Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:47:18.523Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Governing the Civic University

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

David R. Jones
David R. Jones*
Affiliation:
Centre for Administrative and Higher Education Studies, University of New England, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Colleges were founded in many of the cities of Victorian England. Some failed; others became the civic universities of twentieth-century Britain. Owens College, Manchester; Yorkshire College, Leeds; and University College, Liverpool, which formed the Victoria University; are examples both diverse and interconnected, as well as representative and influential, and therefore form the basis of this study. The new colleges quickly evolved efficient academic self-government. The successively evolved constitutions of Owens College and the Victoria University were widely influential, but the developing practice of academic governance was perhaps more significant. British academics were learning to use their constitutions and diverge from the apparent letter of statutes in ways which have been widely admired in the twentieth century.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , Fall 1985 , pp. 281 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 by History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Three abbreviations are used throughout the notes to designate materials from the archives of the three colleges: O.C. for Owens, Y.C. for Yorkshire, U.C. for University.Google Scholar

2. The term “civic colleges” is not generally found in the literature of British higher education. I use it as a convenient means of referring to institutions without university status, as was the condition of all the proto-civic universities before the creation of the Victoria University in 1880.Google Scholar

3. Such persons might, of course, be highly educated and engage in scholarly pursuits.Google Scholar

4. The organizational arrangements of civic universities have been frequently described. The most thorough analysis of the acquisition and exercise of power in British universities is contained in Moodie, Graeme C. and Eustace, Rowland, Power and Authority (London, 1974), and in various papers by these authors, notably Eustace's “The Origins of Self Government of University Staffs,” presented to the 1970 Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, and Moodie's “Academics and University Government: Some Reflections on British Experience,” presented to the Seminario “Politicas y Estructuras Universitarias: Antecedentes y Experiencias Internacionales,” Vina del Mar, Chile, November, 1979. See also Van de Graaf, J.H., et al., Academic Power (New York, 1978). The present author is indebted to this body of work for many ideas, though the application and perhaps distortion of them to the specific circumstances of the 19th century is his own responsibility.Google Scholar

5. He has published versions of this explanation in several places, most completely in “A Postscript on Self-Government in Civic Universities,” in Ashby, Eric, Technology and the Academics (London, 1959).Google Scholar

6. Eustace, , “The Origins,” p. 16. See footnote 4 above.Google Scholar

7. Representatives and organizations of students only acquired significant powers after the period under study, though social organization had already begun. Ashby, Eric and Anderson, Mary, The Rise of the Student Estate (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 43. Non-academic staff, other than senior administrators, have only very recently acquired a voice in university affairs.Google Scholar

8. And revealing them very publicly, via a series of parliamentary investigations and a body of polemical literature ranging from works like those of Arnold and Pattison to a vast assortment of diatribes.Google Scholar

9. Notably the University of London, which was originally governed entirely by shareholders, without academic input. Moodie, and Eustace, , Power and Authority, p. 27.Google Scholar

10. The charitable Livery Companies of the City of London found it easy to understand governments so like their own when they decided to support colleges, and their members were no doubt comfortable as Governors and Council members of colleges in consequence.Google Scholar

11. Ashton, Thomas, explaining the proposed constitution of the Owens Extension College, spoke of a governing body small enough for an individual sense of responsibility but large enough to include the opinions of the community. Manchester Examiner and Times, report of the “Owens College Extension” meeting, 4 December 1869. The representative character was evidently enhanced at the expense of the sense of responsibility, as the Court was quite large, while even the Council had occasional trouble achieving a quorum.Google Scholar

12. Donors of £1,000 or more became “Perpetual Life Governors,” while gifts of at least £250 earned a “Life Governorship.” The qualifications, and the names of those so qualified, were prominently displayed in the College Calendar.Google Scholar

13. These links were quite deliberately fostered. The Duke of Devonshire inquired of the new University College, Liverpool, whom he might usefully nominate in his capacities as Chancellor of both Victoria and Cambridge universities. James Stewart of Trinity, Cantab., and H.E Roscoe of Owens were suggested. U.C., Council Minutes, 22 December 1881.Google Scholar

