Category: postcards

  • Higher education postcard: Grey College, Durham

    Higher education postcard: Grey College, Durham

    It’s 1959, and Durham University is still a federal university, with colleges in Durham and Newcastle. And expansion in Durham was underway. Elvet Hill, just south of the River Wear, had already seen St Mary’s College move in 1952 from its old site; and now a new college was being built.

    The college was to be named Grey College, after Charles Grey, Prime Minister when the university was founded (Grey may also have been the earl who inspired the eponymous tea). The name was subject to some controversy: the alternative was Cromwell College, after regicide and Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell; Grey won by one vote.

    And then on 6 March, catastrophe. There’s lots of detail in the report in the Shields Evening News, but the long and short is that the building was burned out. Notwithstanding the reviving tea that the firefighters were able to get. It was due to admit its first students in the next academic year, just six months later. And it did!

    Clearly a get up and go spirit was needed, and that appears to be what happened. The college opened; the master paid from his own pocket for the hall to be panelled. Felix the Phoenix was adopted as a mascot.

    The college expanded rapidly – this is, of course, in line with the general growth in UK HE at that time. By 1964 it had over 350 students, all men – a sevenfold growth in five years. And in 1966 it became the base for the USSR football team during the world cup. Their group games were played at Ayresome Park in Middlesbrough and Roker Park in Sunderland, so staying in Durham made sense. This was the USSR’s most successful world cup: they made it to the semi-finals, where they lost to Germany. There’s a nice – if somewhat long – telling of the story here.

    Grey admitted its first women students in 1984. The title of its head changed from master to principal when Professor Sonia Virdee was appointed to the role in 2023. Heidi Alexander, at the time of writing Secretary of State for Transport, is an alumna; Nish Kumar, comedian, is also among its alumni.

    And here’s a jigsaw of the card for you.

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: UWE Bristol

    Higher education postcard: UWE Bristol

    Medieval England was full of guilds – chartered bodies often relating to a particular trade – which gave members rights.

    One such was the Society of Merchant Venturers in Bristol: although chartered in 1552, it traces its lineage back to the thirteenth century with mention of a guild of merchants in the city. The society had some sort of monopoly on maritime trade “beyond the seas”, which was clearly advantageous to the society’s members, and the society and Bristol prospered.

    In 1595 the society established a school for mariners’ children. Over the years this would have developed; and in 1894 it was re-founded as the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, with very fine new buildings, including forced air heating and ventilation systems. The college burned down in October 1906 – “reduced to a mere shell”, in the words of the Western Daily Press.

    In 1909 University College Bristol received a royal charter, and became the University of Bristol. I’ll write about this another time, but for now, let’s note that the engineering section of the Merchant Venturers Technical College became part of the faculty of engineering of the university. This shows that it must have been of a reasonable standard; I wonder also if the fire, and the need to find new accommodation, played a part.

    After the second world war, responsibility for the college transferred to the local authority. The two sites it then occupied became two different colleges: the Bristol College of Commerce at Unity Street and the Bristol College of Technology at Ashley Down. On 31 August 1949, just above an article celebrating the possible return of clotted cream from Devon, the Western Daily Press noted that courses offered by the College of Commerce ranged “from shorthand to shipbroking, languages to librarianship, and export to general education.”

    Further change came in 1960, when the College of Technology split into two: the Bristol College of Science and Technology, and the Bristol Technical College. The former moved to Bath in 1965, becoming the University of Bath. And that is a story for another day.

    And now the era of the polytechnics was here, and Bristol Polytechnic was formed. The College of Commerce and the Technical College were joined in this by the West of England College of Art. And the technical college split one more time: the Brunel Technical College offered lower level programmes; the higher level activity became part of the polytechnic.

    As far as I can tell, this latter college had its roots in the Bristol Academy for the Promotion of the Fine Arts, which seemed to have admitted its first students in something like 1844, and was certainly involved in seeking tenders for a new building in 1855. It wasn’t one of the first government schools of design, although it appears to have been modelled on the same principles. In any event (and if I am wrong about this college, please do correct me in the comments!) it was by 1969 well established in Bower Ashton.

    The nascent polytechnic was spread over several sites in Bristol, and in 1970 plans were announced to develop a campus in Frenchay, at Coldharbour Lane. Over time much of the activity of the various campuses would move to Frenchay, but for now it was just plans: the campus opened in 1975.

    We now need to go down another historical byway: in 1976 two colleges of education were incorporated into the polytechnic. These were the Gloucester and Bristol Diocesan Training Institution for School Mistresses, founded in 1853 and latterly called St Matthias, and Redland College, an emergency teacher training college established in 1947. There’s an excellent brief history of St Matthias on the university’s website, including some great stories.

