Category: postcards

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.

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March 7, 2025
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.
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February 28, 2025
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!

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February 21, 2025
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!

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February 14, 2025
Higher education postcard: Taxila | Wonkhe

We’re doing anther historical incursion today – looking at what was an internationally renowned centre of higher learning in the Indus valley.

We have to wind the clock back a long way. In 535 BCE Persian emperor Cyrus the Great invaded the lands to the east, and by 540 BCE had taken all of the lands to the west of the Indus. A regional capital was established at Taxila, which by then had probably already been a city for about 500 years. It was the obvious choice, having been capital of the ancient kingdom of Gandhāra. We also need to note that in 326 BCE Taxila surrendered to Alexander the Great’s army; that a few years later it became part of the Mauryan empire for over 100 years; then part of the Yavana empire for another hundred years or so; then occupied by Indo-Scythians between 80-ish BCE and 30 CE; and the Kushan empire until about 375 CE.

The following account draws strongly on Roy Lowe and Yoshihito Yasuhara’s 2016 work, The origins of higher learning. After the Persian conquest, Taxila became a centre for Vedic learning. By the time of Alexander and the early Mauryan emperors, there was a demand for scholars who could speak Greek.

As well as the Vedic scriptures, medicine was taught at Taxila. Two eminent healers – Charaka and Jivaka – both studied at Taxila, perhaps under the teacher Disapamok Achariya. Other notable people associated with Taxila included Panini (who was neither the inventor of the sandwich nor the inventor of sticker albums, but was in fact a Sanskrit grammarian) and Chanakya, an early political economist.

Lowe and Yasuhara tell us something about academic life at Taxila. Individual teachers shared a building with their students, and would enrol up to five hundred students. Senior students were used as assistant teachers, as clearly 500 is too many for one person (it’s easy to recognise the doctoral-students-as-teaching-assistants model here).

The curriculum comprised “the three Vedas and the eighteen accomplishments”. The three Vedas – books of verses – were the Rigveda (knowledge of the verses), the Yajurveda (knowledge of the sacrifice) and the Samaveda (knowledge of the chants). The eighteen accomplishments are not so clearly specified. On the evidence seen by Lowe and Yasuhara they may have included “elephant lore, magic charms, spells for reincarnating the dead, hunting, the study of animals’ cries, archery, the art of prognostication, charms, divining from bodily symptoms, and medicine”; to which was later added “logic, the atomic theory of creation, arithmetic, law, accountancy, agriculture and astronomy.”

This looks like a cracking degree programme to me. Particularly once I’d realised it was prognostication not procrastination, for which I’d want to submit a claim for accreditation of prior experiential learning. And, if you’re tempted to get sniffy about seriousness, it probably represented a good stab at the frontiers of knowledge at that time. Which is what first and second cycle qualifications of the UK higher education qualifications frameworks are about nowadays. So not so daft really.

The Kusham empire, in the first century CE, destroyed the city of Taxila to make way for their own city, rebuilt a little to the north. And in the fifth century the Hunas destroyed the rebuilt city. (It is not clear if these Hunas were connected to the Huns who were busy invading Europe at about this time.

And so there we have it; a very early institution of higher education. It is now a world heritage site, as suggested by the postcard, and a very popular tourist destination in Pakistan.

A final cultural connection. A favourite of mine from the 1970s TV schedules was Monkey! This was a TV adaptation of an early Chinese novel, the Voyage to the West.

The song played over the closing credits includes the lines “In Gandhāra, Gandhāra, they say it was in India…” – our heroes were escorting a Buddhist monk, Tripitaka, to being back some holy scrolls to help the emperor restore morality and order to China. It seems likely, I would suggest, that they were heading to Taxila.

And really finally, here’s a jigsaw of the card, in case you feel the need of some pleasant distraction.

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February 7, 2025
Higher education postcard: University of Valladolid
Greetings from old Castile!

Let’s go back to the thirteenth century, and the Iberian peninsula. The Roman empire had collapsed a few hundred years before; Visigoths had invaded from the north and established kingdoms; the Almohads had invaded from the south; it was a time of political uncertainty, with no peace; but also intellectual ferment.

