What Is a Degree?

The approach of Capping revives the question as to whether the possession of a University degree is any guarantee of special intelligence or even of a good general education. Many people are very impressed by the letters after a person's name, but we fear that they are often disillusioned on meeting graduates and engaging them in conversation. It would be incorrect to maintain that the average graduate holds no opinions, but in many cases these appear to be determined more by the prevailing fashion than by first-hand information.

In the N.Z. University Colleges intellectual activity is largely confined toa small radical section, often regarded as cranks by their more conservative and conventional brethren. But with the world in its present condition an intelligent interest in current problems is surely not out of place in a University which was formerly regarded as the centre of a nation's cultural education. At the present day it appears to be more concerned with the production of specialist, sometimes well versed in one or two subjects, but often blissfully ignorant of any connection between these subjects and other branches of knowledge.

The students themselves are not entirely to blame. It is impossible to exonerate completely the present educational system. It would be rather a bold claim to maintain that the results of educational research during the last thirty years have had any noticeable effect of the methods of University education. All teachers agree that if a class is to derive and benefit from a lessonor lecture, it is essential that the member should be on the alert and interested in the subject. Too often students are in a semi-comatose state, atuomatically copying down the notes dictated to them by the lecturer.

Of course, we must admit that it is much easier to give destructive rather than constructive criticism, but, at the presen time, when the examination system appears to be on trial in England, it is not inopportune to direct attention to some of the more obvious defects in our own system.