    In 1992 the polytechnic – along with all others – was given university status and became the University of the West of England. A familiar tale of rebuilding an campus consolidation took pace, with the St Matthias site ultimately closing; the aggregation of city centre sites into one city centre campus; the growth of activity at Frenchay, and the establishment of a campus in Swindon. In 2012 there was an ill-fated attempt to create a stadium to be used by Bristol Rovers and the university, but this came to nothing other than legal arguments with Sainsbury’s.

    UWE is now the thirteenth largest UK university by student numbers (2023–24 HESA data).

    And there we have the UWE story, or at least one telling of it. The Merchant Venturers Technical College is unique, I think, in having given rise to three different universities. And, as the Brunel Technical College still exists as part of the City of Bristol College, and as the City of Bristol College has a university centre, there’s always room for a fourth to be created.

    The card was sent in 1988, addressed to David, c/o Mrs Williams, at St Martin de Porres school in Luton. David was Mario Morby’s father; Mario had cancer and was collecting postcards to try to get a world record. The LA Times has a good write up; happily it seems that Mario survived the cancer, and got into the Guinness Book of World Records.

    Here’s a jigsaw of today’s card for you to enjoy. And a bonus jigsaw of the St Matthias campus which is, frankly, quite challenging.

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: statuary | Wonkhe

    Higher education postcard: statuary | Wonkhe

    Greetings from Oxford!

    Many – perhaps even most – universities have a statue or two. But few have a statute which is as troublesome as one of those belonging to Oriel College, Oxford. You can see the statue in question in the alcove directly above the door in the postcard – the one on its own at the top; not one of those along the first floor. And I bet by now you’ve guessed the statue. It’s of Cecil Rhodes: plutocrat, imperialist and, crucially for this post, alumnus of, and donor to, Oriel College, Oxford.

    You can see the statue a little better in this close-up from anther postcard. The Latin reads something like “from the generosity of Cecil Rhodes.” (It is also, apparently, a chronogram – the outsize capitals giving the date of construction, 1911, in Roman numerals. And it does, if you ignore the order and just add up all of the Ls, Ms, Is, Cs, Ds and Vs. There’s a really good site here to help.)

    Rhodes made money – a lot of it – from diamonds, and become politically powerful within the British southern African colonies. I’m not going to attempt a biography in this post; you can read here what Britannica has to say about him. He studied at Oxford between 1873 and 1881, the extended length of time not being explained by his gaining higher and higher degrees, but by his interrupting study to return regularly to South Africa.

    Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape Colony (as it was then known), and played critical roles in the British wars against the Zulu and against the Boer (he fomented the incident which led to the war against the Transvaal). He was an ardent imperialist: writing about the English, he said:

    I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. I contend that every acre added to our territory means the birth of more of the English race who otherwise would not be brought into existence.

    Rhodes died young – aged 48 – and in his will left £100,000 to Oriel College (worth about £10.5 million today), a chunk of which was used for a new building on the High Street side of the college. Its the one in the postcard with the statutes. He also left money for other educational goals – for example, land in South Africa which became the campus for the University of Cape Town; and famously the Rhodes scholarships, which support students attending Oxford from the former British empire, and from Germany.

    In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town protested against a statue of Rhodes on campus. As this piece makes clear, the statue was the symbol, the protests had a broader target: the legacies of colonialism and racism within and beyond the university environment. The university’s council agreed with the protestors, and the statue was removed. Students 1, Rhodes 0. And a slogan – #RhodesMustFall – gained currency.

    In 2016, a focus of what had become a movement fell on Oxford. The Oxford Union debated and passed a motion in favour of the removal of the statue on Oriel college. In 2020 the matter surfaced again, with student protests in Oxford, and resolutions in favour of removing the statue from the undergraduate and postgraduate students of the college. Trickily for the college, the building – and hence the statues – were listed, so simply removing the statue was not possible. The college’s council agreed to hold an independent inquiry to make recommendations, and when the report was received in 2021, voted to seek to remove the statue. But, the environment was hostile, and it was clear that government, whose approval would be necessary, would not approve.

    The college has published a good explainer, which includes links to pieces by Professor William Beinart, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, outlining Rhodes’s legacy; and by Professor Nigel Biggar, Emeritus Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology, arguing that Beinart’s criticisms of Rhodes were overplayed.

    Now, the issue to me seems fairly simple. Did Rhodes’s actions lead to a state of affairs where if you have black or brown skin you were treated far worse than if you had white skin? The history of the twentieth century in southern Africa say clearly yes. Should we therefore be memorialising him? Reader, I invite you to answer this one for yourself.

    And that is how things currently sit. Whether under a different government permission to remove the statue might be given I do not know. Sculptor Antony Gormley suggested that the statue be turned to face the wall in shame – maybe that would be permitted? I do suspect, though, that we haven’t yet heard the last of this one.

    And here, as is customary, is a jigsaw of the postcard – enjoy!