Intellectual ferment because universities were being founded across Europe. Universitas – the Latin term – meant a single community, and that’s what made them special. They were sanctioned (mostly) by the Pope, and their members were accountable to the university authorities, not to civil authorities. This was a big deal – it gave freedoms to learn and think, as well as to misbehave and irritate the townsfolk.

And universities were springing up all over the place (the date in this list is when they were chartered, or gained their papal bull):
- Bologna, 1158, with origins from 1088, and still going strong
- Paris, 1200, with origins from 1045
- Oxford, 1248, but origins from 1096
- Hilandar, 1198, closed late 1300s, now the Mount Athos monastery
- Vicenza, 1204–1209
- Cambridge, 1231, started 1209 by refugees from Oxford
- Palencia, 1212–1264, and we’ll come back to this
- Salamanca, 1218, with origins to 1134
- Padua, 1222, founded by refugees from Bologna
- Naples, 1224, the first university founded by a monarch, not by the Pope
- Toulouse, 1229, founded to stamp out heresy
- Orléans, 1235, teaching law that Paris was forbidden to teach
- Siena, 1240.
The Kingdom of Castile – at that time a junior associate of the Kingdom of Leon – was keen to grow and develop. And in 1241 King Alfonso VIII founded the University of Valladolid; his successor Sancho IV granted the university the tax take from the local region, giving it financial security. And in 1346 Pope Clement VI granted a papal bull.

One account of the foundation of Valladolid has it that scholars leaving Palencia founded the university. It seems that competition closed Palencia: Salamanca had a more successful university, and was nearby, and funds were in short supply. No doubt some of the scholars of Palencia did go to Valladolid after it was founded. At this distance in time, and without documentary evidence, it is mostly conjecture. What is clear is that Valladolid thrived, and Palencia closed. And now Valladolid has a campus in Palencia – the wheel has turned full circle.

As the Spanish state developed, and as it began to extract wealth from the lands it conquered in the Americas, its universities thrived. Valladolid expanded, with new faculties, and new buildings. The building on the postcard dates from 1716–18, when the university was embarking on a programme of enlarging its estate.

It’s a grand façade. The statue framed at the top is of wisdom stepping over ignorance. On the four Corinthian columns are statues of the kings who helped develop the university: Alfonso VIII, Juan I, Enrique III and Felipe II. (It seems harsh that Sancho IV didn’t get a statue, but maybe by then local taxes were small beer compared to silver from South America). The statutes on the balustrade represent, allegorically, the early eighteenth century curriculum: rhetoric, geometry, theology, canonic science, legal science, and wisdom.

But the buildings reflected a glory that was fading. Spain’s universities had not modernized; student numbers fell. Efforts to reform were stalled by the conservative responses to radical and revolutionary thinking and action in France: universities were places for reaction. Post-Napoleon, and as industrialisation spread, Spain’s universities slowly regained their vigour. Valladolid’s student numbers grew.

Valladolid the city was firmly nationalist leading up to the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939, and although Valladolid was bombed early in the war, the city itself was far from most of the fighting. After Franco’s death and the restoration of democracy to Spain in 1975, a process of reconstruction took place: new statutes were agreed in 1985. Campuses of Valladolid were established in other Spanish cities – for example Burgos gained a faculty of law in 1985, and in 1994 became a university in its own right. (This appears to be a Spanish model of university expansion, which has the benefit of clear academic oversight early on.) You can read the university’s history on its webpages here – it’s been a useful source in compiling this account.

Notable alumni of Valladolid include:
- Trinidad Arroyo – first female ophthalmologist in Spain
- Manuel Belgrano – hero of Argentinian independence, designed of the Argentine flag and the general after whom the ill-fated warship was named
- Joaquín González – doctor, one of the drafters of the post-independence Philippines constitution in the late nineteenth century
- Turibius of Mogrovejo – humane and reformist archbishop of Lima, from the time of Spain’s colonization of South America, made a saint in 1726
And here is a jigsaw of the card for you.
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January 31, 2025
Higher education postcard: Dartington | Wonkhe

Dartington Hall is a splendid old country house.

