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Student Interests (1937)
There are, one imagines, few undergraduates who regard the incorporation of a “student representative” in the Senate as any great gain, however much it may appeal to that student officialdom which has developed since the establishment of the S.R.C. It is characteristic, indeed, of a bureaucratic mentality that it should see advantage in having a permanent negotiator at unreported conferences, instead of simply “making representations” as occasion arises, and accompanying them by discussion and agitation in the student body. The same mentality is exhibited in the seeking of contact with the governing body and not with the teaching staff, with whom alone, as fellow-workers in the institution, students could ever hope to establish relations of solidarity. But it comes out most of all in the vague notion of “representation” without any determination of what is represented, the notion of someone's working “on behalf of” students without the formulation of any student position.
The appointment of a students' representative, in any case, raises the question of what student interests are. They must surely, one would suppose, amount to something more than the elaborate futilities of Festival Week, though it is on these that most of the controversies of recent years have turned. But one would be hard put to it to find any other manifestation of a common “student spirit.” The diversity of schools of professional training naturally promotes divergent interests among the students, and to this must be added the artificial “loyalties” engendered by the Colleges and by the Sports Union. This organisation, of course, professes a desire to cater for the whole student body, but, since the majority of students do not want to participate in competitive sport, the Sports Union remains alien to them and the various teams which are supposed to represent the University represent only sectional interests.
It might be supposed that, if there is any common interest of students, it
will reside in study. But this, if anything, is the common interest of the
University, and the special position of students as junior members of the
organisation has to be taken into account. The more important fact, however,
is that they are temporary members and are faced with the problem of finding
employment at the end of their University careers. But the problem of
employment is not one on which students can unite; it is connected, again,
with sectional interests, and with the participation of students in other
institutions, medical Association, Education Department, and so forth. It
may be thought that students can at least unitedly support such a body as
the University Appointments Board, and it would appear that student
officialdom takes this view, The question, however, is not one of individual
jobs but of general conditions of employment, a question which goes far
beyond merely student interests. If employed graduates are to participate in
professional organisations, their position there will hardly be improved by
their having put
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non-graduates out of jobs. If, on the other
hand, jobs are in any case available to graduates, considerations of
professional solidarity will still arise; and, while a mediating agency may
benefit some individuals, it could make no more than a pretence at
systematic adjustment on the whole. It should be obvious that such tinkering
with individual cases cuts right across professional solidarity (as is the
case with all organisations of a “helpful” kind), and that is why employers
are so readily interested in the matter. The separation of graduate
employees from non-graduate employees can be of benefit to the former; it
would be a different affair if professional organisations themselves decided
that it was desirable that their members should be graduates.
While, then, a general interest in social reorganisation might well form a bond among students, an interest in individual jobs, or a concern with the requirements of employers but not with the requirements of employees, will not do so. Division is fostered, too, by the treatment of kinds or conditions of employment (e.g., Business Principles, Public Administration) as themselves subjects, and, in general, by the intrusion of professional requirements into University courses. It is not a question of students having their horizon bounded by the University; the great bulk of them will have some extra-academic career in view. But the case is met if the University provides courses of scientific study, certain of which employing organisations can require their candidates to take. It is to be understood that in these times such a “pure” University cannot exist; the Universities, on the contrary, are fields of battle between commercial and academic tendencies. And it is the weight of commercialism that above all weakens student unity. In such circumstances abstract appeals for unity, the devising of schemes of representation without any exposure of commercialism, can only operate in support of the anti-academic and divisive tendency.
But if, as has been said, study itself cannot be the bond of union among
students, where, it may be asked, is the “student spirit” to be found? It is
to be found, I would suggest, in a certain aspect of study—that of
criticism, the calling in question of received opinions and recognised
standards. It is noteworthy that, in countries involved in revolutionary
crisis, students are found largely supporting the revolutionary cause, and,
even where struggles are not acute, they are generally in revolt against
orthodoxy. There is, no doubt, a certain instability in this attitude;
unorthodoxy in itself is not a stable position. But that is only to say that
students are not the repositories of scientific or social innovation, that
they are supporters, not initiators, of movements. It is not to say that
their activity cannot be a determinant, let alone a symptom, of social
change. When vested interests are strong, student activities are weak—though
unorthodoxy still breaks out in crude forms, as in the desire to “shock the
citizens” in student celebrations. Such crudity, however, is itself a
compromise, and its “organisation” by officialdom is simply the
establishment of a student orthodoxy, which is quite inimical to the student
spirit. The
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recrudescence of criticism, involving the
establishment of contacts with anti-commercial (artistic or proletarian)
movements outside the University, will alone secure the unity of students
themselves. The alternative is the triumph of commercialism, of middle-class
ideas, in a word, of mediocrity.