Irrelevant to Country's Needs

The government of the day is not providing $X million a year for university staff to follow their own scholastic whims. And the rather steady flow of letters to the editors of the daily newspapers make it quite dear that ordinary members of the public are at one with their government in considering the universities to be publicly accountable. Employers of university graduates are vocal too, from time to time, sometimes about the unsuitability of graduates for the jobs for which they are supposed to be trained, sometimes about the unavailability of graduates in fields important in New Zealand. There has been a good deal of criticism lately of the irrelevance of some university studies to the needs of the country. A related undertone of comment, not usually heard publicly, is that the universities in their teaching actually predispose their students against employment in business and industry—and, one might also add, in school-teaching, which some university teachers seem to regard as a lowly occupation.