1225LEADING ARTICLES

How Much for Education ?

THE LANCETLONDON 7 DECEMBER 1968

WHEN Sir JOHN WOLFENDEN, chairman of the Uni-versity Grants Committee, introduced the UniversityGrants Committee’s report on the 1962-67 quinquen-nium,l he announced that the university population hasnow reached 211,700. This is about 12,000 (6%) morethan last year. It exceeds the numbers for whichfinance has been budgeted by several thousands: in

fact, it means that the universities are already withinabout 13,000 of the target which they are planned toreach in 1972 at the end of the current quinquennium.What makes this all the more remarkable is that the

purse-strings show no sign of coming untied, and,during this year and next, university capital expenditureis being cut by a cool E10 million.Moreover the present generation of students were

born in the trough just after the post-war baby boom-the size of the age-group is several hundred thousanddown on the comparable one last year-with the resultthat the proportion of the whole age-group now enteringthe universities has rocketed from about 51/2% to a

record 8%. In some ways this makes an ironic post-script to the 1962-67 report, which should in theoryhave been the record of a period of feverish activity anda prelude to one of consolidation. The report shows

activity, certainly. As usual the figures have to bequalified in various ways, because the former colleges ofadvanced technology were given university status duringthe quinquennium; but, excluding the ex-c.A.T.s,

undergraduate numbers rose between 1962 and 1967from 93,781 to 134,230-an increase of 43-7%. And,despite the fact that the staff-student ratio remainedalmost unchanged over the period, recurrent grants fromthe University Grants Committee went up from E51million to E122 million (this also excludes the ex-c.A.T.s).Even after discounting five years’ inflation, there is astark disparity between a 43-7% increase in numbers anda 137-1% increase in U.G.C. grants which cannot failto raise a question-mark about future expansion. Nodoubt it will be the ambition of Sir JoHN’s successor,Mr. KENNETH BERRILL, to reverse the direction in whichunit costs have moved. He will not find it easy because,when the new universities-whose high initial costs

partly explain these figures-have grown up into moreviable and more economical communities, the U.G.C.will have to tackle the backlog of obsolescence in thegreat civic universities which have taken much of thestrain in recent years.The time is rapidly approaching when the Govern-

ment will have to show its hand on the matter of student

1. University Development 1962-67. Cmnd. 3820. H.M. StationeryOffice. 19s. 6d.

numbers for the 1970s. It would be hard to imagine amore difficult time than the present in which to arrive atagreed forecasts. The whole shape of university expansiondepends on the state of the economy-without a buoyanteconomy there will neither be the money to finance the

expansion nor jobs for the graduates who emerge at theend. In theory, the 1970s should be a period of sustainedgrowth in higher education-the Robbins projections,now proved to be underestimated, point to a rise instudent numbers to 350,000 by 1980. But these figureswere based simply on the expected growth of demand;what is at issue now is not the demand for higher educa-tion but the human and material resources needed tomeet this demand.A pamphlet by Mr. STUART MACLURE 2 throws some

light on the rise in education spending over the pastthirty years. MACLURE was prompted by the crisis in theschools threatened by the Government’s decision tohold down the rise in local-government spending nextyear to 3% in real terms. This in itself may not soundunreasonable or particularly drastic, but the fact is thatfor the past twenty years education spending has beengoing up annually by 6-7% in real terms or, in current-money terms, doubling every six or seven years.Within this general rate of increase, the higher-educationand further-education sections have grown far more

rapidly than education as a whole. But MAcLuRE pointsout that the growth of demand for higher educationarises out of the growth of demand lower down: oncemore it is the familiar story of education as an articulatedwhole, the development of any part having implicationsfor a later stage. Any projection of higher-educationnumbers, therefore, is a statement about the expansionof secondary schools, the raising of the school-leavingage, the recruitment of sixth-form teachers. Forward

planning demands an answer to the key question: Iseducation expenditure going to resume its rate of growthof 6%. in real terms-that is, about twice the hoped-forrate of growth for the economy as a whole-or are weabout to enter a period of sustained stringency ?MACLURE remarks that education has reflected chang-

ing social assumptions which each year make a slightlybigger section of the community expect and demandwhat once was reserved for the well-to-do or especiallygifted. Some of these assumptions underlie the 1944Education Act, and so long as this remains in force thedemand can be expected to go on growing. The demandstill has a long way to go, as every recent study of thesociology of education has indicated.

Plainly, educational finance is going to be undersevere pressure well beyond the immediate crisis year of1969-70. A turning-point of the greatest significance hasbeen reached. Primary and secondary schools used torepresent the lion’s share of public expenditure on edu-cation. In the past ten years the rapid expansion offurther and higher education has changed this. In future,further and higher education-the most costly, mostrapidly growing sections-will account for more than2. Learning Beyond Our Means ? By STUART MACLURE. Councils &

Education Press Ltd., 10 Queen Anne Street, London W.1. 6s. 6d.,including postage.