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: New College, Oxford

    Higher education postcard: New College, Oxford

    Greetings from Oxford!

    As I write this blog, the spring statement is two days away, and I have no idea (although I can make a guess!) how Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves’ statement has gone down with people. Reeves studied for her first degree at New College Oxford, and so that’s where we’re going today.

    This being Oxford, New College is obviously a very old college. It was founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham, the Bishop of Winchester. Formally – that is, when it’s in trouble with its mum – it’s called The College of St Mary of Winchester in Oxford. But even in 1379 this caused confusion. There was already another college dedicated to St Mary – the one snappily titled The Provost and Scholars of the House of the Blessed Mary the Virgin in Oxford, commonly called Oriel College, of the Foundation of Edward the Second of famous memory, sometime King of England.

    And so it became known as New College. Which name it retains to this day, despite (at the time of writing) there being thirty colleges of the university which are, by any reckoning, newer.

    Anyway, enough cavilling. The college was founded, and it had a name which at the time seemed reasonable. It’s founder, William of Wykeham, was a man of substance: as well as being Bishop of Winchester, he was Lord Chancellor to both King Edward III and Richard II. And he became thereby a rich man: by speculating on tax revenues, by income from the many church livings he had, and by the expropriation of the property of French religious houses looted during the Hundred Years’ War.

    He used these riches in part to fund education, and in the late 1370s was busy not only establishing an Oxford college, but also establishing Winchester School. (He’s the reason why Winchester old boys are called Wykehamists. I say old boys advisedly – Winchester School started admitting girls in 2022, so soon former pupils will be a more accurate description.)

    New College’s charter and statutes made it unusual. Admission was restricted to pupils from Winchester College – it formed a closed system. It also included provision for undergraduate students, one of the first at Oxford to do so. (And no, I’m not sure how you got to be a graduate student if you hadn’t been admitted somewhere to be an undergraduate first. My guess is that the medieval understandings of these terms is different to mine today.)

    The senior fellows (masters and above) taught the junior fellows (undergraduates). In this arrangement you can see the start of Oxford’s tutorial system; you can also see the practice of research students teaching undergraduate classes, which is common across the UK today, especially in research-focused universities.

    New College was also the first of the Oxford colleges to be built around a quadrangle, meaning that everything the fellows needed – places to sleep, eat, read and pray – were inside the college walls.

    The statutes and the physical constraints of the buildings kept New College small. The college’s history identifies two notable periods in the next few centuries. The first was the period of religious strife during the Tudor dynasty’s reign. New College was a hotbed of Catholic fervour, and its fellows staunch supporters of Queen Mary. And when Mary died, to be succeeded by the very protestant Elizabeth, many of its scholars fled to mainland Europe.

    In the civil war, Oxford was a significant place – the base of the King’s parliament for much of the war, it was also put under siege. The royalist defence of the city was, in part, organised by the then warden (head) of the college, Robert Pinke, who was acting vice chancellor at the time. When Oxford was threatened by parliamentarian forces, he went to parley with their commanders. One of whom, William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, was a New College man himself. But that didn’t stop him sending Pinke to London where he was arrested and held for a while. Alumni relations must have been tricky for a while after that.

    After the civil war, demand for higher education slowly grew, as the political settlement took hold, as the power of the monarch was slowly constrained by parliament, and as a middle class began to emerge. But New College was constrained by its statutes: it could only have 70 fellows, and they had to be Winchester College students. This meant that it went from being one of the larger colleges to being one of its smallest.

    Statute and ordinance changes in 1857 and 1883 did much to modernise the college. The requirement to be a Winchester school pupil was removed; the limit to the college’s size also. In 1868 fellows were permitted to marry, and the college introduced (with Balliol) the idea of intercollegiate lectures. The college grew, admitting more students, so that by 1900 nearly 300 undergraduates were registered.

    The 1900s also brought a couple of notable wardens. The first was William Archibald Spooner, for whom spoonerisms were named. Spooner, it is held, was prone to making amusing slips in his speech, such as asking “tell me, was it you or your brother who was killed in the war?” A particular meaning is swapping the first sounds of nearby words (“you have hissed my mystery lectures”). Dictionaries of quotations are full of spoonerisms. And, once you recognise that New College becomes cue, knowledge, it is possible to have some sympathy with the Reverend Spooner. The pen-portrait on the college website is certainly very fond of him, with good reason, I would say.

    The second notable warden was H A L Fisher. Fisher was President of the Board of Education in David Lloyd George’s wartime cabinet, from 1916 to 1922. He introduced legislation to require compulsory education for all children up to the age of 14, and also introduced enhanced pension arrangements for teachers. The Teachers’ Pension Scheme, rates for which currently cause headaches for more than a few university vice chancellors, is part of Fisher’s legacy. He retied from politics to take up the post of warden of New College, succeeding Spooner. Fisher died in 1940.

