rates, so as