Calendar: 1975-1976 Page 398

XXVI Annual Report of the Delegacy with that in some others of the western world What the UK delega- tion was expounding in that gathering was pragmatic empirical pluralistic approach Representatives from some other countries principally in Scandinavia seemed to favour dogmatic priori monolithic position They frightened me They knew what the struc- ture of society would or should be in 2050 and they were prepared to draw up blueprint for the educational system which would bring it about with the further modest submission that nothing else was permissible have often envied the confidence of those who don't admit the possibility that they could be wrong How comforting to know with certainty that all who disagree with you must be either stupid or perverse or both We in this country oifer in post-secondary education wide range of options It is very desirable that this should continue and the range should increase rather than diminish There should be variety of levels of rigour of distribution between depth and breadth of types and contents of course of standards of entry and qualifications of methods of teaching and assessment student should never be under compul- sion either in choice of discipline or in choice of institution Anything likely to impose constraint upon this freedom of choice must be watched with caution That is why for example though the logistical arguments for an increase in numbers of home-based students may be strong we are very reluctant here to see them applied in way which limits the freedom of choice of candidate for University place We assume in King's that our students for by far the greater part are here because they want to be Some might have preferred to be somewhere else and come to King's not as the place of their ir5i choice That is quite different matter Out of the sixty or so University institutions available in the United Kingdom some sort of preference has been expressed to come here by virtually every student who enters We make little use of the clearing system and then usually only when the highly speculative business of relating offers to vacancies has left us with unexpected empty places We try only to admit those who are likely to stay fairly exacting course 'A' level grades are helpful in the admission procedure but they are highly fallible as predictive tools and we attach great importance to interview We interview all candidates with reasonable claim to admission and we find that interview is not only helpful to the selector but can be helpful to the candidate in making wise choice There is much to be said for completely open entrance to tertiary