Progress

New countries which are trying to establish themselves often begin their march into the future by founding a university—next they found an airline and build a parliament house. Then they want to close the university down for subversion.

Only a couple of years ago, the government of Argentina decided to show its strength; police broke into the faculty of science in Buenos Aires; they knocked down the dean, who tried to bar their way; they broke his head and his arms; they beat up every human being who happened to be in the building at the time; and the next day 308 of the 312 staff had to go. The work of a life-time was destroyed in an afternoon, and practically no science is being taught today in the largest university in the southern hemisphere.

Even in countries where governments are tolerable and where universities are not corrupt and centres of political action, they may be inefficient and grotesquely overcrowded. The University of Paris, for example, has 180,000 students—30,000 more than they expected—and yet there are, I think, only 500 seats in the library. Students were admitted for whom there are no places in lecture rooms or laboratories. Some queue from 7 o'clock in the morning in order to get a place for an 11 o'clock lecture. Many students never see a professor all the time they are at university. Last year I believe 920 candidates graduated in archaelogy in the Sorbonne and it was then that they discovered that there were no jobs available for them at all. German universities are run by all-powerful professors, some of whom are completely uninterested in student affairs. University courses get longer and longer and an alarmingly large number of men do not graduate until after 30. An attempt by Parliament to make it possible for men to be professionally qualified by 26 was most bitterly resisted by the universities. One cannot help feeling that some form of rebellion was inevitable in Europe and one can only marvel that many universities have been so quiet for so long.

And what is one to make of the universities in India? The University of Kerala has about 140,000 students—almost as many as the Sorbonne. Both universities are obliged to admit every student who comes with a school-leaving certificate, although the standard of school teaching has declined and the number of would-be undergraduates has increased beyond all expectation. University staff cannot be found, buildings are inadequate, and equipment is out of date. Students study subjects which are of no use to them, and in Kerala there are no jobs for the graduates. 50 years ago, devoted missionaries created the best schools in India in the state of Kerala—today it has some of the best universities, more graduates than any other state and more graduates unemployed—and Kerala was the first state in India to go communist. Many of the problems of Kerala seem strangely like those of Europe; everywhere desperate problems seem to inspire desperate remedies. And who can wonder? What are frustrated young people to do?

If we are to understand the student riots and the very peculiar form that some of the demonstrations have taken, we must think of present difficulties and present discontents; but we cannot ignore, even today, traditions established 600 or 700 years ago. In the Middle Ages university students were clerks, and in some ways they were indistinguishable from clerics in holy orders. Many of them has a priestly tonsure, and nearly all of them claimed the extraordinary privileges which were demanded by the church for its priests. In England, it used to be said that it took two murders to hang a priest—one to unfrock him and one to condemn him. All over Europe, students were to all intents and purposes immune to the processes of civil law.