Views onOxford

As this is a volume about Oxford economics, it is interesting to briefly exam­ine some of the opinions that Rogers held about the workings of the University, not least because he seems to have gone out of his way to express them.

Some insight into the relative merits of different British universities can be gleaned from Rogers' remarks early on in the volume about the time he spent studying at King's College, London, between leaving school and going to Oxford:

[King's] gives much the same instruction as that at the best Oxford and Cambridge colleges. I can only say, for my own part, that the advantages I derived from a year and a half's study at King's College were larger and more suggestive than any which I ever procured from academical instruction (Rogers 1861a: 19).

As far as Oxford was concerned, Rogers focused in particular on the deficien­cies, as he saw them, in the distribution of endowments between different col­leges and the college-based teaching system which he regarded as being an unwelcome monopoly (see ibid.: 60-61), with lectures described as ‘perfunctory, repressive, irritating' (ibid.: 61). Instead, Rogers argued that only professors should be allowed to deliver lectures (as was the case in Germany) and that only those holding at least an MA degree be permitted to instruct undergraduates.

It seems remarkable that Rogers was first elected to the Drummond only a year after the appearance of Education in Oxford. Either way, being a professor at the University did not seem to dim his hostility. One of the likely reasons for this was the influence of Cobden, who often expressed an antipathy towards Oxford (and Cambridge) especially when it came to what he thought was the unsuitability of graduates of these universities for the intellectual demands of political life:

What Cobden did comment on...is the utter ignorance, on subjects of great political importance, which prevails among young men who have graduated at the older universities, and who.are presented to seats in the House of Commons, or purchase admission into it, or succeed to analogous positions in the House of Lords. Cobden used to argue that the particular knowledge which the older universities impart to such people is of absolutely no use to them in the responsible place which they occupy (Rogers in Bright and Rogers 1870: ix).

Even in 1881, many years after he had served his first term as Drummond Professor but still seven years away from the beginning of his second term, Rogers felt the need to again go on the offensive with an attack on Oxford's tutoring system:

The monopoly of instruction given by college tutors was greatly assisted by their possessing a monopoly of examination, and the right of conferring distinctions in the class list. In other words, they audited, and audit, their own accounts... It is very seldom that anyone except a college tutor is allowed to be an examiner. As a consequence, the gravest scandals have not infrequently arisen. It is a com­mon saying in Oxford that the clever men are to be found in the third class, the dull and industrious in the second, the examiners’ friends being put into the first. The statement is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but there is nothing to prevent it being a reality, and if it were a reality, there is not enough public con­science in Oxford to reprobate it (Rogers 1881: 73-74).

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