ABSTRACT
In 1938-9 there were 50,002 students in the universities of Great Britain aided by the University Grants Committee.[ 1 ] Over 22,000 were in the faculty of arts and nearly 14,000 were reading medicine or dentistry; the remaining 14,000 were spread over the faculties of pure science, technology and agriculture.[ 2 ] During 1938 and 1939 the question of the extent to which the universities would be able to continue to operate in wartime weighed heavily on those concerned for their welfare. Some of the specific issues that concerned academics and administrators were the extent to which university buildings were likely to be requisitioned, whether particular universities were to be evacuated from the cities, whether most of their men students would be called up immediately after the outbreak of war, to what extent they would be able to keep their staffs, and what financial difficulties lay ahead if fee and grant income both dropped as markedly as was feared.
