University Needs

Since 1946. then, there has been a great change for the better in teaching conditions. It extends to other activities than prescriptions and examining. Money is short. There are many things we should be doing, and would do if we had the cash, more student counselling, more tutorial work, better library services, more expert specialised teaching for advanced students, better amenities for students. The list is endless, and a hose of us who know other universities often feel ashamed of how-little a student gets at Victoria. But the students of 1946 got less, a lot less. We move slowly. But we move.

I. A. Gordon—Professor of English Language and Literature of this College and Ex-Vice Chancellor of the University of New Zealand. He is a noted Educational Authority.

Would we—staff land students—be any better off if we had our own University of Wellington, and were not simply a constituent college of the University of New Zealand?

I think the answer is "Yes." But it is not an unqualified "yes." I have already shown that the University of New Zealand has shown itself capable of adaptation. If the university, under wise guidance, can continue to adapt, without delay and without clinging to outmoded powers, it has a long life ahead of it. But unless the university can shape Us policy promptly to meet the needs of the colleges (which, after all are the university) the day of separate universities is very close at hand.

The university is the teacher and the student. Everything else is nonessential. But the university is part of the general community, and more and more it is the community at large that pays. When it comes to all-over planning on a national scale, especially on problems involving financial commitments for the future, then the Wellington unit (be it university or university college) must be regarded as only a part of the general university framework. Whether Victoria becomes legally independent or not, there will continue to be need for some organisation that can act as a clearing-house for the general planning of the finance or higher education. If four universities grow up in New Zealand, they will have to have a self-denying ordinance, to ensure the fullest discussion and co-operation before beginning any expensive new programme. Without that, we might have four, starved medical schools, four ill-equipped schools of engineering, and perhaps even four schools of Home Science. Common-sense will impose some sort of discipline. But it is amazing how common-sense disappears in an atmosphere of intercity rivalry. All sorts of people will rally round to support a post graduate School of Pig-Breeding for Waikikamukau, who will be the first to protest when taxation has to be raised to support the school they so loyally supported in its pipe-dream (and cheap) stage.