This is one of three radical changes which the university has undergone in the last thirty years. The abolition of the Religious Test Act which severed the strict connexion of our universities with the Church of England, the marriage of fellows, and the appointment of men not in clerical orders to fill the chief university and college offices, have gradually changed the face of university life, secularising it and socialising it, bestowing on it, definitely, a lay and undenominational character which is perhaps not so far from its primitive ideal as sticklers for the connexion of the universities with the Church would have us believe. It is no longer an advantage to be in orders at Cambridge: they do not help you to a fellowship for this is given to the best man in open competition; even heads of colleges need no longer be clergymen, and only one collegiate office, that of the dean, is still preferably bestowed on a parson. The results are curious. Clerical fellows are popular, but theology is a neglected subject in the big colleges and the theological chairs are not centres of influence. At the same time every college enjoys clerical patronage, which can be exercised in favour of its deserving sons; and every college, besides its dean, appoints chaplains for the maintenance of the chapel services.[337] Clerical fellows, it is true, are now in a minority, but there seems to be no reason why the clerical don should cease to abound, as he has always abounded, in our university cities. A university education has become more not less valuable for a clergyman now that it enables him to meet men whose beliefs differ widely from his own; now that the right to display an academic hood in church is no longer prized as its chief advantage.[338] [Sidenote: The combination room.]