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In addition to the University, several institutions, calling themselves colleges, have arisen; beginning as a rule as boys' or girls' schools, later adding work above matriculation to their programmes, and finally evolving a special "College Department," which has in some cases developed into a University College of the highest efficiency. When the separation is complete, the school, which was in a sense the parent of the College, generally becomes known as the "College School."

This evolution of a University College out of a Secondary School, which undoubtedly has certain attendant disadvantages and dangers, is the natural result of a growing demand for University work, in a country where the population is sparse and distances are great. It has, none the less, been the history of every college in South Africa, except the Transvaal University College, which was founded as a full faculty of Mining and Engineering, adding its Arts department at a later date.

In South Africa the present tendency, without a doubt, is for institutions to assume the title "University College" before they are anything more than good High Schools.

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This tendency has unquestionably been fostered by our system of Degree by Examination."

Nobody will deny that this tendency will, if unchecked, bring its own retribution in a needless multiplication of weak colleges, in a general discrediting of "University Colleges" as a class, and in a decided fall in the prestige of these institutions that have really earned that name.

To come to the individual institutions doing University work. The South African College opened in 1829 with about a hundred students" and three "professors." The "School" was founded in 1874 as the "junior department of the College," and thus occupied. buildings in the College grounds, from which it was removed in 1895. As the Matriculation classes were not transferred from the College to the School till the year 1900, the institution's life as a University College in the strict sense can be dated from that year.

The College gives Certificates in Engineering subjects, and has an Associateship. It also prepares students for the Arts Course, the Survey examinations, and the Law Examinations of the Cape University, and does the first and second years of the Mining Course; and also the first year's Medical work of the Home Universities.

During the year 1905 there were 275 students and 26 lecturers. The Victoria College, Stellenbosch, was founded as the Stellenbosch Gymnasium in 1865. In 1874, owing to the incorporation of the University, an Arts department was established, which was incorporated as a College in 1881. The name Victoria College dates back from 1887. There is a complete separation between the school and college, and the college confines its attention to University work above matriculation. It covers preparation for the Arts, Survey and First Mining Examinations, and the first year's medical course. During 1905 there were 196 students and 16 lecturers. During 1905 the number of students was half as great again as in 1904.

The Rhodes University College, Graham's Town, is the youngest University College in Cape Colony. In 1855 St. Andrew's College was founded, and in 1878 the College and School departments were separated.

The Rhodes University College was incorporated in 1904, and took over the staff of lecturers from St. Andrew's, which was subsequently increased. The work is being carried on in temporary premises, pending the erection of buildings to cost £40,000. Three other schools in Graham's Town have occasionally put students through the Cape University examinations above matriculation, but since the Rhodes College has been established they all hand over their matriculated students to it. In 1905 there were eleven lecturers and 58 students.

The Diocesan College, Rondebosch, was founded in 1848 as a College School, and in 1886 St. Saviour's Grammar School was affiliated to it under the name of the Diocesan College School. The Matriculation Classes are still retained in the College, but otherwise the separation of College from School is practically complete. In 1905 there were five lecturers, fourteen matriculated Arts Students, seventeen Law Students, fifteen in the Survey Department, and one "miscellaneous," making a total of 47. This year there are over 50 undergraduates.

The Huguenot College, Wellington (ladies) was founded as a Seminary in 1874, and in 1898 the growth of the Collegiate Department necessitated the evolution of a College as a separate entity. The College is only open to Matriculated students. During 1904 there were 27 students, and in 1905 25 students and six lecturers. separation between College and School is complete. Only the Arts Course is taken here.

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Other Institutions in Cape Colony. By referring to the yearly pass lists of the Cape University since 1905, I find that no less than 20 schools in Cape Colony have regularly or occasionally passed students through the Intermediate Arts Examination, not including the five colleges mentioned above. Four have succeeded in putting students through the B.A., viz., Gill College, Somerset East (12), Burghersdorp Seminary (2), Kingswood College, Graham's Town (1), and Queenstown Grammar School (1). The total number of successful candidates from these schools is B.A. 16, Intermediate Arts 65. Several of these schools still retain the right of preparing students for Intermediate Arts.

Passing from the Cape Colony, we find that the only school in the Orange River Colony doing University work is Grey College, Bloemfontein. It was opened in 1858, and was the property of the Dutch Reformed Church till 1882, when it was transferred to the Government. Since 1899 it has put 19 candidates through Intermediate Arts and two through B.A., both the latter in 1905. It possesses a College Department, with a staff of six lecturers. The separation between school and college is complete. The classes are open to matriculated girls from the High School, as well as to the

College Students.

There were in 1905 seven matriculated students, and this year there are twelve in the Intermediate Class and six in the B.A. classes. There are no other students this year, though the college offers classes for the Survey, First Mining, and Law examination. A University College, to cost £60,000, is to be built. No other school in the Orange River Colony attempts University work.

In the Transvaal the only institution seriously doing University work is the Transvaal University College, till lately known as the Technical Institute.

Within the last ten years five schools have, between them, put six candidates through the Intermediate Arts, and the Normal College, Pretoria, has obtained the B.A.

The Technical Institute began its life in March, 1904, as a faculty of Mining and Engineering, the Law Course being first started in 1905, and the Department of Arts and Science at the beginning of 1906. At present there are 91 day students, of whom 57 are in the Engineering and Mining Departments, 14 in the Arts and Science Department, and 20 in the Law Department. The staff consists of 14 lecturers, two assistant lecturers, and two demonstrators. College grants Certificates and Diplomas in Engineering, Mining, and allied subjects, also a general certificate in Arts and Science, and an Associateship. Students are also being prepared for the Cape University Examinations in Arts, Mining, and Law.