    There’s a fascinating, and slightly ghoulish, postscript to Fisher’s life. In 1943, as part of a wartime deception, British intelligence dressed up a corpse as a British marine, carrying apparently secret documents. Documents written to deceive. The body was left to wash ashore near Spain, the documents were shared by the then fascist Spanish government with nazi Germany. And the documents, which related to the site of allied landings in southern Europe, seem to have been believed. To make the deception more credible, the fictitious marine had to be dressed appropriately, and in wartime London good quality clothing was hard to find. And so Fisher’s woollen underwear was used.

    New College has an impressive list of alumni. As well as Rachel Reeves, the list includes politicians Tony Benn, Gyles Brandreth, and Hugh Gaitskell; academics Harold Laski and J B S Haldane; Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; public intellectuals Neil MacGregor and Lucy Worsley. And, as the K-Tel hits compilation adverts used to say, many, many more.

    And here, as usual, is a jigsaw of the postcard for you.

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: Purdue University

    Higher education postcard: Purdue University

    Greetings from Indiana!

    In 1862 the United States passed the first of a series of laws – known as the Morrill Land-Grant Acts – which allowed states to sell federally owned land to fund the creation of colleges. These colleges – known now as land-grant universities – form a large chunk of the US higher education system. And its important to note – as America tries to forget its history – that the land sold to fund them was often bought, granted by or stolen from Native American tribes.

    The state of Indiana decided in 1865 to take advantage of the act, and a process to decide where and how to spend the money began. The state could have chosen a couple of existing institutions, but in 1869 was swayed by proposals from Tippecanoe County which included pledges of $200,000 (about worth $4.6 million today) and 100 acres of land. And so Purdue University, named after the benefactor who had pledged the lion’s share of the $200,000, was established in West Lafayette, on the Wabash River.

    Purdue developed into a university focusing on engineering and agricultural subjects. This was under the guidance of Emerson E White, president of Purdue from 1876 to 1883. He sought to differentiate Purdue from the “classical” American universities, and the syllabus reflected this. Humanities and social sciences were not prohibited, but were not prioritised. He sought also to ban fraternities from campus, and when the Indiana state legislature required the university to allow fraternities, he resigned. But it was too late, and that year Purdue received no state grant.

    Purdue became a leading institution for research into steam traction on the railways. By the 1890s it owned several locomotives, and a railway dynamometer which enabled research. There was a local railroad – the Monon railroad – which operated works near Purdue. In 1891 the Purdue football team (gridiron, not association or union or league) beat neighbours Wabash College 44–0; there were suggestions that the team had included some ringers – boilermakers from the Monon works. Which led to the nickname Boilermakers, given to the university’s sports teams.

    (Its a bit of a tradition in American universities for their teams to have nicknames; a little like the now sometimes quaint nicknames used for football teams in Britain. A few still have local meaning, but other than journalists looking for copy, do many people still call their team by its nickname? Answers in the chat, please. But in America they are still used, it seems.)

    Purdue became the first US university to have its own airport, in 1934, and introduce credit bearing courses in learning to fly. Amelia Earhart was an instructor for those courses, and a career counsellor for women students. Her round-the-world flight attempt in 1937, in which she disappeared, used an aeroplane funded by Purdue’s research foundation.

    Purdue scientists discovered properties of the element germanium which enabled the invention of transistors. Transistors were fundamental to the development of electronics and computing. Transistors themselves were invented at Bell Laboratories but without germanium semiconducting crystals, which the Purdue team produced, transistors would not have operated quickly enough.

    In 2017 Purdue University bought Kaplan, the early online university, and transformed it into Purdue University Global.

    The card – here’s a jigsaw – shows the Boilermaker Special, Purdue’s official mascot. The Boilermaker was introduced in 1940, paid for by alumni and members of the Purdue Reamer Club, a student club formed as an alternative to the fraternity societies. The first vehicle comprised a body made by the Baldwin Locomotive Works, mounted on a Studebaker chassis. The card shows the third Boilermaker Special, which was in service from 1960 to 1993. It was made by General Motors, on a bus chassis. The current Boilermaker Special is the eighth; a ninth is expected to be in service from this summer.

    The card was posted in February 1973 to a couple in Washington DC:

    Came out here yesterday to let M.G. take a look at Purdue…

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: Oxford Brookes University

    Higher education postcard: Oxford Brookes University

    Greetings from Oxford!

    As reported in the Oxford Times, on 21 March 1865 – which by my count is very nearly 160 years ago – a meeting was held in Oxford. This led to the establishment of the Oxford School of Art, which opened its doors to students on 22 May that year.

