To encourage full-time study the Professorial Board is now arbitrarily setting a limit on the amount of work a student may undertake; lengthening the time he has to remain a student at university; and increasing the amount of money he must put down towards his own education.

This is no incentive; it cannot be described as just a blind or negative approach. It is a calculated repressive measure clamped on by the Board to further that pipe-dream of professorial bliss—the university inhabited by full-time students only.

The Board is Dragging Back the Part-Timers to Let the Full-Timers Keep Ahead!

There are un.deniably some phases of university study which are best undertaken by full-time students only. Recently, a lecturer in philosophy was deeply pained when, while keenly explaining symbolic logic, a student objected, "But what is the use of it all?" "Good heavens!" he replied, "We don't study this for utility, you know."

Practical Work Essential Anyway

But other things are studied for their immediate utility. All the subjects taught in this university could be put in one class or the other. Those like philosophy and pure mathematics administered to us to mould the traditional mental habits of the trained scholar (onesame principle as a dental plate to straighten crooked teeth) should be taken as early as possible, and in as big a dose as possible. While a student is acquiring these mental disciplines, full-time study may be the proper thing.

But in most courses, certainly in Law and Commerce, there comes a stage where the teaching becomes purely utilitarian. If Conveyancing and Secretarial Practice are not utilitarian, what are they? In these subjects, surely, practice is an essential aid to the study of the theory.

Here is the paradox, that the Professorial Board has gone to much troubLe obtaining the best possible laboratory conditions to unite the practice with the theory of science, while they are still trying to divorce the practice of Law and Commerce from its theory.

N.Z. Social Situation Ignored

It is time the Board realised that part-time study is a traditional and necessary part of the New Zealand way of life; that the New Zealand university is the way it is because it has adapted itself to fit the specific social conditions in this country; and that a university fully dedicated to the concept of full-time tuition only is undesirable in terms of New Zealand's social objectives.

Education is not Only for the Rich

Historically, universities were founded to cater for the education of clerics and the younger sons of the "better" classes. Ever since, the universities run on the traditional Oxford-Cambridge pattern have catered only to those students who, either because of their parentage or because of scholarships, have been able to afford full-time tuition.

In England there has always existed a class rich enough and numerous enough to support these institutions. Similarly in the U.S. and Canada there is enough wealth for institutions run on similar traditional patterns to survive.

In New Zealand, no such monied class cocists, at least not in the numbers required to supply four universities and two agricultural colleges with about 20,000 full-time students, and the paltry number of scholarships awarded annually cannot hope to supply the deficiency.

But over the past 50 years in New Zealand a pattern of university education has emerged that has overcome these difficulties in the most desirable and only practical way. The end product is derived as much from this country's educational philosophy of equal opportunity for all as from the experiment and constant adjustment inevitably associated with the development of the system. It grants the opportunity of a university education to every New Zealander of average ability, not just to the brilliant, or to the rich.

And why not? Why should the student of average ability from a family of average income not have a higher education?

What are the alternatives? If a stiffer entrance qualification is adopted it will create a class of "intellectuals"; if students are not subsidised by bursaries, education will be the prerogative of the rich and only they will receive higher education. Both classes will tend to be self-perpetuating simply because education is worth money these days, and money can in part buy education (through better schools and special coaching).

If this country wishes to avoid stratification along educational lines, we must retain a common educational background. The average student, not only the rich or the brilliant student, must have the chance of obtaining a degree, for this is the price of an homogeneous society.

Not all, of course, will proceed to the higher academic honours; that is where the better students will assert themselves. But in this way the educational environment for all students will remain the same. It is this identity of background that will remain a guarantee of the single class society.

As it is economically impossible to send 20,000 students to university full-time, the majority must attend part-time. The New Zealand university system has adapted itself, like the chameleon, to blend with the social environment. It is the end product of an evolutionary process.

It is this trend that the professors, blind to the experience of history, are now trying to reverse. To succeed would be to put the New Zealand university system right back into the middle ages; for that would be the effect if all part-time students were to be scared either into attending full-time only, or more often, into not attending at all.

Let's hope then, that the Professorial Board will reconsider this decision and reverse it. And in future years, if they wish to "encourage" full-time study, it would be more just to show the full-time students a little more carrot, and leave off beating the part-timers with the big stick.

—M. J. Moriarty.