14. By the mid-'60s growing student numbers at Owens required a new site, more money, and a more complex organization than that of the original charitable trust. All were achieved through public appeals and a new charter, the Owens College Extension Act, 1870. See footnote 11 above.Google Scholar

15. Moodie, and Eustace, , Power and Authority, Ch. 5.Google Scholar

16. See DNB entries under Heywood, , and Thompson, Joseph, The Owens College (Manchester, 1886).Google Scholar

17. Thompson, , The Owens College, especially Ch. 3.Google Scholar

18. See his comments on professors, particularly Theodores, , in The Owens College.Google Scholar

19. Assured position and prospects were a rarity among the sub-professoriate of the nineteenth century. Even in the well-ordered German system the privatdozenten had little recognized status. As for the tutors of Oxbridge (or the United States), they were young men awaiting and seeking better positions, often outside academia and usually outside their present institution. Only when lectureships, senior lectureships, etc. became permanent professional positions would sub-professorial staff begin to be recognized as a significant part of their institutions.Google Scholar

20. Y.C., Council Minutes, letter to Clothworkers, 5 June 1875.Google Scholar

21. Y.C., Council Minutes, letter from Hummel, J.J. to the Chairman of the Textile Industries and Dyeing Committee, 31 January 1885. Also see, more conveniently, Gosden, P.H.J.H. and Taylor, A.J., Studies in the History of a University (Leeds, 1975), “Government and Staff,” pp. 198–200, 219–20. The title Instructor was ostensibly merely an indication that certain departments were externally maintained, but it is worth noting that Technology and its “Instructors” achieved the status of a faculty of the college only with great difficulty.Google Scholar

22. Lupton's receipt of the Cross of the Order of St. John and an illuminated address from his colleagues and students was reported in the Leeds Mercury, 1883.Google Scholar

23. Greenwood married the daughter of a prominent bank manager (Langton, whose retirement was commemorated by a large gift to the college), Roscoe the daughter of Edmund Potter, M.P. Google Scholar

24. Muspratt, Edmund, an influential supporter of College and University, said that the professors' evening lectures and contact with influential residents soon earned respect. Muspratt, , My Life and Work (London, 1917), pp. 276–78. Rathbone's friendship with several professors, and particularly with Oliver Lodge, is mentioned in Rathbone, , A Memoir (London, 1908), Ch. 9, supported by an assortment of letters catalogued as IX. 6. 175–204, in the “Rathbone Papers” at the University of Liverpool.Google Scholar

25. E.g., Professor Green's FRS appears in the Y.C. Annual Report for 1885–86. The value of professors' public activities in enhancing the colleges' repute was appreciated, and this no doubt redounded to the professors' credit vis a vis Councils and others. When Roscoe was appointed to a government “Noxious Vapours Commission” Greenwood pointed out to the Council that “it was clearly in the interest of the College that he should act on the Commission.” O.C. Council Minutes, October 1876.Google Scholar

26. Leed's first three professors, Rucker, , Green, and Thorpe, , became respectively Secretary of the Royal Society and Principal of London University, Professor of Geology at Oxford, and Director of Government Laboratories. Gosden, and Taylor, , Studies, “Introduction.” Google Scholar

27. Moodie, , “Academics and University Governance,” (Chile), pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

28. Three quotes from O.C. Trustees Minutes, October 1868.Google Scholar

29. An excellent source of information on the relationships among income, expenditure, and status is Banks, J.A., Prosperity and Parenthood (London, 1954).Google Scholar

30. This may have been especially significant at Leeds, where the faculty were striving for a position similar to that at Owens. In the mid-80s Stroud, who had been a Gilchrist Scholar at Owens, became Cavendish Professor of Physics, and was soon followed by Smithells (Chemistry), who had been a Dalton Scholar at Owens and had taught for two years under Roscoe.Google Scholar

31. O.C., “Substance of a Report…,” 1850.Google Scholar

32. Y.C., “Report of the Committee…,” 1872.Google Scholar

33. O.C., “Substance of a Report…,” 1850.Google Scholar

34. O.C. Council Minutes, 1853.Google Scholar

35. U.C. Council Minutes, 1881.Google Scholar

36. For example, in 1875 the Manchester Senate's recommendation that a new Lectureship in English Language be established (in keeping with the then current trend in scholarship) was immediately approved by the Council, apparently without debate. O.C., Council Minutes, March 1875.Google Scholar

