The Tutorial System: The Jewel in the Crown

Abstract

In his encyclopaedic A history of the University of Oxford, Mallet has claimed that the commitment of the Oxford colleges to supervise ‘the conduct and instruction of their younger colleagues was a natural development of the collegiate idea’ (1927, p. 57) and, likewise, the emergence of the college tutor ‘was a natural development of the college system’ (1927, p. 134). What is fascinating about the history of the European universities is how in the middle ages, having ‘constituted an intellectual community embodying the same ideal’ (Ashby, 1966, Universities: British, Indian, African, p. 4), they acquired very different characteristics in response to the Reformation and the rise of nationalism (Halsey & Trow, 1971, The Decline of Donnish Dominion, p. 34).