Its great hall dates from 1388, and has a wonderful hammerbeam roof, an a porch where the arms of Richard II can still be seen. The trouble with keeping old buildings going – when you’re no longer a medieval feudal lord, and when wages have risen – is that upkeep is pretty tough. So it was fortunate that Dartington was bought, in 1925, by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst.

The Elmhirsts were interesting. Leonard was from minor English gentry, poor but clearly clever (he completed his degree in agriculture from Cornell in two years). Dorothy inherited at 17 a fortune (about half a billion dollars in todays money). She met Leonard when he was seeking donations to support his club for international students at Cornell. Romance blossomed: they married in 1925.

But before then, Leonard had accepted a job as secretary to Nobel-prize-winning polymath, poet and painter Rabindranath Tagore. This took him to India, where he supported Tagore’s work on rural reconstruction. This influenced him and Dorothy to attempt something similar in the UK, and in 1925 they purchased Dartington Hall. This became a home for all sorts of experimental work – on agriculture and rural economics and society, and also arts and creativity. About 1500 people worked on the estate; it gave concerts (the BBC broadcast the English Singers Quartet on 24 November 1934, and on Saturday 1 December 1934 a concert by Claud Biggs on the piano, accompanying contralto Astra Desmond); and the Western Morning News and Daily Gazette was entranced, on 28 May 1934, with Uday Shan Kar’s Hindu dancing.

In 1935 a charitable trust was established to run the estate, and a a wide variety of activities continued. These included summer schools (such as the Fabian Society school which is pictured on the card), concerts, classes of all sorts. Post war, these activities became more significant: an adult education centre was established in 1955, and in 1961 Dartington College of the Arts was founded. Initially this focused on training teachers in the arts: music, dance and drama, and visual arts.

In 1973 the college gained “assisted” status and received funding from Devon County Council to extend its offer to provide undergraduate degrees. Degrees were awarded by the Council for National Academic Awards (CNAA), the body which awarded degrees across the non-university higher education sector. This was prompted by a shift in government policy to require teacher education to be to degree-level (the first of many such shifts in professional education over the years).

The changes in funding arrangements in the late 1980s – the removal of polytechnics and colleges from local authority control, and the creation of the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council – created financial challenges for Dartington, as it lost its special funding. These were addressed by closing some programmes and rationalising others. And again, in 2006, the college faced financial difficulties. Scale appears to have been the problem, exacerbated by the college not owning its buildings and therefore being unable easily to expand student numbers.

This time the problems were insurmountable, and the college merged what was then Falmouth University College, and is now Falmouth University. The provision was moved away from the Dartington site.

But that isn’t the end of the story for higher education at Dartington: Dartington Hall Trust is registered with the Office for Students and established a provider with two faculties: Dartington School of Arts and Schumacher College (each of which continued the work of former colleges associated with the Dartington site).

Back to the postcard: we’ve encountered the Fabians before, in the establishment of the London School of Economics. They seem to have run summer schools at Dartington for several summers in the 1940s at least, but I haven’t been able to track down which one this card depicts. Can anyone recognise any of the earnest (Bevin or otherwise) socialists?

And here’s the jigsaw for you to have a go at. Have fun!

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January 24, 2025
Higher education postcard: Trinity College, Carmarthen

It is 1848, and a spectre is haunting Europe. If you’re Karl Marx, that spectre is communism. But if you’re a member of the god-fearing gentry in west Wales, that spectre is the lack of education!

Here’s the South Wales and Monmouthshire Training College, later Trinity College, Carmarthen, later still part of University of Wales Trinity Saint David. It was opened in 1848, following the efforts of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in England and Wales (they loved a snappy title in the nineteenth century). The National Society, as it was better known, had been established in 1811 to promote a religious education, mostly via Sunday schools. And there was a counterpart – the British and Foreign School Society for the Education of the Labouring and Manufacturing Classes of Society of Every Religious Persuasion – established in 1808 and 1814, which did the same but with less religion.