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half the bill and will feel the full force of campaigns forincreased productivity and lower unit costs. Everythingpoints to intensification of the demands for more efficientuse of university buildings and staff-a renewed ques-tioning of the organisation of the academic year and thedivision between research and teaching on which thenational staff/student ratio of 1/8 is based. And, if masshigher education is really to be the aim, the fact must befaced that, though the present system of supportingstudents by full maintenance grants may be appropriateto a small elite higher-education sector, it is unlikely tobe feasible in a system which promises to absorb up-wards of 20% of the age-group. If this problem has to betackled sooner or later, it would be much better resolvedbefore the Latey report 3 has been adopted, and beforea parliamentary lobby for 18-year-old voters has formed.

Transplanting the ThymusTRANSPLANTATION of the human thymus may lack

the spectacle of some of the enterprises of modern

surgery, but the subject has great immunological interestand some definite clinical importance. Two cases of theDiGeorge syndrome (congenital absence of thymus andparathyroids with anomalies of the great vessels, arisingfrom failure of pharyngeal-pouch development) are

recorded in this issue (p. 1210 and p. 1211) in whichostensibly normal immune function has been conferredby transplanting fragments of foetal thymus.The immune defect in this syndrome is confined to

delayed-hypersensitivity-type reactions, since immuno-globulin formation and antibody production are

apparently normal. Nevertheless the seriousness of thecondition in the few previously identified cases justifiedan experimental approach to treatment. Two points areof special interest: the speed with which the lympho-cytes gain normal in-vitro reactivity after the transplant,and the identity of these lymphocytes. Lymphopeniain these cases is only slight in the first place, but theresponse of the blood lymphocytes to such agents asphytohsemagglutinin is definitely impaired. After

transplantation of thymic fragments, which at most

contain about 108 cells, responsiveness was virtuallynormal in four days in one case and was normalat three weeks in the other. Moreover, in both casesall the responsive cells analysed by chromosome

analysis were of recipient origin.At first sight these data seem to conflict with

experimental work pointing to an exclusively thymus-derived population of responsive " reactor " lympho-cytes but the difficulty may be at least partly resolvable.In the mouse experiments the population of donor cellsin the thymus is in any case transient, being soonreplaced by cells from the recipient bone-marrow.There is then some dilution of donor thymus-derivedcells in the blood and lymph-nodes by cells of recipientorigin, and it may be that in man a similar process3. Report of the Committee on the Age of Majority. Cmnd. 3342. H.M.

Stationery Office, 1967. See Lancet., 1967, ii, 247.4. Davies, A. J. S., Festenstein, H., Leuchars, E., Wallis, V. J.,

Doenhoff, M. J. Lancet, 1968, i, 183.

differs only in quantity and in timing. Thus, if therewas only a minute quantity of donor cells in the

periphery, they would remain virtually undetectableamong the billions of emergent recipient cells. On theother hand, some more fundamental difference mayexist, as between mouse and man, and one legitimatedoubt is whether such a rapid effect could arise throughthe established pathways of cell migration and pro-liferation alone, or whether a humoral factor from thethymus is influencing the existing pool of circulatinglymphocytes. This question is among many whichremain unanswered. For example, what happens to thegraft ? Is it rejected or not ? And, in either case, howlong does normal immune function persist ?The implication for other forms of congenital

immune deficiency are important. In the relativelycommon disease of combined (Swiss-type) immunedeficiency and in the Nezelof syndrome (lymphopeniawith normal humoral immunity) thymic transplantationhas not the immediate or complete effect that has beenseen in the DiGeorge cases.5-8 It is safe to say thatmere absence of thymic function is not the basis ofthese syndromes, and the alternative hypothesis of astem-cell defect becomes much more attractive. Interms of the concept of

" reactor

" and " effector"cells, these syndromes could result from a defect of thestem-cells which generate either or both cell populations.In these conditions, therefore, thymic transplantation islikely to be of subsidiary importance at most. Itremains to be seen, however, whether other conditions,perhaps acquired rather than congenital, may benefitfrom thymic transplantation.

The ZoonosesZoorrosES have been defined as " those diseases and

infections which are naturally transmitted betweenvertebrate animals and man." 9 Although human andanimal diseases must have been connected since thestart of man, new disease entities and unsuspectedrelationships between man and animals are beingincreasingly recognised. More than 150 zoonoses havenow been identified Reservoirs of zoonoses amongdomesticated animals are the sources of greatest dangerfor man, since he is in closest contact with such animals.But changes in environment brought about by agri-cultural and industrial development can bring peopleinto contact with animals and infective agents of which

they may have had little or no previous experience.Prevention and control of zoonoses are of particularimportance to countries in the tropics. In the first ofthe Heath Clark lectures this week, Prof. P. C. C.

GARNHAM, F.R.S., discussed general principles of zoonosesand outlined four examples of tropical zoonoses. They5. Kay, H. E. M. in Immunologic Deficiency in Man (edited by

D. Bergsma); p. 168. New York, 1968.6. Hong, R., Kay, H. E. M., Cooper, M. D., Meuwissen, H., Allan, M.J.G.,

Good, R. A. Lancet, 1968, i, 503.7. Githens, J. H., Muschenheim, F., Vincent, A., Fulginiti, M. D.,

Robinson, A., Kay, H. E. M. J. Pediat. (in the press).8. Hitzig, W. H. Personal communication.9. Tech. Rep. Ser. Wld Hlth Org. 1959, no. 169, p. 6.

10. ibid. 1967, no. 378, p. 7.