37. Teaching for the London external degrees was said to prevent “that rapport between teaching and examining which is necessary to a thoroughly efficient system of instruction.” See O.C., Archives, , “Pamphlets Concerning University Status,” 1876.Google Scholar

38. Presumably the faculties' expertise was what led donors to leave the details to them. In any case the Owens faculty were defining conditions of scholarships at least from 1857. See O.C., “Minutes of College Meetings,” vol. 1, 1857–1869.Google Scholar

39. In addition to new clinical fields, physics, more botany, and a new form of anatomy were added to the medical curriculum in the late nineteenth century.Google Scholar

40. The Council was to advertise professorships and to refer all applications and testimonials to the Senate for advice, though it was not to be bound by that advice.Google Scholar

41. For examples, see the appointments of assistants by Professors Frankland and Roscoe, and of an evening teacher by Greenwood. O.C., Trustees Minutes, October 1853, 1859, and 1865, respectively.Google Scholar

42. Uncontested and unsupervised faculty appointment of assistants appears as early as 1874 and was common by the late '70s. Y.C., Council Minutes, 1874, 1878–79.Google Scholar

43. O.C., Senate Minutes, 1873–74, and Council Minutes, 1875–76. The new regulations directed the Principal to present a form of advertisements to the Council. The Principal and the Registrar were to summarize all replies for members of Council and Senate; then the Senate was to examine, arrange, and report on the. applications, after which the Council was to invite one or more candidates for interviews. Council Minutes, June, 1876.Google Scholar

44. The examples of Schorlemmer and Toller reveal the reality of faculty power. Each had been hired by the faculty as an assistant, and each later received a newly created chair on the faculty's recommendation without even the formality of an advertisement. O.C., Senate Minutes, 1874 for Schorlemmer's chair in organic chemistry, 1880 for roller's Smith English Chair.Google Scholar

45. By 1878 at Leeds the faculty was creating appointment short lists for the Council. Y.C., Council Minutes, 1878. As early as 1884 at Liverpool Senate recommendations for guest lecturers and two new professorial appointments were accepted by Council, apparently with little or no discussion. U.C., Council Minutes, May-July, 1884.Google Scholar

46. Leeds did dismiss technical faculty, and all the colleges at one time or another had troubles with the relatively large, transitory, and uncontrolled medical faculties.Google Scholar

47. In the last decade, for example, most British and American discussions of the state's powers over higher education have dealt with governments' financial activities.Google Scholar

48. O.C., Trustees Minutes, 1858–59; Minutes of College Meetings, 1858; Council Minutes, 1871.Google Scholar

49. The faculty had buttressed their advice with outside professional opinions. Thompson, , The Owens College, pp 214–17.Google Scholar

50. See, for example, the O.C. Senate Minutes, June, 1875, and Council Minutes, April, 1881.Google Scholar

51. O.C. Trustees Minutes show regular acceptance of faculty claims for repayments and allotments for lab equipment, materials, etc.Google Scholar

52. U.C. Council Minutes, 25 June 1881, and November, 1881.Google Scholar

53. U.C. Council Minutes, 28 February 1882. Expenditures by professors were generally authorized in advance and seldom discussed or audited. E.g., Council Minutes, 22 May 1883; 2 October 1883; Senate Minutes, 1884.Google Scholar

54. This power had existed informally at least as early as 1868. O.C. Trustees Minutes, 1868, 1870.Google Scholar

55. The Langton Fellowship, created in 1878, and the Bishop Berkeley Fellowships, 1881, provided for research fellows at Owens. See Fiddes, Edward, Chapters in the History of Owens College (Manchester, 1937).Google Scholar

56. U.C., Council and Senate Minutes, May-July, 1884.Google Scholar

57. In 1869 the Owens faculty were providing the Trustees with detailed reports on the costs of running new labs. O.C., Council Minutes, 1869. In 1871 the Council directed that: “Senate be requested to send to the treasurer for embodiment in his estimate a statement of all grants which they think it desirable to appply for during the session.” O.C., Council Minutes, 1 November 1871.Google Scholar