I’ve written before about how education policy in England and Wales developed slowly, and that compulsory, free education for children was a long time coming. The efforts of the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society had a big impact. And they included not only the operation of schools, but of training colleges for teachers.

Let’s take in the report from the magnificently named Monmouthshire Merlin of Saturday 4 November 1848 to get a flavour of the excitement in Carmarthen:

OPENING of the TRAINING COLLEGE CARMARTHEN.

This interesting event, which was anxiously looked forward to by the clergy and members of the Church Establishment in the Principality, took place on Tuesday week. The weather was very unpropitious; heavy showers descending the whole of the morning, which greatly marred the appearance of the imposing spectacle, and no doubt hindered many distant clergymen and gentlemen, as well as a great number of the respectable inhabitants of the town, from joining in the procession. At eleven o’clock the procession moved from the Town-Hall in the following order:

Police Constables of the Borough.

The Mayor and Corporation.

The Magistrates.

The Welsh Education Committee.

The Principal, Vice-Principal, and Master of the Training College.

The Clergy, in their gowns.

The Gentry and Inhabitants of the Neighbourhood. &c., &c.

After the procession reached St. Peter’s Church, divine service was performed, and the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of St Da vid’s preached an excellent sermon, with his usual eloquence and ability, from the 12th chapter of the Romans, and the 6th, 7th, and 8th verses. The collection at the close of his lordship s eloquent appeal amounted to £ 67. 14s. 4d., a much larger sum than had ever been previously collected at St. Peters Church on any occasion. After the conclusion of the service, the procession was not re-formed; the parties departed, and proceeded towards the Training College, to partake of the cold collation which had been provided at that place. No ceremony was performed at the college, in connection with its opening, any farther than the throwing open of the doors to admit the visitors and others interested in the proceedings. The place is now ready for the reception of pupils, as the masters are in residence, and the arrangements are all complete. From the celebrity of the principal. and the salubrious situation of the college, we have no doubt that many will avail themselves of the opportunities now offered to them at this Training Institution. The building of the college is finished in the best style of workmanship, is replete with every convenience required by the pupils, and it reflects great credit on the architect and others concerned. The Model Schools are also in a state of great forwardness; and as the workmen have now been transferred from the Training College to them, it is expected they will be ready for opening in a very short time.

Romans chapter 12 verses 6, 7 and 8, by the way, read as follows:

6 Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith;

7 Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching;

8 Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness.

The college did well. In 1967 there was an entrance examination for places, with tuition fees waived, and travelling expenses for successful students, as noted by the Carmarthen Journal of 26 July 1867. Note that the better students were given more money for travelling expenses; and that “all persons of good health and character” did not include women: the college first admitted women in 1957.

The college formally changed its name to Trinity College Carmarthen in 1931, although it seems likely that the name was used informally before then. I have seen, for example, a newspaper article of 1894 referring to its as Trinity College Carmarthen; and the postcard itself is certainly earlier than the 1930s.

Like most colleges, over time it grew, added new subjects and generally thrived. The college building expanded from that shown on the card, with other facilities and residences. In 1990 it became affiliated to the University of Wales, and became a full member college in 2004. By this time, of course, the University of Wales was in a degree of turmoil, with exits as well as entrances. Trinity gained degree awarding powers in 2008, became Trinity University College in 2009, and in 2010 merged with St David’s College – or University of Wales Lampeter – to form University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

Its most famous alumnus is arguably Barry John, one of the great fly halves of the legendary 1970s Welsh rugby team, and the punchline to Max Boyce’s Hymns and Arias.

The card was posted, but sadly the stamp has been removed, so the postmark is missing. It was sent to Mr Williams in the Cottage Hospital, Caernarfon. The original message in Cymraeg is below. As best as I can tell, the first part reads something like:

The weather for pilgrims far away is very good. We will be coming home next weekend.

(This probably isn’t entirely right.)

And then I can’t make out the words in the second half, so no chance of a translation, however bad. Can any reader do this?

Here’s a jigsaw for you too.

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January 17, 2025
Higher education postcard: University of Al Quaraouiyine

Greetings from Morocco!

