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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol. 37, No. 17. July 17, 1974

So what's wrong?

So what's wrong?

Most of the staff for the department come from overseas due to lack of New Zealand applicants for positions. On the basis of Vic's good name (overseas that is) we get a reasonable selection of staff. They have their travel to New Zealand paid in full provided they stay a minimum of three years.

The problem is that most stay the three year minimum and then leave.

It can be seen from the box that even New Zealand staff members take the earliest opportunity to leave the department.

1975 will bring a totally changed staff from even early 1973. Mostly coming from overseas, the new staff will experience many problems settling into the country, university department etc and these problems will, en bloc, on unsuspecting students.

It would be easy to explain this away by saying that staff have put their 'careers' above the interests of students. It would be easy except that several of the leaving or left staff have enjoyed and fostered very good relations with their students. Pat O'Malley (left 1973) and Stephen Mugford (leaving 1974) are just two of those staff who enjoyed good relations with their students. They demanded a critical response to their teaching and by and large accepted the resultant criticisms. O'Malley went to the highly rated London School of Economics. While by no means perfect in their approach or acceptance of what is essentially a bourgeois science they represented a significant body of staff trying to break down the pervading concepts of staff elitism and student passivity.

Those that leave the department do not on the whole appear to be leaving for purely selfish reasons. The inner workings of the Sociology Department seem the more likely cause.

There is no doubt that students are perturbed and troubled over the high turnover of Soc. Dept. staff. Courses change willy nilly as do the expensive set lexis, adding up to a lack of a consistent approach. This can only be at the expense of students trying to master social science. Resultant chronic understaffing means lecturers and tutors too often teach theories that are divorced from current social practice because they do not have sufficient time to go out on research. This shows up in a dull and uninspiring set of courses and increased student cynicism. The bleak prospect of 1975 brings matters even more to a head and and action is needed immediately to change matters.