Americans -- England -- Oxford; Education -- United States; Education, Higher -- England -- Oxford; University of Oxford
The first college to develop regular undergraduate instruction within
its walls was "S. Marie College of Winchester in Oxford," founded in
1379, by William of Wykeham. "S. Marie's" brought in so many
innovations that it came to be called "New College," a title which,
incongruously enough, it has retained for more than five hundred
years. Wykeham's first innovation was to place the grammar master, for
the greater good of his pupils, at the head of a "college" of seventy
boys at Winchester, thus outlining the English system of public
schools. New College was accordingly able to exclude all who had not
attained the ripe age of fifteen. The effect of this innovation on the
college was peculiar. When the boys came up from Winchester, they
appear to have been farther advanced than most of the undergraduates
attending lectures and disputes in the university schools; in any
case, Wykeham arranged that the older fellows should supplement the
university teaching by private tuition within the college. Little by
little the New College type succeeded that of Merton. Magdalen
College, founded in 1448, carried the tutorial system to its logical
end by endowing lectureships in theology, metaphysics, and natural
philosophy. The older colleges--those of the Merton type--little by
little followed this new example, so that by the end of the Middle
Ages it was possible for a student to receive his entire instruction
within the walls of his college. In Wolsey's splendid foundation,
Cardinal College (1522), now styled Christ Church, there was a still
more ample endowment for professorships. At first the college
instruction was regarded as supplementary to the university teaching,
though it soon became far more important. The masters of the
university continued to read lectures on the recognized subjects,
living as of old on fees from those who chose to listen; but they were
clearly unable to compete with the endowed tutors and professors of
the colleges. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the mediæval
teaching master was disappearing. The only real teaching in arts--by
all odds the most popular branch of study at Oxford--was given within
the colleges and halls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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