I’ve covered some of the UK’s ancient universities – Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh – in this blog. And if I tell you that the University of Al-Qaraouyine used to be known as the University of Fez, you might know that we’re going to look at somewhere that makes these universities look like the new kids on the block.

We need to start in the year 859, using the common era calendar. In Britain, there were many small kingdoms. The great Viking invasion hadn’t yet happened. Æthelbald was King of Wessex (you might have heard of his brother Alfred, the Great). Rhodri Mawr was asserting kingship over something approximating to modern Wales. The unified Kingdom of Alba in Scotland hadn’t yet happened. It was a long time ago.

In continental Europe the Byzantine empire still had hundreds of years to go. The empire formed by Charlemagne was already in the process of breaking up; France was just beginning to emerge as a single political entity. There were emerging states in Serbia and Hungary. There was not yet a Russia, although the Kievan Rus’ were around and about.

Further south, across the Mediterranean, there was less flux. In Baghdad and Cairo there were caliphates; there was an emirate in Cordoba; and in Fez the Idrisid dynasty had ruled for almost 100 years. And in Fez, or so the story goes, a woman named Fatima al-Fihriya founded the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque. She was daughter of a merchant, and inherited money, which she used to establish the mosque. And her sister Mariam similarly used her share of the inheritance to establish another mosque in Fez.

It is obviously hard to know the truth from a distance of over eleven centuries, but historians have disputed this foundation story. Some say that the mosque was founded by the son of Idris II, the then ruler. But in any event, it was founded. At that time mosques tended to be centres for teaching and other civic roles, as well as their religious function, and it seems that this was true for the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque. Certainly in the early 900s it became the Friday mosque for Fez – the main one in the city.

Now hang on a moment, I hear you say, this is meant to be higher education postcard, not religious building postcard. To which I’d reply, remember that in many cultures, education and religion have at times gone hand-in-hand. Christ Church Oxford, which I wrote about last year, is both college and cathedral. And when Galileo was prosecuted by the Catholic Church, part of the case was made by the church’s own astronomers, who were proper scientists.

In the same spirit, bear with me on the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque. For it became much more learned. No doubt with the patronage of Fez’s richer residents, some scholars believe that it gained status as a teaching institution from the 1040’s onwards. And certainly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was offering a wide curriculum, similar to that at Oxford and Cambridge: as well as theology and jurisprudence, students studies grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, medicine, astronomy and geography. Indeed, in 1207 the university (as it was now known) awarded the earliest known doctor of medicine degree to Abdellah BenSaleh Al Koutami. Other sources suggest that Pope Sylvester II (before he was Pope) studied at the university, although, to be fair, specific evidence for this has not been found.

The university then went into decline – as has happened elsewhere – with a narrower curriculum, perhaps aligned to an increasingly conservative approach to religion. Fez had become less important over the centuries, and perhaps this lack of access to power and cultural significance contributed to the decline.

As the nineteenth century turned to the twentieth century, the political landscape was changing. European powers were increasingly flexing their muscles, fuelled by colonial ambitions and notions of racial superiority. Morocco went to war with France in 1844 and Spain in 1859, coming out worse both times. Increasing European influence further weakened the Moroccan state, and in 1912, after some gunboat diplomacy, Morocco became a French protectorate, via the Treaty of Fez.

The postcard dates from this time: my French isn’t up to scratch, but I think it is saying that the image was taken by one of the French air force units stationed in Fez in 1927. The picture on the front of the postcard shows two mosques. The Al Quaraouiyine university is the building to the right centre, with the tall stone minaret and the white-walled buildings with steep roofs. The presence of the French military reminds us that the French occupation was by force: it was only in 1926 that the first armed resistance to French rule was ended.

In 1947 Al Quaraouiyine university was integrated into the state education system, and women were admitted as students. By 1956 Morocco had gained independence from France, and in 1963 Al Quaraouiyine officially became a university, by royal decree. Classes moved from the mosque to an old barracks; faculties were established. It became officially the University of Al Quaraouiyine in 1965.

