Inter-University Relations and Exchanges

Abstract

THE question of inter-university relations, which was discussed on July 21 at the Congress of Universities of the Commonwealth, is partly an administrative and partly an academic question. On one hand, it is necessary to make such business arrangements between the universities as will enable a young student or teacher to move from one university to another without academic loss of standing or financial embarrassment. On the other, it is necessary to make such an exchange sufficiently attractive from an academic point of view for the man or woman contemplating a temporary migration to make sure that it will be academically advantageous. No young man with academic ambitions —which will probably be centred in his own country— will welcome the idea of an exchange which will leave him for a year in a university which is not equipped whether in its libraries or laboratories to enable him to develop his own research. Conversely, no university will welcome a teacher who regards himself as nobly and self-sacrificingly spreading the joys of learning to universities less lucky than his own.