2012 Annual Report - Jesus College - University of Cambridge

56 CREATOR OF THE MODERN COLLEGE I Jesus College Annual Report 2012
Morgan’s Tutorship (1864-1870) the
number fell slightly to 6 out of 8 (150 out
of 202) which was about the University
average. But in the next fourteen, during its
full-flowering, only 5 in 9 graduated (495
out of 906) whereas the University’s
average was 7 in 9. And, unsurprisingly,
there was little change during the ten years
of ‘Red’ Morgan’s Tutorship (1886 – 1895):
only 3 in 5 graduated, while the University
average was 4 in 5. Not all of those who did
not graduate will have stayed as long as
those who did, so they will not, term by
term, have been quite so large a proportion
of the student body as those bare statistics
suggest. But all a student had to do if he
was to stay beyond his first year was pass
the Previous (‘Little Go’) examination, and
as the 1874 edition of the semi-official
Student’s Guide to the University of Cambridge
said, “being intended for all students alike,
and being placed early in the course, is
necessarily easy. The standard is low . . . .
students often leave school with
knowledge sufficient to pass the
examination, [so] it has been thought
expedient to allow such students to pass
the examination” early in their first year. 22
But it was not only the ratio of graduating
to matriculating students that was low during
Morgan’s Tutorship; so too was the
proportion taking an Honours rather than an
Ordinary degree – “the examination for
which” as that same edition of The Student’s
Guide assured its readers “is in truth not so
difficult but that any person of common
abilities, and common preliminary training,
with tolerable industry at Cambridge, may
reckon with certainty upon passing it.” 23
In the years 1850-1863 1 in every 2 Jesus
graduates obtained Honours, but throughout
Morgan’s Tutorship only about 1 in 4 did (it’s
difficult to be more precise since the able and
ambitious often took more than one Tripos):
an average of 6 a year between 1864 and 1870,
but no more than 9 a year 1871-1885, despite
the great growth in the College’s size, which
was not matched, either, by a significant rise
in the number of scholarships offered.
Seventeen instead of 14 Rustat Scholarships
were now available (and no longer limited to
clergy orphans), and there were two Entrance
scholarships – a novelty – each year, one in
Mathematics and one in Classics. That was
all. The College had not yet started to offer
teaching for the Tripos: those seeking
Honours - the “reading man” – had still to
go and find it for themselves. 24 The College
provided only what was needed for the
Ordinary examinations. (In 1868 Jesus had
agreed with four others on inter-collegiate
lectures for the Classical Tripos, each college
to provide a lecturer on a different subject,
but the scheme was not trouble-free. 25 ) As The
Student’s Guide (speaking of the run of
colleges) said, “Perhaps two hours a day may
be the average of time exacted of a student by
the lecturer. Nor is it to be imagined that by
a lecture is meant a formal and continuous
discourse. . . A lecture at Cambridge is
generally much the same thing as a lesson at
school, it being of course understood that the
lectured are not subject to the restraints and
discipline of schoolboys. If the subject be
classical, an author is read, the students
translating in turns, while the lecturer
interposes his comments as he sees fit. If it
be mathematical, the students are often
occupied during the whole of the hour in
writing answers to written questions or in
solving problems. Where the audience is
large, the lecture sometimes becomes more
formal in its character.” 26
Matters improved somewhat during ‘Red’
Morgan’s Tutorship: 1 in 3 Jesus
undergraduates now took Honours – over
half of them in one of the “new” Triposes :
Natural and Mechanical Sciences, Law,
History, Economics and Theology. It was not,
however, until Arthur Gray became Senior
Tutor in 1895 (the first layman to be a Jesus
Tutor) that there was any real change –
Fellows to teach something other than
Mathematics and Classics began to be
elected, but it was an uphill struggle in the
hard times of the agricultural depression and
the South African war (for which Morgan was
a fervently jingoistic recruiting sergeant) 27
when colleges were competing for a
dwindling number of students. Indeed, it was
only under the impact of the 1944 Education
Act that the present understanding that a
student place at Cambridge is a scarce and