P.M. on Education Policy

The Rt. Hon. S. G. Holland

I have great pleasure in complying with your request to address a brief message to students of Victoria College. If proof were needed of the Government's interest in university education, I could point out that the University of New Zealand and its constituent and agricultural colleges are today receiving recurring grants from the Government at the rate of over a million pounds a year, four hundred thousand pounds a year more than in 1949. These amounts, I may add, do not include the very large sums expended in the provision of bursaries, nor the special non-recurring grants for capital expenditure.

It is clear, therefore, that in common with similar institutions in other British countries, our university colleges have come to depend increasingly on public funds for their support. This raises difficulties, not the least of which is that of ensuring or guaranteeing the academic freedom of the university. For it is part of the British tradition that the university should be free from even the merest suspicion of political interference, and that it should have not only the right but the duty to resist anything that might hinder it in performing its dual task of extending and disseminating knowledge. The Government is fully conscious of the importance of this tradition, and for my own part I may say that so far from believing that he who pays the piper ought always to calf the tune. I hold firmly to the view that one sometimes gets better music by entrusting the selection to the piper.

The Government is aware that the increase in the birth rate over the past fifteen years will mean that the problem of accommodation at present affecting primary and post-primary schools will in a few years become a real one for the university colleges. Unfortunately, the very heavy demands that have been made upon the Government from all sides for expenditure on capital works have meant that progress with university buildings has been less rapid than the Government would have wished. Nevertheless, sites have been acquired for the rebuilding of two of the University Colleges, extensions of sites have been provided on others, substantial progress has been made with the large building programme at Lincoln College, and four large projects amounting together to about one and three-quarter million pounds are under consideration.

The problems of education beyond the secondary level are, however, not simply problems of funds and accommodation. There are many questions of great importance that await answers. Should the university undertake the training of all those who can reach minimum entrance standards, or should it concentrate its resources on a highly selected group of people of superior ability? Should the university provide the professional training for an ever-increasing number of occupations, or should some alternative form of higher education be developed to provide for technological training? What are the principles on which the university should decide whether it should provide a particular course of study? Would part of the problem of our university colleges be solved by the establishment of "Junior Colleges" offering shorter and less rigorous courses? How is the university to ensure that even those whose object is the attainment of professional qualifications have the necessary general education to enable them to play their part as citizens in a democracy?

All these questions arise inevitably as the community makes more and more demands for trained people to carry on an increasing number of highly specialized occupations. I have framed those problems in the form of questions as to what the university ought to do. And I have done so deliberately. While the Government has the responsibility of satisfying itself that no major field of study that may be in the national interest is neglected, it is no part of the Government's function to force its will on the university or to distract the university from its main objective by offering financial assistance to projects which, however desirable in themselves, have yet no place in properly conceived university policy. The questions that I have mentioned are, therefore, questions on which the views of the university ought to be made known, and which should be fully debated so that all their implications may be discovered.

Finally, there is one aspect of university education that I regard as especially important, particularly as it concerns the student and the community that assists him. I refer to the social responsibility that should result from the receipt of privilege. What traditionally distinguished the so-called "learned" professions from other occupations was the spirit of service that pervaded them. To this tradition of service the university contributed a great deal. Though the university today draws its students from a much wider field, and though it prepares them for a much broader range of occupations, the same tradition of service ought to hold good, it is a necessary part of a university education that the student should be encouraged to examine commonly held opinions and to criticize the statements of his fellows. But an education that never advances beyond this negative phase is not properly speaking a university education at all. The [unclear: community] needs critics; but it also needs constructive thinkers and it looks increasingly to the university to produce them.