    The initial curriculum included freehand drawing, shading in chalk, perspective and model drawing, figure drawing and anatomy, and painting in oil and watercolour. There were separate classes for men, women, and children under 15. Men and children paid two shillings a month (with discounts for larger periods paid up front); women paid four shillings per month. It isn’t clear to me why the fees were different, but as L P Hartley says, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

    The school was initially housed on the ground floor of the Taylor Institute, a library for European languages within the University of Oxford. In 1868 or 1870 (sources differ) a school of science was added. But trouble was brewing. John Ruskin, who had recently been appointed as the Slade Professor of Fine Art at the university, did not approve of the way drawing was taught at the Oxford School of Art, and established the Ruskin School of Drawing to address this. The Ruskin School needed space, and so the School of Art and Science was moved to the basement of the Taylor Institute. The Ruskin School of Drawing is now, by the way, the Ruskin School of Art, and is the University of Oxford’s department of fine art. This tells you who won that argument in the long run!

    The move to the basement proved short lived. In 1888 chemistry labs in the Wesleyan school, Witney, were used by the school of science. In 1891 the school was taken over by the city council, following legislative changes enabling local authorities to fund education and to act as trustees, and was renamed the Oxford City Technical School. And in 1894 a new site, at St Ebbe’s in Oxford, was acquired for the school.

    The new site enabled growth in activities – so rapid that in 1899 the government Department of Art and Science declared it inadequate. Needless to say, the school remained on that site for another fifty years, albeit it also occupied other sites across the city.

    We now need to fast forward to 1928 and introduce a new character: John Henry Brookes.

    Brookes had trained as a silversmith, and was a part-time teacher of sculpture at the school. In 1928 he was appointed vice principal of the school of art (the schools of art and science were technically separate organisations); and in 1934 when the schools of art and science were formally merged to form the Schools of Technology, Art and Commerce, Brookes was appointed its first principal, and was to remain in that post until 1956.

    A pressing issue was accommodation, and in 1949 a 25 acre site in Headington was secured for the school. Planning permission was not granted until 1952, having been initially rejected in 1950, and it wasn’t until 1955 that the foundation stone for the new suite was laid. In 1952 a new name was also given: the school became the College of Technology, Art and Commerce. The Headington site was not formally opened until 1963, fourteen years after the site was acquired.

    In 1956 Brookes retired. His impact on the institution was clearly great. The college was once again renamed as the Oxford College of Technology; this and Brookes’ retirement were not, I believe, related events.

    In 1970 the college became Oxford Polytechnic and, in line with national policy which encouraged the amalgamation of smaller specialist colleges into more generalist institutions, it started to expand by incorporation. First came the Lady Spencer-Churchill College – this had been an emergency teacher training college, established in 1947. The Oxford School of Nursing joined in 1988; and in 1992 the Dorset House School of Occupational Therapy also joined the polytechnic. And also in 1992, the polytechnic became a university.

    Oxford Brookes University was the chosen name, in honour of John Henry Brookes. A few of the polytechnics had chosen names to commemorate local people – for example, Liverpool John Moores, Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry – but I think Oxford Brookes is the only one named for a former principal. If you know different, please do say!

    In 1993 the university acquired Headington Hill Hall, formerly owned by Robert Maxwell, enabling an expansion of the Headington site. And in 2000 Westminster College, a methodist teacher training college, merged with the university.

    Being a university sharing a city with the University of Oxford can’t be easy: comparisons will mostly be tiresome. But here’s a surprising one: Oxford Brookes is arguably the best university in the UK at which to row (as in, propel a boat by oars, not argue) – see, for example, this report on the Henley regatta, 2023. Bet you didn’t know that!

    And here’s a jigsaw of the postcard, which I found more challenging than I expected.

    Happy 160th birthday, Oxford Brookes University!

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: Nalanda | Wonkhe

    Higher education postcard: Nalanda | Wonkhe

    A long time ago, in a land far, far away from where I sit in Swansea, King Kumaragupta I established a monastery as a centre for higher learning. The monastery was in Nalanda, in modern-day India, and the year was something like 427 CE.

    Nalanda was already a holy site: it had been visited by Siddhartha Gautama – who you might know better as Buddha – and was the birthplace of one of his disciples. By 427 CE there had for some 700 years been a stupa at the site, containing the remains of Sariputta, the disciple. Mahavira, a significant character in Jainism, had lived there. It was a place of pilgrimage.

    Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara’s 2016 work, The origins of higher learning, contains a good discussion on Nalanda, on which this blog draws. The monastery was active between 427 and the twelfth century CE, so it had about 700 years of existence, and overlapped the creation of the first European universities and the Islamic centre of learning based upon mosques and libraries.