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In Natal matters are complicated by the fact that the schools occasionally or regularly prepare students for Intermediate Arts, and two or three, the Durban High School and the Ladies' College, Durban, have each on one occasion put a student through the B.A. One school, Maritzburg College, has also five successes in the survey, and two in the first Mining Examination. One or two other schools occasionally attempt the Survey Examination.

A Commission on Technical Education last year recommended the establishment of separate classes, to form the nucleus of a University College, and to draw the senior pupils from the various High Schools, where they are being coached in one's and two's for University Examinations.

The present condition of Natal's finances makes it very improbable that any steps will be taken, for the present, other than continuing the work now going on at secondary schools.

Now let us try to form some estimate of the relative importance of the several units which I have enumerated, as factors in South African University Education.

Taking first, as a basis, the Arts degree, I have plotted the numbers of successful candidates during the last eleven years along lines corresponding to the colleges from which they are derived.

In this respect the South African College and Victoria College are approximately equal, and all the other colleges and schools, plus all private students, taken together about equal in importance each of these two places.

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The students, in other words, fall into three equal groups. we can express it this way. There are three equal educational institu tions (on basis of Arts degree), the teaching College at Cape Town, the teaching College at Stellenbosch, and the examining University at Cape Town, fed by a number of smaller schools and private students. The actual yearly averages are :—S.A.C., 12; Victoria, 12; others, 13. If we take as a basis the Intermediate Arts Examination, Stellenbosch has an annual average of 27.2, South African College of 19.7, while the greater number of compeung schools, and the greater care with which the less efficient institutions can coach candidates for this examination makes the "other colleges, etc.," line considerably greater, its average being 39.

When we come to Engineering, Mining, Surveying, and Law, we find fewer competing institutions. The only Colleges regularly preparing men for the survey examination in numbers are the South African College, Victoria College, the Diocesan College and Rhodes College, while Maritzburg College has passed five, and Grey College one, in the last three years. A few other schools occasionally prepare

candidates; the great majority are, however, private students.

With the exception of 3 boys prepared at the Maritzburg College, all the students who have taken the first mining examination of the Cape, and the first and second annual examinations of the Transvaal Technical Institute have been trained at the South African College, the Victoria College, and the Technical Institute. Grey College has done the work of the first year of the Technical Institute in the case of one student.

In Law, taking the senior or qualifying examinations as a basis, by far the greater number of candidates are private students, the number of such reaching to 104 last year. The average number of students graduating or obtaining Law Certificates from the South African College for the last 3 years is 29, the Transvaal University College had 30 successes last year (its first) while the Diocesan College averages for the last three years five successes, and Grey College has twice, and Rhodes College once, passed a student.

So much for the present position of University Education in South Africa. It may safely be said that the majority of those qualified to give an opinion regard the present state of affairs as unsound. We have a number of teaching institutions, of very varying efficiency, and the same degree is given, on the same terms on the one hand to the candidate who has spent three years at a fullyequipped University College, in an atmosphere of research, and in daily contact with specialists whose original works have secured them fame in their particular subjects, and on the other hand to the schoolboy who has been successfully coached, probably with deficient. laboratory equipment, by men who, as schoolmasters, are usually not specialists, but at best trained retailers of second-hand knowledge. For the schoolmaster cannot be expected to attain that degree of specialisation in any one subject which is now demanded of a professor, not to create that atmosphere of research which is essential to University work, if the verdict of the leading men in the University world in Europe and America counts for anything.

The practical ways out of the present difficulty may be summed up under the headings, affiliation, federation, and separation. Affiliation would mean, I take it, to all intents and purposes, a continuation of the present regime, but with a closer union between some or all the colleges and the Cape University. Such a scheme would appear to have few advantages over the existing system, and could never be expected to satisfy the stronger colleges, though perhaps helping to bolster up some of the weak ones.

Federation is, on the other hand, a policy that many people seem to advocate, rather than separation. Federation could take place in either of two ways-there might be a wholesale federation of colleges, weak and strong, or a limited federation admitting only the most efficient.

Wholesale federation, with the admission of all kinds of colleges, would lead to a University that was in great measure an association of high schools. So impracticable would it seem, that I doubt if anyone is likely seriously to propose it as a feasible

measure.

Limited federation, on the other hand, would have certain undoubted advantages, and has many supporters. The arguments for and against it have been very fully set forth in a recent Report of Committee of Senate of South African College on University Education," a body which, as one of the pioneer corporations for University teaching in South Africa, has a strong claim be heard. On the whole, the weight of opinion in that report is decidedly against federation.

A federation of the strongest schools, preferably on an acknowledgedly temporary basis, might be a decided step towards greater efficiency. The merits and demerits of federation will, I hope, be discussed by more competent persons than myself. To me the greatest difficulty seems to be, firstly, to decide what colleges should be excluded, and, secondly, what to do with those that are excluded. That some of the aspirants to admission would have to be excluded at first is, I think, obvious, otherwise there can be hardly any doubt that the weak colleges would keep back the University, for as Professor Schuster has put it (in a letter published in the report above mentioned), "the strength of a federal university is that of its weakest college." Such a scheme of limited federation would entail a mutual agreement between the federal colleges as to the minimum of endowment, students, staff and research, which would subsequently admit a college to the federal University.

The question would then arise: What can be done with the new federal colleges, some of which may have invested considerable sums in their College Departments. They must be given a fair chance. to acquire that standard of efficiency which will admit them to the federation. This could be provided for in any one of four ways:

(1) The Federal University might affiliate whole colleges or classes or individual teachers for certain subjects and courses, either directly to the University or to one of its constituent colleges. This would absolutely exclude the weakest institutions, an object that is

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