In Calcutta, for instance, out of 4,500 students barely 1,000 live in hostels, and not all hostels are by any means satisfactory.

In the Indian Universities there is no collegiate life such as English Universities afford, and in India most of the secondary schools as well as colleges are non-residential.

The majority of those who attend them, unless they live at home, have therefore to board out with friends or to live in promiscuous messes, or, as is too often the case, in lodgings of a very undesirable character, sometimes even in brothels, and almost always under conditions intellectually, morally, and physically deleterious.
Lest I may be accused of exaggeration or bias, I will appeal here to the testimony of Dr.Garfield Williams, a missionary of the highest repute and experience, and in profound sympathy with the natives of India.
Speaking at the Missionary Conference at Calcutta last winter, he said:-- The conditions and environment of the student in Calcutta are such as to make the formation of character almost impossible....
He is not a student in the best sense of the word, for he has not the scholarly instincts of a student-- I speak, of course, of the average student, not of the exceptional one.

His parents send him to the University to pass one or two examinations, and these have to be passed in order to enable him to attain a higher salary....

His work is sheer "grind." The acquisition of good notes for lectures is the first essential for him, and the professor who gives good clear-cut notes so that a man can dispense with any text-books is the popular professor--and for two reasons: first of all, it saves the expense of buying the text-book, and then, of course, it helps to get through the examination.
That is a reason why two boys of the same village will go to different colleges because they can then "swap" notes.
It is a very rare thing for a student to have money enough to buy more than one of the suggested books on a given subject for examination.