ABSTRACT
The main role of the central universities was to maintain the standards of the affiliated colleges. This was done chiefly through the examination system. The University of London consisted mainly of an administrative and examining organization which co-ordinated the work and set the standards for the group of colleges in London which had joined together in confederation. Although the Indian universities ought to provide an object-lesson in how not to educate, the system has at least been in existence for a hundred years and is, for better or for worse, well established. The idea that education is a force making for change, that it gives the individual human being a tool to break the fetters of tradition and class structure, is linked to another. This is the concept of development, in the sense in which the word is used when talk about developed or underdeveloped nations.