But history moves in fits and starts, not in a straight line. In the 1970s secular subjects were moved to another university; Al Qaraoiyine was to focus on theological disciplines; and in 1988 traditional Islamic teaching was resumed at the university. And then the pendulum swung again – in 2015 the university was re-founded. The words of the university president are worth quoting in full:

His Majesty King Mohammed VI May God Assist Him, keen on conferring to Al Qaraouyine University its intellectual and social influence anew, and given the historical role it played in teaching and training scientists, scholars, lecturers and orators for nearly twelve centuries and in order for Al Qaraouyine University to regain its scientific clout as referenced in specialized, distinguished and judicious training in legal sciences, Islamic studies, comparative jurisprudence and Maliki heritage, and in order to develop scientific research and its methods in such fields Royal Dahir (Decree) no 1.15.71 dated on Ramadan 7th, 1436 corresponding to June 24th 2015, was issued, stipulating the reorganization of Al Qaraouyine University as a public higher education and scientific research institution, with a legal body, financial, educational and scientific autonomy.

Such a new regulation aims at enabling Al Qaraouyine University and its affiliated institutions to optimally and efficiently carry out its mission. Such will be performed through improving the content of programs at all levels of training cycles on one hand, and enhancing the supervision at all affiliated institutions or the ones under its educational supervision on the other hand

Generating and passing on knowledge requires building and highlighting the qualifications, revealing and confirming the skills to ease the educational process in Qoran, Hadith, Figh studies and legal sciences, besides the religious supervision.

Whereas Al Qaraouyine University wishes to train researchers, specialized scholars, Imams, male and female qualified guides, by means of methods and knowledge that enable them to perform their tasks as best as possible, such training requires being aware of the key contemporary issues. This implies teaching foreign living languages and impregnating with a dialog culture and a break-off with preconceived ideas and slavish imitation. In this regard, it is now necessary that Al Qaraouyine University students know about open and illuminated Islamic thought issues, imbued with the dialog culture, so they would be become more open and prone to exchange and coexistence using all granted communication tools.

Such openness will undoubtedly make Al Qaraouyine graduates strongly quipped in the face of the future, with solid science and efficient culture, while greatly combining the heritage drawn from religious principles and national values, Moroccan identity resources, good knowledge of Morocco’s history, and the contemporary life that allows them to manifest modernity free from intellectual alienation. Ultimately, this will help improve the image of Islam and Muslims in countless fields, so that the glorious past of Al Qaraouyine University will serve its present, bestowing it with the position it well deserves and shining its light in the near future with its usual influence in the Arab, African and Islamic world, and worldwide.

I like a university seeking to regain its “scientific clout”; and you can see in “this implies teaching foreign living languages and impregnating with a dialog culture and a break-off with preconceived ideas and slavish imitation” a defence of university values. It’s worth remembering that all universities exist within a society’s culture, and that if a university is worth having it will be pushing the boundaries of that culture. That’s what I see here.

So that’s the University of Fez, or as it is more properly known, the University of Al Quaraouiyine. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site as well as being a modern university. And here’s a jigsaw of the card to keep you occupied.

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January 10, 2025
Higher education postcard: Christ Church, Oxford

We’re well into advent, so it seems apposite to look at Christmas and, in the context of higher education postcards, a college named after its eponymous protagonist.

We’ll start in 1002, which is well before there was a university at Oxford, let alone a college. King Æethelred had ordered a massacre of Danes within his kingdom, which took place on 13 November, St Brice’s day. Amidst the massacring, St Frideswide’s nunnery was destroyed (with, presumably, woeful consequences for the nuns). As a result of the massacre of the Danes – which Æethelred had apparently been advised would be an effective pre-emptive strike – the Danes, led by Sweyn Forkbeard, went on a bit of a rampage. This, by the way, was why Æethelred was the unrede – not “unready” but “badly advised”.

Anyway, back to the main story. Æethelred had St Frideswide rebuilt as a priory, and under Henry I this became an Augustinian foundation. Which rubbed along with the people of Oxford until in 1524 it was suppressed, by Cardinal Wolsey. He used the proceeds from the suppression of other priories, including Wallingford Priory, to repurpose the priory’s buildings and establish Cardinal College.

