University Education

Report Of Parliamentary Recess Education Committee By Academicus

After many years of agitation for a competent inquiry into N.Z. university education the Reichel-Tate Royal Commission took evidence and reported in 1925. Notwithstanding the evidence in support of four universities with limited charters (the weight of the evidence of three of the four university centres was in favour of this solution), the Commission decided for one federal university for the Dominion, with liberal powers of initiative for the constituent colleges. Legislation followed, but the most far-reaching recommendations of the Commission, the appointment of a Principal of the University and a radical improvement in the finances, staffing and libraries of the colleges, were in the main ignored. Both Sir Harry Reichel and Mr. Tate were men of wide experience in university organisation and government. They could properly be called experts in this field.

Before the scheme that they recommended had really been tried another Commission—this time a Parliamentary Committee of nonexperts—has in a few short weeks reviewed the whole of our education system from kindergarten to university and made revolutionary proposals in every sphere. As far as the University is concerned, the most important recommendations are as follows:—

1.	The University of New Zealand is to be disestablished and its place taken by two universities—one for the South Island and one for the North Island. Each University is to consist of the university institutions and teachers' training colleges in the island.
2.	Under the new regime there are to be no university scholarships and the accumulated funds of the N.Z. University, from the revenue of which many of the present scholarships are now paid, are to be devoted to the improvement and maintenance of the college libraries. Bursaries will be provided for deserving students (especially for those in rural areas) and will be awarded on the report of school inspectors on the school work of the applicants.
3.	All examinations in the new universities are to be of the purely internal type, though the Committee seems quite unaware of the lions in the path. By this reform it is hoped to save the present high costs of examination, and the money thus saved is to be devoted to the improvement of the university staffs in Arts and Science. The Committee fails, however, to show the means by which this end is to be achieved.
4.	A uniform scale of university staffing and salaries is recommended and all salaries are to be paid directly by the Government. This will, in effect, make the members of the university staffs civil servants: a policy that all British Universities have refused even to consider.page 34
5.	The training of teachers is to be co-ordinated with the school of education of each university college and is to be administered by the university colleges, Auckland and Dunedin training primary and sub-primary teachers, Wellington and Christchurch training post-primary and agricultural teachers.
6.	The matriculation examination is to be very largely replaced by a system of leaving certificates granted on the work of the pupils in the secondary schools.
7.	The Committee hopes that if some people are on the Councils both of the Technical School and of the University it will aid in the coordination of the work of these institutions.

While there are some good points in the report, it is clear that the nature of university education, and especially university education in this country, was not clearly understood by the Committee. The whole weakness of university education in this Dominion is very closely connected with three vital defects that are hardly touched by the recommendations of the Committee.

First, we have adopted a very decentralised system of university education of a most expensive type, and yet the financial provision made for the teaching colleges is only about one-third of the amount allowed for the poorer universities of the British Empire. If we are to have the best type of university work in this country we must be prepared to pay for it not less than other countries do.

Second, New Zealand is far from the greatest educational centres of the world. It therefore needs on its university staffs men and women with the best brains and the highest characters. But to attract these we must offer conditions, in respect to salary, sabbatical years and facilities for research, that are at least not less attractive than those to be found elsewhere.

Third, real university work requires the whole of a student's time. Unfortunately, in this country we have gone out of our way to encourage people to believe that a university education may be gained by study in the odd hours at the end of a busy working day. It will be futile to provide adequate staffs, libraries and laboratories unless the great mass of the students can give the whole of their time to university work during three or four years. It is of no avail to say that it cannot be done. It is clone in poorer countries than this Dominion and is clone in this country in medicine, agriculture, dentistry, home science, engineering, etc.

In the respects noted we find the report of the Committee not only disappointing, but misleading. The report seems to suggest that it is possible by mere co-ordination to raise the level of university education in this country without any further demands on the finances of the community or on the time of the student. This is illusory.