ursued by his schoolfellows. Every boy in the school
is crammed with the same facts, and in the same way. The sixth-form boy
is exactly like the rest of his class, exactly like the sixth-form boy
of ten years ago, and probably exactly like the sixth-form boy of ten
years hence. Not only does he possess precisely the same knowledge as
his companions, hold the same opinions, and enjoy the same mental
horizon, but he has acquired uniform tastes and habits. In other words,
the school has stamped upon him a common individuality shared by all its
pupils.

After he has left school the same process is carried on at the
university. Here he is crammed again with the same facts, the same
rules, and the same ideas, borrowed from the same people, that are being
dinned into scores of other young men who are working for their degree.
Having gone conscientiously through this routine, he takes his degree
with the rest.

This aim being accomplished, his educational career is over. He has
graduated; that is to say, he has obtained a certificate to the effect
that he has acquired a certain regulation stock of knowledge.

What happens next?

The unhappy graduate suddenly makes the discovery that his university
qualification is not the ready passport to employment that he had
fondly imagined it to be. Unless he has a reasonable chance of a curacy
and chooses to enter the Church, or can scrape together a few pupils to
coach, or has the means to go on reading for the Bar or cramming for the
public examinations, his prospects of immediate starvation are
excessively favourable.

It was remarked some years ago by a writer who had spent a great deal of
time in investigating life at common lodging-houses in the poorer
districts of the Metropolis, that a startling number of university men
seemed to drift into them. Yet these are the men who are supposed to
have qualified themselves most highly for the holding of good positions.
In some way, therefore, it is clear that this academic training has
disadvantages which serve to handicap its victims severely in practical
life. It cannot be mere accident that those who, according to all
educational tradition, are classed as the most fit for responsible
employment necessitating good mental ability, actually labour under
obvious disabilities in this connection.

Nobody can urge that there is not enough work of a nature demanding high
attainments to go round. Literature itself offers an enormous field