Which you may never have heard of, at least until now. And that’s because Wolsey had a spectacular fall from grace. Having failed to secure a divorce for psychopathic king Henry VIII, he was cast from the inner court. In 1530, ill with dysentery, he died in Nottingham as he was returning to London to face trial for treason.

Now Henry was not the sort of king to let bygones be bygones. He suppressed Cardinal College in 1531, and the following year re-founded it. As King Henry VIII’s College. He wasn’t a modest man.

And in 1546 he was a much richer man. Using the Protestant reformation as cover for personal aggrandisement, he broke from Rome, founded the Church of England with himself as its head (like I said, he wasn’t a modest man), and moved from dissolving priories to dissolving monasteries – far richer pickings. This enabled him to re-found King Henry VIII’s College as Christ Church College, and simultaneously made the priory church into the cathedral of the Church of England diocese of Oxford. The college’s full formal name reflects all of this: the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford of the Foundation of King Henry the Eighth.

The buildings started by Wolsey were completed, and added to. Christoper Wren designed the Tom Tower, the one on the card. This holds the Great Tom bell, which is rung 101 times every night at 9pm Oxford time (yes, of course it has its own time zone), or about five minutes past 9pm Greenwich Mean Time.

Let’s fast forward to 1642. Supporters of Parliament were at war with supporters of the king; armies had been raised. A pitched battle had been fought at Edgehill; it was indecisive, enabling the king – Charles I, or Charles as he was known at the time – to continue his march on London. Realising London could not be taken by force, Charles retreated to Oxford, and made his base there. (In the meantime, parliamentarian forces had arrested the university’s vice chancellor, John Prideaux, an event which must, even today, give hope to people across higher education.)

Charles set up shop in Christ Church. He used the deanery as his royal apartments, and the college’s great hall became the meeting place for the parliament. (Parliament had not been dissolved before the outbreak of the war. Charles summoned it to Oxford. Most of the Lords attended, and about a third of the Commons. It met from January to April 1644 and again from October 1644 to March 1645. What did it do? We don’t really know, as its records were burnt in 1646 before parliamentary forces retook the city.)

Christ Church’s alumni include thirteen British Prime Ministers, although one of the them, William Pulteney, first Earl of Bath, held office for two (2) days only, and whether he actually ever was Prime Minister is now disputed by historians. The parliamentary history records that after his two-day prime ministership he “spent the rest of his life in retirement, consoling himself with the pleasures of avarice, to which he had always been notoriously, indeed scandalously, addicted.”

Alumni also include many politicians of ministerial rank (for example, Nigel Lawson, David Willetts, Chris Skidmore); monarchs (including Edward VII, although he transferred to Trinity Cambridge); scientists (such as Robert Hooke, Martin Ryle); a whole gaggle of top-drawer philosophers (such as John Locke, Freddie Ayer, Daniel Dennett, John Rawls, and a personal favourite, Gilbert Ryle); literary figures including Lewis Carroll, W H Auden, and John Ruskin; and, perhaps best of all, both Flanders and Swann.

There are a few additional points to cover before I wrap up this account.

Firstly, an epic disagreement between the former dean of Christ Church and the college. This long statement by the college sets out one side of the issue.

Secondly, what a wonderful set of buildings! They’ve inspired the buildings of the University of Galway, and have also, apparently, featured in the Harry Potter films, although as your correspondent has never seen any of these we have to take this on trust.

And finally, Christ Church’s arms: these are Cardinal Wolsey’s arms; properly described they are Sable, on a cross engrailed argent, between four leopards’ faces azure a lion passant gules; on a chief or between two Cornish choughs proper a rose gules barbed vert and seeded or. And its always good to see a chough, whether from Cornwall or anywhere else.

Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard, to give you a bit of festive diversion; and a bonus jigsaw of the college kitchen, which is a bit harder, should you need an excuse to spend more time secluded with your computer over the festive season.

And that’s it for 2024’s higher education postcards. I’ll be back in January with more; in the meantime, a very merry Christmas to you all.

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December 20, 2024