First published in 1962

This book comprises lectures given in November 1961 to what was then the University College of North Staffordshire. It deals with the aims, rather than the administrative problems of the Universities, to put at the forefront of the reader’s mind the fundamentals of University organisation, structure, and development. Butterfield has in mind the needs of undergraduates, and tries to concentrate attention on that electric contact between teacher and student for the sake of which all our elaborate educational machinery exists. He examines the position of the teacher, the status and function of an academic profession, and the relations between teaching and research.