| Admin_History | The academic programme at Ushaw College was greatly influenced by the continuation of the Douai tradition which was designed to offer students a broad - based education not exclusively theological. Pupils traditionally entered Ushaw at the age of eleven and were described as church studentsto distinguish those who were there with the specific intention of testing their vocation to the priesthood from those simply seeking an high standard of education in a Catholic environment. In all other respects, the students followed an almost identical curriculum of humanities, mathematics and science until the time came for the lay student to pursue his career or further education elsewhere. Students commenced in the class known as Underlow, progressing through Low Figures and High Figures. They then entered the college proper and joined the class of Grammar, followed by Syntax, Poetry and Rhetoric, at which the point the remaining lay students left the school and the church students embarked on their vocational training. Academic displays of learning were held in public in the Exhibition Hall (now the Lecture Theatre). An event known as ‘Reading Up’ was conducted in the Hall at the end of each academic term. Every school (year group) was lined up on the stage facing the teaching staff and the assembled college. A lecturer then began to announce, in Latin, the position of each student in the Latin examinations. As the name of each student was announced, starting with the first, he returned to his seat leaving his less successful colleagues waiting anxiously to hear their fate, until the last youth made his embarrassed way back to his place. Until their abolition at the end of the nineteenth century, defensions were held in the public room at the end of the academic year, as had been the practice at Crook Hall and Douai. Copies of theses to be defended were printed in Latin, and examiners' from the ranks of the clergy were invited to attend. The professors of divinity during the early years of the college were not specially trained for their work; they were generally the senior professors of the college who had graduated through the cursus honorum. This was the traditional procedure forced upon the college by the closure of the English universities to Catholics and the dearth of Catholic learning abroad. In the early nineteenth century, English Catholic students were debarred from universities or at least from obtaining degrees so, in March 1839, the superiors of the college presented a petition to the queen to allow the seminary students to take their degrees at London University. This was granted in a charter the following year and Ushaw students Francis Wilkinson and Richard Wilson became the first Catholic students since the Reformation to qualify officially for a degree (without violating their consciences by accepting the Oath of Supremacy attached to entry and graduation at the older universities). From the end of the 19th century, relations with London University were deterioating so overtures were made with the University of Durham to allow selected Ushaw students to be sent for advanced training in mathematics, sciences and classics. Following the decision to grant Ushaw College the status of licenced Hall of Residence of the University, the college began offering courses validated by the University, including undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. |