    Nalanda attracted scholars from many countries and regions – Lowe and Yasuhara report Persia, Tibet, Chia, Korea, Indonesia and Mongolia. (Their book highlights just how mobile scholars – and their ideas – were in the ancient world. It’s well worth a read.) From two of the Chinese scholars, Hiuen Tsang (who spent three years at Nalanda) and I Tsing (who, emulating Hiuen Tsang, spent ten years there), we can find out about life and learning at Nalanda.

    It seems that Nalanda was organised on a collegiate basis – that is, residential, with tutors supervising students’ learning. At its height there were about 1,500 tutors and 8,000 students, which is a very Oxbridge ratio.

    To gain admission, a student had to answers questions posed by the gatekeeper; apparently only one third of those who sought entry were successful. A high degree of literacy was expected of applicants: they must be familiar with core Buddhist texts and philosophical writings, although there was no religious belief bar to study.

    Kumara Gupta I and subsequent rules had granted Nalanda a substantial income, from the produce of over 200 villages. This income supported the tutors and scholars: there were no tuition fees, and no requirement for students to undertake any task other than learning, discussion and contemplation.

    The site was about the size of the City of London; there were ten temples, eight monastic buildings – which served as colleges – and over 600 individual study-bedrooms. But don’t think modern rooms with ensuite – this means space for a bed, and niches in the walls for a light and a bookshelf. The library was in three buildings, one of which was nine stories high; it is estimated that it held several hundred thousand texts; and copies were given to scholars who left for elsewhere.

    Nalanda was governed by an assembly which took all major decisions, including those relating to admission, allocation of study-bedrooms, and students discipline. (Nalanda’s authority over its members seems to have been like that of a medieval European university.) There was a clepsydra, which regulated the times for eating and bathing.

    The curriculum is known to have included study of Buddhist texts, and other subjects such as medicine and magic. Amartya Sen identified the subjects as including “medicine, public health, architecture, sculpture and astronomy… religion, literature, law and linguistics.” It is clear that Nalanda was a site for secular learning, not simply religious instruction. There was a tall tower for astronomy.

    And, wonderfully, it seems that Nalanda spawned other institutions of higher learning. Gopala, who came to power in the region in the 700s, after a century in which there had been a power vacuum and much strife, founded several institutions which formed, with Nalanda, a network. These were at Odantapura, Vikramshila, Somapura and Jaggadala. Lowe and Yasuhara speculate that this could be thought of as a federal organisation: tutors and scholars were able, and indeed were encouraged, to move freely between them; it was a single project to enhance learning.

    Nalanda is now simply ruins, although a modern university was established near the site in 2010, and in the 1960s there was what was regarded as a new university on the site. It says so on a postcard, which, as we know, never lie.

    Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard, which is from a 1960s tourist pack of several of the site and the temple. It is unsent, and the pack had been held together by a rusty staple whose disintegration enabled me to scan this one without damaging the others.

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: the university court

    Higher education postcard: the university court

    We’re in Aberystwyth again this week, but not for an in-depth look at the university – we’ve done that before.

    Instead, we’re going to look into an aspect of old university governance, with an Aberystwyth artefact. This is a draft report to the University Court of Governors.

     

    The older, chartered universities in the UK (which means, broadly, those founded between 1800 and 1992) tended to have three bodies involved in governance:

    • A senate, which was the academic decision-making body of the university, comprising all or some of the university’s academic staff
    • A council, which was the governing body of the university, but which couldn’t take a decision on an academic matter without first consulting the senate
    • A court, made up of stakeholders (ie graduates, local bigwigs, learned society representatives), which had very few if any powers, but to which council must account for itself and its activities.

    Typically speaking, a court would meet once a year. Its powers might include appointing the chancellor of the university, but that is a ceremonial role, so is a very limited practical power (although one over which universities occasionally trip up). And at the annual meeting, there would be reports from the vice chancellor, and questions, and then that would be it for another year.

    Now, this report is from a college of the University of Wales, which was a federal university. This means I’m not clear whether the report was to the court of the University College of Wales Aberystwyth, or to the court of the federal University of Wales. But either way, it gives a fascinating snapshot of what accountability looked like in 1920. (And if you know about the governance of the University of Wales in 1920, please do say in the comments below!)

    The report would have been the first under the principalship of John Humphreys Davies, pictured here.

    Davies was an alumnus of Aberystwyth; he succeeded Thomas Francis Roberts, who had been principal from 1891 to 1919, and had died in August of that year whilst still principal. He had since 1905 been registrar of University College Aberystwyth, making him another rare example of progression from senior professional service roles to institutional leadership.

    The report starts with a brief statistical summary. It shows the impact of the first world war on numbers: there were 298 students in 1917–18; 410 in 1918–19, and 971 in 1919–20. About 30 per cent of the students were women; over 70 per cent came from south Wales; over 15 per cent from north Wales; over 10 per cent from England. And the remainder – nineteen students in total – came from Egypt, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, France, India, Java, Jamaica and an unexpectedly large contingent – ten students – from Serbia.

