EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL FUNCTION
youth training and youth service organizations which are now assum-
ing such importance.
With regard to the universities two main reforms seem indicated.
One is the adoption of some system whereby students can move more
freely from one university to another without impairing their chances
of a degree, the other a closer linkage of our own university system
with that of other countries. Approximation in general educational
policy, increased facilities for visiting research workers of all ages,
exchange of teaching and student personnel—all are needed. This in
its turn has two facets, the international and the imperial. Inter-
nationally, while the utmost should be done to continue and extend
the exchange of students, staff., and ideas between our universities and
those of other continents, and especially of the United States, Europe
will present a special and urgent need, for it is largely through educa-
tion that we can expect to nourish the tender plant of super-national
European patriotism. Naturally this European patriotism cannot
and should not supplant national patriotisms; but its growth is in-
dispensable to the future peace and progress of the European
Continent. Higher education is bound to play an important role in
the process, and we in this country must be on the alert and be pre-
pared to take a position of leadership in providing a truly European
system of universities for our Continent.
There are other international aspects of higher education to be
considered. Among the most important of these will be the establish-
ment of an international staff college to train administrators, both
general and with specialist qualifications, for international work,
whether in Europe, in the colonies, or elsewhere. Only so can we
expect to provide the staff necessary to carry on all the complicated
supra-national business of the world. The League of Nations
secretariat and the I.L.O. have demonstrated that solidarity,
standards, and esprit de corps can be produced relatively quickly in an
international body; it is for an international staff college to add
deliberate and specialized international training. There are many
other international fields for education, such as the control of text-
books in the interests of international amity and general social de-
velopment; but we cannot deal with them here.
On the imperial side, a great deal could be done toward bringing
all institutions of higher education and research into a more unified
system—by exchanges of teaching and research personnel, by special
institutes at home, by ensuring that colonial colleges and universities
should enjoy a higher status in their communities, and so on. - A given
expenditure from the Colonial Development Fund would probably go
271