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Oxford Catholic Worker's College

1910 New Catholic Dictionary

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One of five institutions recognized by the British Board of Education as residential colleges giving "full-time instructions of a university standard in subjects of liberal education to adult students, whose full-time education has been interrupted by employment." The students are wage-earners and have come from nearly every industrial area in Great Britain. The archbishops of England and Wales are visitors and .trustees of the college, which is governed by the executive of the Catholic Social Guild; finances of the guild and college being separate, the principal being advised in regard to the students by an educational committee in Oxford. The course normally covers two years, of three terms each. Students receive tuition from university tutors, attend university lectures, and are enabled to prepare for the university diploma in economics and political science; their studies also include moral philosophy, social ethics, and philosophy of religion. The college was opened by the Catholic Social Guild in 1921, in memory of Father Charles Dominic Plater, S.J., "in order to provide special training for working-class students in the social sciences, with special reference to the application of Christian principles and the social philosophy of the Catholic Church." While in Oxford the students are in touch with the problems of the C.S.G., the headquarters of which are in the same house, and on returning to their homes they frequently combine, along with other useful activities, the leadership of study circles, thus continuing their own study and imparting their knowledge to others. As British working-class organizations are lacking in trained leaders, the college endeavors to train such leaders in order that sound principles may be diffused. Candidates for admission must give some indication of practical usefulness in their home surroundings; they must be sufficiently free from family ties, and have reasonable likelihood of regaining their former occupation; the age of entry is elastic, but in the case of a student who left school at the age of 14 it is essential that he should have done some further study. There are usually six or seven men in residence; since 1923 two or three women students, members of the college, are accommodated in the private residence of a lady in Oxford. Fees are, in some cases, collected by local committees of the C.S.G. or other Catholic societies, the committee selecting the student; in other cases scholarships are provided by individual benefactors. Mass is celebrated daily in the college chapel.