z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-04.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 299
ON UNIVERSITY REFORMS 299
“70. If it is thus to be desired that the highest university teachers should take their part in undergraduate work and that their spirit dominate it all, it follows for the same reasons that they should not be deprived of the best of their students when they reach the stage of post-graduate work. This work should not be separated from the rest of the work of the University, and conducted by different teachers in separate institutions. As far as the teacher is concerned it is necessary that he should have post-graduate students under, him. He must be doing original work himself, and he often obtains material assistance from the co-operation of advanced students. Their very difficulties are full of suggestions, and their faith and enthusiasm are a pay source of refreshment and strength. He escapes the flagging spirit and and the moods of lethargy which are apt to overtake the solitary worker. There can be no question of a higher class of teachers than the professors of the University, or the whole position of the University will be degraded. On the other hand, a university teacher of the highest rank will naturally desire to have as his post-graduate students those students whom he has already begun to train in his own methods, though his laboratory or seminar will, of course, be open to students who come from other universities, and to some perhaps who come from no university at all, as well as to some who come from other teachers of the University of London. There must be a great deal of give and take, and students may often gain by studying under more than one teacher of the same subject ; but that is an entirely different thing from separating the higher work from the lower. We do not think it would be possible to get the best men for University Professorship it they were in any way restricted from doing the highest work or prevented from spreading their net wide to catch the best students.”
“71. It is also a great disadvantage to the undergraduate students of the University that post-graduate students should be removed to separate institutions. They ought to be in constant contact with those who are doing more advanced work than themselves, and who are not too far beyond them, but stimulate and encourage them by the familiar presence of an attainable ideal.”
The disastrous consequences which follow to advanced research work where it is separated from teaching have become patent at least to me. It is a notorious fact that many Indian students who have returned with post-graduate degrees from the University of London and other universities have been failures in the sense that they have failed to master their subjects although some of them occupy the highest posts in the educational line. The reason for this is to be found in the fact that their under-graduate training was utterly insufficient for advanced research work. The Committee will remember that post-graduate training is very modern in its origin and conception. There were men at Cambridge and Oxford who did a great deal of excellent work although those universities did not have post-graduate departments. Even now the men at the head of post-graduate departments