Comings and Goings: University Students in Canadian Society, 1854-1973 (review)

This new study on university students is a welcome contribution to the history of Canadian higher education. Its interest lies in the fact that it looks at the experience of university students from a new perspective. Scholars in the past have focused mostly on the experience of students on campus. 'Less is known about the lives of students before and after their university days.' To correct this imbalance, Charles Morden Levi sets out to 'produce a study of the origins and future careers' of the 1873 student officers of the Literary and Athletic Society (Lit) of the University College at the University of Toronto from 1854 to 1973, including succeeding women's associations. Yet, the author aims do to more than chart out their career paths. Indeed, he argues that students 'entered a variety of careers and had an impact on society not entirely predicted by the university that educated them.' By charting out these officers' 'coming and goings,' he wants to evaluate the influence the university experience had on these graduates, essentially through the Lit, and in turn their own influence on society. This is a tall order for a 172-page study and a stimulating subject that would have required more analytical fine-tuning to fulfil its promise.

Let it be said that Levi has undertaken painstaking and meticulous research to uncover the available information on the student officers. He makes the data user-friendly by laying it out clearly in numerous tables. His study also allows us to identify the newly emerging careers selected by graduates over a 120-year period. For all this, his efforts deserve generous praise. However, one of the most pervasive problems of this study has to do with the fact that the author does not ask enough questions about his sources and is not reflective enough about his analytical tools. Levi does not discuss the advantages offered by his sources and their interpretive limits. The Who's Who publication is a case in point. The author is not only dealing with a factual index but a most revealing historical document as well. For instance, the Who's Who edition of 1911 did not include the same kinds of individuals as the Who's Who of more recent times. We have changed our views about who is important. In other words, selection in this publication is contingent. Furthermore, he does not discuss what he means by individuals having an 'impact' on society. The author obviously has made a connection between impact and positions of leadership. Since this interpretation is a fundamental aspect of this study, it deserves a much more detailed critical analysis. It poses particular problems when he addresses the issue of women and postgraduate experience. Levi also makes a series of assumptions that unfortunately weaken the thrust of his arguments. These have mostly to do with the way he interprets the role the Lit. He seems to assume that what the students learned at the university can be reduced to what they learned as members of the Lit. More than that, Levi appears to suggest that what the officers learned at the society was the most formative experience in their university career. For instance, since debating was an important activity at the Lit, and many students entered professions that involved debating, he identifies this connection as evidence that membership at the Lit was key - more to the point, that membership in the Lit accounts for students ending up in positions of leadership. One could argue that this assumption goes against another commonsensical one: that individuals are shaped by a variety of influences. And when the author looks at the postgraduate future of female student officers, he again makes assumptions that leave the reader wondering if he has distanced himself enough from the material at hand. Because he indirectly suggests that impact is exercised through traditionally male-dominated occupations, by looking at sources compiled according to the same set of criteria, women...