58. The process can be traced in the Minutes of Liverpool's Council. In 1884 a small committee of Council and faculty was appointed to draw up forms, make estimates, present accounts, etc. Some annual grants were made thereafter, and financial affairs generally seem better arranged by 1886. By October of 1889 a Finance Committee was appointed to consider the “annual reports” of departments, and next January the committee recommended small annual grants to some departments. It was not yet a modern budget, but it was far cry for the earliest years. U.C., Council Minutes, November, 1884, 1886, October 1889, January, 1890.Google Scholar

59. U.C., Council Minutes, 3 July 1888.Google Scholar

60. “Substance of a Report of a Committee of the Trustees,” 1850, O.C. Archives. Advice was sought from a wide range of individuals, universities, and other educational institutions.Google Scholar

61. O.C., Trustees Minutes, 1858. Greenwood's quick grasp of all College business was impressive but not really surprising. Since 1851 he had served practically as acting Principal during Scott's many illnesses, and in 1857 he gathered the reins into his own hands with quiet efficiency. O.C., Trustees Minutes, 1851–57.Google Scholar

62. The logic was obvious, for example, to the vast majority of American colleges which gave their chief academic/executive officer a place, or even the headship of, their governing bodies. See Schmidt, George P., The Old Time College President (New York, 1930), pp. 48–49, 73–74. The typical American college president of the 19th and 20th centuries of course had considerable greater powers than his English counterpart.Google Scholar

63. O.C., Trustees Minutes, 1859–61.Google Scholar

64. The new Principal was immediately authorized to arrange for demonstrators, etc., and then report. U.C. Council Minutes, 22 December 1881. For the growing range of his duties, see U.C. Council Minutes, 1890.Google Scholar

65. See, as a not unrepresentative example, Thompson's laudatory Chapter VI in The Owens College .Google Scholar

66. See below, p. 18, for statistical evidence of his diligence. His qualities were publicly recognized at the time. See a series of articles on “The Principal and Present Professors of Owens College” published in the Manchester Free Lance, 8 and 29 February 1868.Google Scholar

67. Indeed, they travelled together on the Continent, examining foreign educational institutions at the College's behest.Google Scholar

68. O.C. Senate Minutes, 18 October 1873, and Council Minutes, 1874. Note that it was the Senate which had acquired the power to elect a Vice-Principal. Further evidence of the general respect for the Principal's qualifications and activity can be found in the raising of his salary to 700 in 1873. O.C. Council Minutes, 4 April 1873.Google Scholar

69. See footnote 66 above.Google Scholar

70. Good examples include his quick response to complaints about a change in certification of evening class work. Correspondents in the public press had regretted a loss of previously available honors and convenience of transfer; Greenwood immediately assured them that the new arrangements would take care of this. Manchester Guardian, April 1874.Google Scholar His diplomatic skills were also equal to a complaint from the medical students, again in the public press, that they had been deprived of the right to address their own annual gathering. Greenwood replied with an apology and the scheduling of an extra address. O.C. Cutting Books, June, 1872.Google Scholar

71. All the colleges seem to have followed Owens' lead in this matter. Scott had been assigned the duty of examining candidates for admission to Owens in 1851.Google Scholar

72. Annual attendance records in Councils and committees of Council are available in the Liverpool and Manchester archives for the years mentioned in the text. They are frequently printed with the annual reports. By simply adding together Council and committee attendances I have created a crude, but, I believe, informative measure of interest in and influence on college business. Certainly the names of the most regular attenders at Owens from 1870–1872 are those of men prominent in all aspects of the College's life. Greenwood and Roscoe are joined by Ashton, Thomas, Christie, R.C., Darbishire, R.D., Nield, Alfred, and Thompson, Joseph.Google Scholar The choice of seven or eight most frequent attenders is not arbitrary; in most years frequency of attendance falls off greatly outside this inner circle. By 1874 at Owens a circular to Council members reminds them that regular attendance is necessary to avoid further problems in attaining a quorum. O.C. Council Minutes, 5 June 1874.Google Scholar

