STARVING STUDENTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2191, 15 May 1908, Page 4

STARVING STUDENTS.

RUSSIAN UNIVERSITY SCHOLARS.

It is a matter for American pride that many young men are so eager for a higher education that they will do any kind l of work to get enough money to keep themselves at a university. But poverty and self-sacn-lice among university students seem to bo greatest in Russia. The Press of St. Petersburg has been giving many instances lately of the expedients adopted by poor university students to keep themselves. “Comrades! Why bestow your ten-kopec pieces on outside seamstresses i\ lien there are willing workers in plenty at tho University and technical school who can sew quite decently, if not artistically?” runs a notice posted up in Tomsk University. “I can sew as well as any ordinary work .woman, and certainly more conscientiously.” Another student offers liis services as a barber for half the usual charges. “A starving' scholar asks for omnloyment of any sort,” and “A student in utter destitution asks for work, even of the most menial character” —such notices are to be found in university corridors in St. Petersburg. The (Russian student is often a beggar, and the cries for help or employment which constantly rise from this half-starved class aro declared to be a disgrace to Russian civilisation. In tho University of St. Petersburg alone more than 1000 students have to leave every year because they cannot .pay their fees. This deplorable state of things has an important political effect, for it is a great factor in making universities nurseries of rebellion. Starvation sharpens envy, and the beggar student comes to hate both tho autocratic official and the comfortable middle-class. This dangerous element in Russian society is growing more and more dangerous every day. The cleverest, brightest, and most ambitious sons of the country, the genuine “young Russia,” can, it is contended, be given their social rights only when the system of education is so improved that “practical and genuine assistance is distributed by the city and, the State., at any rate to such an extent as to lighten the lot of poverty to which those who aim at a university training arc at present exposed.”