Back to the Universities
It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of securing a flow of able and well-educated young men for recruitment into the public services and professions in the approaching critical period of reconstruction. Appreciating this need, the Ministry of Labour and National Service propose to release in Class B of the demobilisa- tion scheme 3,000 Arts students and t,5oo theological students, the former selected by their Universities from men of scholarship stan- dard, the latter recognised as candidates by the responsible Church authorities. Under strict consideration of the needs of war, men taking medical, science and engineering courses have been reserved for study at the Universities, but since 1942 there has been no defer- ment for students who would have taken arts courses. Yet it is just from this class that key men in so many walks of life should be chosen. Happily, casualties in this war have not been so catastrophic as in the last ; but hundreds of thousands of men have been deprived of the opportunities of higher education. Unless they can get this education, they will be handicapped for the rest of their lives. The scheme provides that only the pick of them will get release in time to begin their University courses next October. But these are the men who will be .most urgently needed. No doubt during the next three years the Universities will be filled with students, somewhat older for the most part than they would be normally, affording—if we may judge by the experience of 1919-22 —most interesting and admirable material to be brought under Uni- versity influence.
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