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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, June 1910

University of New Zealand

page 31

University of New Zealand.

"Slot pro ratione voluntas."

In his letter to the Mayor explaining his reasons for nonattendance at the University reform meeting at the Town Hall, Sir Robert Stout said: "May I suggest that the initial reform may be to try to get University Professors throughout New Zealand to agree as to what they desire? The main reform needed is that all the Professors of one subject should be of one mind. If this is impossible, how then is it possible for those who are mere laymen to judge as to what is to be done?" A fundamental reform that is demanded by the Victoria College Professorial Board is that there should be provision made in the Constitution of the University for the consultation and advice of the Professors upon academic legislation. The last sentence of our quotation from the Chancellor's letter is the strongest justification we have yet seen of the attitude of the Professors. It contains an admission—and not a mere tacit admission—that a lay body is incompetent to deal with so important a matter as a University curriculum. On such questions, Sir Robert Stout seems quite convinced that the Professors are the best authorities; and, accordingly, we have not the slightest doubt that we shall soon see our esteemed Chancellor becoming a militant member of the University Reform Association.

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We are pleased to observe that the Senate has decided to raise the standard of the Matriculation Examination so as to represent the reasonable result of four years' work at a secondary school, instead of, as at present, merely two years' work. Such a decision will not only benefit the student, in that lie will be better fitted to receive university training in those subjects .with which he is already acquainted, but it is also, we believe, an indispensable preliminary to the introduction of a. more specialised degree course, such as is demanded by our Professors.

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In an outburst of what is probably intended to be considered as "patriotism," the University Senate has page 32 decided to constitute Military Science an optional subject for the B.A. and B.Sc. courses. It is urged in favour of this innovation, that both the Sydney and the McGill Universities have a Chair of Military Science, whilst the authorities of Oxford University have recently appointed a Professor of Military History. We fail to see in these facts, however, an argument for the establishment of four such Chairs in connection with our own University—a policy which has at least the tacit approval of the Senate. The Universities which we have mentioned already perform to the satisfaction of most men who are competent to judge, the primary functions of a University; and thus they are justified in providing, out of their ample revenues, the comparatively trifling sum of £800 for the study of Military Science. But the same excuse for the expenditure of quadruple that sum does not exist in the case of our own University, many of whose Professors are inadequately paid and over-worked, whose libraries are totally inadequate, whose curriculum is condemned by most modern educationalists, and which, by reason of the slenderness of its revenues, is precluded from giving an efficient training even in those branches of learning which are acknowledged by all to lie within the true scope of a University.

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Mr. J. W. Joynt, M.A., the Registrar of the University of New Zealand, is about to leave the Dominion to take up the position of Agent to the University in London, in the place of Mr. Eve, who has retired. In Mr. Joynt we lose a friend who has striven in every possible way to promote good feeling and a healthy spirit of rivalry among the students of the affiliated colleges. We take this opportunity of thanking hint for his services in the past, and of wishing him every good fortune in the future.

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