    There’s then a report on degree examinations, recording each student who had taken degree examinations, for bachelor of arts, master of arts, and certificates of education. I haven’t counted the names, but they stretch for fifteen pages of the report, so it looks like all of the students at the college. Jones is the most frequent name, with 60 in the faculty of arts, three in law, 31 in science, and two for the certificate in education. And we also get a report on alumni who had gained degrees from the University of London, or gained scholarships at Oxford.

    And then the fun starts. Written reports from every department, starting with Greek, ending with the Officer Training Corps Contingent. Here are a few extracts:

    Mr Jenkins, Greek: ‘Special: only two students took the course. Of these, Mr Neil Evans more than maintained his promise of the preceding session and attained a high standard in the examinations. As he intends to take Latin Honours in 1921, it may not be possible for him next session to devote to Greek as much time as he would wish, but if he can defer Greek honours till 1922, there is every prospect of his attaining a high class. The other candidate, Miss Young Evans, also did quite well, and showed improvement on the work of 1919.’

    We have become much more squeamish about naming individuals in formal papers, even when praising them, or damning them with faint praise. Poor Miss Young Evans.

    Professor Atkins, English: ‘The work this session has on the whole been satisfactory, though difficulties have not been wanting, owing to the large increase in the number of students and the varying ability of the ex-service students to settle down to serious study…’

    Demobilisation was clearly not without its downsides.

    We also get a fascinating insight into examination success rates. Here’s the data for undergraduate exams in English:

    By my reckoning, this is a pass rate about 72 per cent for intermediate, 58 per cent for ordinary and 64 per cent for special levels. What would we make of these rates today?

    We learn that the library received gifts including 600 volumes from the library of the late Principal Thomas Francis Roberts; the review of the Aberdeen Angus Cattle Society; the proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin; and the report of the Association of Headmistresses in London. And, excitingly, that Miss Cummings of the Bodleian Library in Oxford has been appointed cataloguer to classify and catalogue the library’s holdings “in accordance with the rules of the Library of Congress.”

    We have the first report from Professor Zimmern, the founding chair of international politics at Aberystwyth, a subject in which the college was to gain much renown.

    And let’s end this set of extracts with this, about the Normal College’s music students. (You’ll remember that the Normal College, in Bangor, focused on teacher training.)

    Apathy, irregularity and a lack of preparation. A sad and sorry state of affairs. I wonder if it was ever thus?

    Overall I’m struck by the level of detail and the minutiae in the report. There’s a flavour of what life must have been like at Aberystwyth, and an openness to accountability which is interesting. Maybe it’s a genuine transparency, maybe it’s a desire to hide big issues behind the day-to-day. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it.

    I’ve got two jigsaws for you today. First the postcard at the top; and then a double page spread from the report, just for the sheer fun of it.

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: Al-Azhar University

    Higher education postcard: Al-Azhar University

    Greetings from Cairo!

    In 970 work started on the Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, which had been founded on the orders of al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah, the fourth Fatimid Caliph. Work on the buildings was completed two years later. In 988 Ya’qub ibn Killis, the first vizier of the Fatimids, designated the mosque as a centre of learning, and the following year 35 scholars were hired. This marked the beginnings of the mosque as a place of learning. The curriculum included law and jurisprudence, grammar, astronomy, philosophy and logic; ibn Killis himself taught; and both men and women could study there.

    It was also, it seems, a place of learning with an agenda. The Fatimids, argue Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara in their 2016 work “The Origins of Higher Learning”, funded Al-Azhar in order to create a framework to underpin Shia Islam.

    In 1171, the Ayyubid caliph Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, who you might know better as Saladin, overthrew the last of the Fatimids, after many years of strife. One of the actions he took was to assert Sunni Islam, rather than Shia; and with this the fortunes of Al-Azhar took a downward turn. There was, it seems, the destruction of books on a vast scale. Some say 120,000 books from the library, some say 2,000,000. Now, by the 1050s the library was said to hold 200,000 books, which is a lot, but it does feel like the upper estimate for destruction one hundred years later has some poetic license about it. In any event, a lot of books were destroyed. Al-Azhar lost its breadth, becoming a centre for the study of Sunni Islam.

    And so it remained, for several centuries. It gained in prestige, becoming one of the four main centres for Sunni jurisprudence in the Islamic world. It regrew its library, which now holds over seven million items; it expended its premises. It continued to accept students for study; and continued too award qualifications. On which rests its claim to be the longest continually operating degree awarding body in Egypt.

    In 1961 – nearly 1000 years after its foundation – Al-Azhar was re-founded as a modern university. Its curriculum was secularised, to cover business, science, engineering, and medicine. And it has a broader remit, as a body responsible for schools across Egypt, with over 4,000 affiliated institutions, with 2,000,000 learners at those schools and institutes.

