Medical Education at Oxford

Abstract

THE problem, how far the older Universities should undertake special training for the professions, is fast finding its own solution. A degree is no longer any evidence that its possessor has been through any course of wide general culture preparatory to his technical education. Recent legislation, both at Oxford and Cambridge, has all tended in the direction of enabling the undergraduate to specialize at the earliest possible point in his career. Whether advisable or not, some such movement seemed inevitable if, in the midst of the daily increasing pressure of competition, the Universities were to retain any hold on the educational development of the country. Even Prof. Freeman's articles in the Contemporary Review are marked by a tone of querulous despair, rather than by any hope that the tide of innovation may be checked. For knowledge as a luxury or an ornament there is neither leisure nor inclination. Cambridge was the first to yield; but the multitudinous statutes which are every day promulgated at Oxford prove that the latter University is eagerly hurrying along the same path. New schools, new Boards of Faculties have been established; old restrictions have been removed Large sums of money have been expended on new buildings, in which new professors may give instruction in arts and sciences unheard of by the last generation. All this has been done in order that the student may proceed as speedily as possible to those special researches which are to arm him for the battle of life.