Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 15, No. 1. March 5, 1952
[Introduction]
There are some valuable things New Zealand students can learn from students "in college" in the United States.
A peculiar claim? Not really. Most of us New Zealanders have been so impressed with the unevenness of academic standards in American universities that we tend to lose sight of the very important facts that (a) the best American institutions are, at the Very Least, as good as our own best patches; and that (b) American students in many institutions have gone far beyond us in building up communal life so as to make a student's years at college a valuable corporate experience as well as the gateway to a job and (we hope) an introduction to learning.
We can deplore, with some American investigators, the harking back of some mature Americans to their college years as irretrievable golden years, and the consequent idolising of the way of life of the student, fully capable of life's enjoyments but not yet burdened with many responsibilities. We can dismiss as a sign of emotional immaturity the desire to return to a younger, less responsible self.
Still the fact remains that life at most American colleges has in greater measure than New Zealand student life ingredients which make it an enlarging of the student's experience in communal living. The students I met really had a feeling of integration into college community; it's not a feeling I'd expect to find among the majority of Vic students.