    Since 2011 the University’s Council of Senior Scholars – senior Islamic scholars, that is – has been re-established and plays a role in national affairs. This includes electing Egypt’s Grand Mufti, which role had previously been appointed by the country’s president. Roughly speaking, a mufti is an Islamic scholar who can issue a fatwa; the Grand Mufti in a country is head of that country’s muftis.

    One of the reasons I like finding out about universities in other countries is the exposure to different ideas of what a university is or does. Al-Azhar has antiquity, it teaches to a high level, it’s a university. And it has a broader remit too.

    And here, as is now becoming customary, is a jigsaw of the postcard. Hope you enjoy it!

    Source link

  • Higher education postcard: Churchill College, Cambridge

    Higher education postcard: Churchill College, Cambridge

    It’s 31 March 1949, and Winston Churchill, now Leader of the Opposition, was visiting the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    He was impressed by what he saw, and thought that the UK should have its own version, a postgraduate university focusing on science and technology. Fast forward six years, and Churchill had retired after his second spell as Prime Minister. His private secretary, John Colville, sought to progress the idea, but could not make as much progress as he had hoped.

    Parallel with, and unconnected to, Churchill’s idea, Shell Petroleum had since the early 1950s been hosting meetings at which leading British industrialists identified a need for a specialist institute to train people for the science and engineering industries. Again, this came to nothing.

    But then in 1957 the two schemes were revivified and brought together. Alexander Todd, Nobel Prize-winning chemist, worked with Carl Gilbert, chairman of Gillette and sometime US trade representative, to make the case for a Cambridge college which would focus on science and technology. And one which would stand as a memorial to Churchill. And so in 1958 an appeal for funds was made (as can be seen from the Scotsman of 21 May 1958, no public funds would be available at first), with some £3.5 million being raised to finance the college and its initial activities.

    The money was raised, with contributions from industry and also from the Transport and General Workers Union (which all confirms L P Hartley’s motto in The Go-Between: “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”). And it was a period of industrial largesse to higher education: in researching this piece I came across a wonderful article – in the Brechin Advertiser (29 July 1958) but no doubt syndicated more generally – by Richard Martin, on the donations to Churchill College, St Catherine’s Oxford, and for new buildings fore engineering at UCL. “The universities have been given the financial tools, and they will not fail to finish the job.”

    Very deliberately, although the college was intended to focus on science and technology, it would not exclude the humanities. This was the period of C P Snow versus F R Leavis, two cultures versus one. Snow – scientist, civil servant, novelist – argued in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution that the problems of society were exacerbated by the failure of many who would be considered well educated (ie in the humanities and classics) to know anything about science:

    A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: ‘Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?’

    (To avoid embarrassment at this point, I will remind you that the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy or disorder of a closed system is always increasing. Which you already knew.)

    Snow’s view was attacked (there is no better word) by critic F R Leavis in 1962: Snow was a philistine; his vision soulless technocratic utilitarianism. Viewed as an attack which played the man not the ball (but note here a defence of Leavis from 2013), the row did not do much to damage Snow’s view.

    The founders of Churchill College clearly thought there was merit in Snow’s views; hence the requirement that only 70 per cent of the entry be for students of science and technology.

    The college was given a Royal Charter in 1960, and admitted a few postgraduate students in that year. The first undergraduates arrived the following year. By 1966 Churchill had been admitted as a full college of the university and by 1968 all of the original buildings had been completed and opened.

    Churchill College was amongst the first of Cambridge’s all-male colleges to admit women (in 1972). Its senior tutor – Dick Tizard – sought to broaden admissions to focus on grammar school and comprehensive school students, not focusing on the public schools. He also worked to achieve the admission of students to membership of the college governing body, in 1969.

    In 1970 the Churchill College JCR, along with the University of Bristol Students’ Union, persuaded the NUS to take up an appeal by two students – Julian Fox of Bristol, and Hugh Nelson Ricketts of Churchill – against decisions of the local returning officers to disbar them from the electoral register because they were not permanently resident at their term time addresses. The Court of Appeal – with Lords Denning, Widgery and Karminski – on 12 May 1970 granted the students appeal. The OfS now requires universities to assist students in registering to vote: quite some distance has been travelled in this matter!

    Winston Churchill is not without controversy. In 2020 the college announced a working party which would organise a year-long programme – on Churchill, race and empire. The university archives hold some recordings from this. Not, perhaps, surprisingly, this attracted a considerable amount of media attention and criticism: Churchill is a revered figure for some in Britain. The college cancelled the series of events in June 2021.

    There’s a very readable history of the college on its website (click on “the college’s first decade” in the fuchsia box), by the way, from which I’ve drawn fairly heavily in this account.

    And here’s your jigsaw of this week’s card – enjoy!

    Source link