LETTER:Results of the Oxbridge tutorial system

From Dr R. H. S. Carpenter

Sir: One form of subsidy not mentioned in your articles and leader on Oxbridge tutorials (13 June) is the very substantial one provided by those who are doing the teaching. At about the time that most people are packing up and going home, we embark on a further two hours of intensive and demanding work, for which - including the time required to read and correct the work the students have prepared for the supervision - we receive some pounds 12 per hour.

Why are we willing to do this? Because we believe that a university education is not vocational training. We are not programming our students for adequacy in some pre-determined job; we are developing in them the qualities they need to be leaders and innovators in whatever field they choose to enter, and this cannot be done by mass production. We aim to cultivate their imagination and creativity, their critical and analytical powers, their desire to get to the roots of things, to think widely rather than narrowly, and to express themselves effectively so that they may convince others of what they believe; in sum, to develop and use their full intellectual faculties. They also learn to work.

In addition to a heavy load of lectures and practical classes, a medical student at Cambridge will typically have three or four supervisions a week, for each of which an essay or other written work is expected; at most universities, three essays a term is nearer the mark.

Over the last decade, this Government has tried to appear to be increasing the provision of "university" education, partly by renaming institutions whose functions are quite different, and partly by encouraging the adoption of cheap and cheerful assembly-line methods by which a suitable tamed and unquestioning workforce can be created at minimum expense to the tax- payer. There may be economic reasons for doing this; but let us not pretend that it is educationally desirable.

Rather than advocating, as you appear to do, the levelling down of tertiary education, why not campaign instead for all universities to be adequately funded so that they may offer to every student who may benefit from it a genuine university education?

Yours,

R. H. S. CARPENTER

Director of Medical Studies

Gonville and Caius College

Cambridge

13 June