The renumeration would be drawn from an autonomous national fund, administered by a board, including the Minister of Education and professorial and student representatives. The fund would be derived chiefly from governmental and municipal subsidies.

This is the first legislation for student-salaries, and is being followed with considerable interest overseas, for the principle of payment for study has been discussed at many international gatherings. The 1950 International Student Service Berne Congress on Access to the University, talked over the pre-salarie, and at the XXIInd world congress of Pax Romana, undergraduate partner of the Intellectual and Cultural Affairs, to be held in Montreal at the end of this month, a report will be presented on the various applications of the principle, as part of the general theme. Mission of the University. We find the 2 salaries, schemes being brought forward wherever there are similar discussions which include the closer integration of the university with the life of the community, and proposals of "democratisation."

The object of the different proposals is to make university education accessible to all classes by the payment of a "salary" to every student who has attained a certain academic standard.

Proposed Applications

The proposed applications of this object vary as widely as the principles which animate them. There is, for example, the French suggestion for the payment of a certain sum of money at fixed intervals to every student who has passed the university entrance examination. There are many suggested modifications of this plan, which include, for instance, provisions for students at technical or agricultural colleges, and even for secondary school children, or provisions for sharing the responsibility with business and labour movements. And there are those who favour rather an extension of the present system of scholarships to include the payment of all fees, with subsidies for books, travelling expenses, board, and so on.

Each of these proposals, or modification of them, touches many fundamental issues, such as the prior rights of the family, the relation of the State to the individual, and to the university, and the extent of the bond between the university and the local community; and the principles behind the various schemes differ accordingly.

The April issue of Pax Romana quotes two answers to the major preliminary question: Is the student salary a matter of strict justice, a claim which the student has the right to make on the community

The Student Charter

At one pole there is a Mr Cayol, who quotes the "Student Charter" promulgated by the Congress of the French National Union of Students at Grenoble in 1946. The Charter gives the rights of the student, the "young intellectual worker," as including the right to special care in the physical, intellectual and moral fields, to work and rest under the best possible conditions, and to search for truth, while among his duties are the integration of himself into the whole of the national and youth world, the acquisition of the highest technical competence, and the search for and defence of truth and freedom. In a concrete application of the principles of the Charter, Mr. Cayol claims for student "syndicalism" a renumeration not merely to improve the student's living conditions, but "as a right."

At the other pole is the rector of the Academy in Nancy, Mr. Jean Capelle, whose opinion is shared by many university professors. Mr. Capelle considers it a play on words to apply the term "worker" to a student: "The worker is one who alienates the product of his work and receives a remuneration in return; the student acquires knowledge and skills which will enable him later on to sell the product of his work at a higher price than if he had not studied. The worker labours for others; the student labours for himself, and only indirectly for society.

"Under these conditions, if the student has the right to receive the means to pursue his studies, i.e., to constitute a capital, he has not the right to consider these means as his due, in the same way as the worker considers his pay as a due."

Mr. Capelle makes a useful distinction between students who are "bound" to the public service for a certain number of years (as a large proportion of engineering students within N.Z.U.), and those who are "free." These, as minors, should be able to draw on an improved system of bursaries, and, on the attainment of their majority, able to draw a monthly allowance, to be refunded without interest after their studies.

N.Z.'s Needs

All these theories are answers to the problems facing university authorities in most countries of the world, including, in several respects, those in New Zealand. Their problems include the demand by industry for a more extensive co-ordination of the university courses and industrial needs and practices, and the necessity for a deeper appreciation of the responsibilities of the university in the search for truth; the necessity for State subsidies, and the parallel tightening of State control; and the material difficulties of the students. Even in New Zealand, where rood is comparatively cheap and plentiful, the housing situation is not impossible, and few under-graduates pay fees for lectures, there are frequent cases of absolute hardship, and many cases of undernourishment. Professors of two of our university colleges have pointed out, in the last couple of months, that a high proportion of students are physically unfit; while in certain faculties (arts and law, at Victoria) at least half the students have fuller part-time jobs.

In considering the case for student-salaries in our own circumstances, we should note that while the standard of living in New Zealand is higher than that of most European countries, and our climate is not unduly harsh, and so on, our students generally receive fewer concessions here than on the Continent. In many cases European students enjoy such benefits as very inexpensive meals or reduced travelling rates—whereas the only comparable assistance for New Zealand students is the Right to Hitch-hike.

The question of student-salaries is not, of course, one which can be discussed in vacuo. It is only one of the suggested methods of "democratisation;" and "democratisation," is the sense, not of a descent of the greater problem of the revision of educational method and theory felt today in most countries.