73. See Thompson, , The Owens College, Ch. 8.Google Scholar

74. Thompson, , The Owens College, pp. 241–42.Google Scholar

75. The Trustees had requested faculty advice, and this was embodied in a series of reports, many of whose recommendations were accepted (see below, p. 18). O.C. Trustees Minutes, “Copy Statements and Summary read at the Meeting of 20th May 1856.” Google Scholar

76. O.C. Trustees Minutes, 1865–66.Google Scholar

77. See Thompson, , The Owens College, pp. 313–15 for a description of their activities. See also, in addition to the Trustees Minutes, a volume titled “Owens College Extension and Amalgamation 1870–1” in the University archives.Google Scholar

78. Copy of letter to the Hon. Sec., Reynolds, Mr, dated 25 June 1877, and signed by Green, , Thorpe, , Rucker, , Miall, , and Armstrong, ; in the Council Minutes.Google Scholar

79. Y.C. Council Minutes, September, 1877.Google Scholar

80. Gosden, and Taylor, , Studies , “Government and Staff,” p. 201. This chapter, by Mattison, F.T., provides a conveniently available summary of the development of governance at Leeds.Google Scholar

81. Y.C. Academic Board Minutes, 1878–79.Google Scholar

82. Y.C. Council Minutes, 1874. The committee was entrusted with “… the more strictly academical administration and discipline of the College …” a definition of duties which surely seems to suggest faculty control under normal circumstances.Google Scholar

83. The difficulties surrounding the office and appointment of a Principal are well covered in Gosden, and Taylor, , Studies , “Government and Staff,” pp. 187–91.Google Scholar

84. See below, p. 21.Google Scholar

85. Here, as elsewhere, both faculty and non-academics eventually agreed that the permanent principal should be an Arts professor, and preferably a classicist. Gosden, and Taylor, , Studies , “Government and Staff,” p. 190.Google Scholar

86. Y.C. Board of Governors Minutes, 14 April 1886.Google Scholar

87. Y.C. Board of Governors Minutes, 16 May 1888.Google Scholar

88. Even after 1878 the Principal was the sole, and non-voting, representative of the faculty at Council meetings.Google Scholar In 1878 the Academic Board was seeking assurance that its reports were being heard by the Council. In 1879 a communications failure held up the approval of regulations for the new Coal Mining associateship. (In that year the Council also rejected a Board resolution concerning library fees, an action inconceivable at Owens or Liverpool.) Communications remained uncertain, causing difficulties with the Engineering course in 1881, etc. Y.C. Academic Board Minutes, 1878–82.Google Scholar

89. Y.C. Academic Board Minutes, December, 1880.Google Scholar

90. A regular Senate was created only in 1884.Google Scholar

91. O.C. Trustees Minutes, “Copy of Statements and Summary read at the Meeting of 20th May 1856.” Professor Frankland recommended “… a closer co-operation amongst the Professors, by periodical meetings with the principal….” Professor Christie went further: “4. That if possible there should be combined action of the Professors among themselves, and of the Professors with the Trustees and that with a view to this, monthly meetings should be held by the Principal and Professors and occasional reports presented to the Trustees.” Google Scholar

92. Thompson, , The Owens College, p. 159.Google Scholar

93. O.C. Trustees Minutes, February, 1857, “As to the Principal and Professors,” in which the rules and powers of “College Meetings” were defined.Google Scholar

94. O.C. Trustees Minutes, 1869, “Draft of Owens College Extension Act.” “The Owens College By-Laws,” Manchester, 1873.Google Scholar

95. O.C. Trustees Minutes, 1869, including a report by the Professors upon the new draft constitution, as requested by the Trustees.Google Scholar

96. Bryce's instructions from the Trustees explained that Owens had become a public service and should therefore become a public institution, not a private trust with private trustees. Governors were to represent the government, local dignitaries, men of University training and distinction, interested men of standing familiar with practical life, faculty representatives, the Bishop, representatives of the alumni, etc. O.C. “Extension and Amalgamation 1870–1” volume, entry 37, “Instructions to Mr. Bryce …” Google Scholar