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Salient. Victoria University of Wellington Student's Newspaper. Volume 31, Number 10 May 28 1968

Dangers In Making Do' Policy

Dangers In Making Do' Policy

"As far as our universities are concerned, we have lived, since the war, from hand to mouth, and have just made do," said Mr. K. J. Maidment, Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University, at a recent Association of University Teachers seminar.

"As we approach the 1970s, this hand-to-mouth policy is in danger of ceasing to work.

"The situation is slowly slipping out of control, and, unless some far-sighted decisions are taken rapidly, damage, which will take a generation or more to repair, must inevitably result."

Mr. Maidment claimed this stemmed from an unresolved contradiction arising from two sets of circumstances.

"On the one hand," he said, "it is axiomatic in this democratic society that everyone should enjoy an equal opportunity for educational advancement.

"On the other hand, to keep up with the times, enable the country's universities to be truly deserving of the name, enable them to offer the kind of training the modern world demands and which the world's wealthier communities find possible to provide, New Zealand is presented with an economic problem it has not faced properly and solved."

As a representative example. Maidment pointed out that Auckland University's roll would not slop at its agreed maximum of 10,000 planned for 1972.

"It will rise year by year. Unless the university is able to close its doors, conditions will rapidly revert to what they were in 1950-57, that overcrowded era of 'making-do' before any new building had begun.

"But, the difference will be that the overcrowding, the makeshifts and discontent of the 1970s will have cost the public several million dollars."

Maidment suggested two solutions: to accelerate building programmes simultaneously with an expansion of further channels of higher education, or a change in the country's attitude.

No longer should a minimum standard give an individual admission to a New Zealand university as a right, and students would have to expect less tolerance of insufficient academic progress.

The second alternative, he suggested, might prevent New Zealand confusing quality with mere quantity in terms of higher education.

"But don't think that I favour the second alternative to the exclusion of the first," he said.

"The first would mean the diversion of public monies to higher education on a scale that could not be contemplated.

"The second suggests the creation of an intellectual elite. repugnant to the egalitarian traditions of the country.

Therefore a middle course must be pursued.

"Universities' building programmes must be accelerated.

"At the same time, it is the universities' duty to stretch their resources to the limit, continuing to admit all comers even though their campuses may become overcrowded."

But Maidment pointed out, if the overcrowding of the 50s was repeated in the 70s, "the sheer numbers of those to be taught would rob our libraries of their value as places of quiet study, and turn our laboratories into factories.

"Abler staff would leave rather than become hacks, and our chances of gaining the respect of the community as a repository of talent and an inspiration to others, would disappear once more."

On the inadequacies of New Zealand's technical education facilities he said:

"Only within recent years has the vacuum between the technical colleges and universities received much notice.

"Now it has become abundantly clear that in a community, faced with the urgent task of diversifying its marketable commodities and manufacturing for export as as wide a range of products its natural forces will allow, technology is about to occupy a place of importance it has never occupied before.

"The technologist will be-come vital in our well-being."