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Universities Old and New

The University Colleges of New Zealand are very largely modelled on the old Scottish University system. This is, no doubt, due to the fact that the early Scottish settlers in Otago were the first colonists to occupy themselves seriously with the problem of Education. The University of Otago was established in 1869 on what may be represented as strictly Scottish lines. In the seventies the University of New Zealand secured a "royal charter" and from that time the University of Otago became (except in name) merely an affiliated University College, like the more recently founded University institutions (Canterbury 1873, Auckland 1882, and Victoria University College 1897). The fact that the University of New Zealand adopted an external system of examination, which entailed the appointment of expert examiners in Great Britain and consequently the setting of the papers, and the correcting of the answers there, made it necessary for the younger University Colleges to follow the example of Otago in adopting the Scottish University system. In Scotland for centuries the Universities were in session for the six winter months of the year (October to April). The recess extended over the six summer months (April to October). This arrangement was accounted for no doubt by democratic considerations. The poorer students were enabled, by securing employment during the summer months, to earn enough money to provide for their maintenance and their class-fees during the University session. Before the days of State and compulsory education the Scottish schools were conducted under the auspices of the various Scottish churches; and University students could, as a rule, secure temporary appointments (during the summer months) on the staffs of primary or secondary schools. Not a few students, however, secured the means necessary for their maintenance from session to session at the University, by undertaking harvesting and other forms of manual labour, during the recess. All the older Universities found it an economic, if not also a physiological and intellectual, advantage to confine their sessions, as far as possible, to the colder months of the year. The colder months, like the colder climates, appear to be conducive to serious study and profound thought.

Until some thirty or forty years ago the professoriates of the Scottish Universities were preoccupied with the idea—an idea very much alive in obscurantist circles all the world over, to the present day—that all real learning, came if not via antiquity, at any rate via books. In 1837, Carlyle, in one of a series of lectures on "Heroes and Hero-worship" (subsequently published in book form) expressed the confident opinion that "The true University of these days is a collection of books." Twenty-nine years later (1866) when delivering his "Rectorial Address" to the students of his old Alma Mater (the University of Edinburgh) he put the case for "a collection of books" somewhat more cautiously:

"A man," he observed, "has not now to go away to where a professor is actually speaking, because, in most cases, he can get his doctrine out of him through a book, and can read it again and again, and study it. I don't know that I know of any way in which all the facts of a subject may be more completely taken in, if our studies are moulded in conformity page 49 with it. Nevertheless Universities have, and will continue to have, an indispensable value in society—a very high value. I consider the very highest interests of man vitally intrusted to them." He added rather significantly: "It remains, however, a very curious truth, what has been said by observant people, that the main use of the Universities, in the present age, is, that after you have done with your (University) classes, the next thing is a collection of books—a great library of good books—which you proceed to study and read. What the Universities have mainly done (what I have found the University did for me) was that it taught me to read in various languages and in various sciences, so that I could go into the books that treated of those things, and try anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, as I found it suit me."

Well the pioneers of University Education in New Zealand were educationally even more democratic than their Scottish educational forebears. What can be achieved by the judicious use of "a good collection of books" impressed them, as it impressed Carlyle and others long before. To encourage individual initiative and the judicious use of accredited text-books, they adopted, as an adjunct to the University system proper, the old London University system, which provided facilities for students not attending University classes to secure University degrees. The exempted student was, and is, unknown in Scotland (except that, in the case of women students, for a few years before 1889, when women were admitted to the Universities of Scotland, the University of St. Andrews conferred an LL.A. (Literate in Arts) degree on women working under "exempted" student conditions). The University Colleges in New Zealand, presumably in the best interests of the community generally, have departed from the Scottish tradition by arranging their classes, for most part, as evening classes, so as to enable students to earn a living while pursuing their University studies. The academic day in Scotland began at 8 a.m. and ended at 5 p.m.—though almost all the classes met between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.

The fact that probably 75 per cent. of University students in the University Colleges of New Zealand are earning part, or the whole of their living while pursuing their studies at the University, is inevitably a heavy handicap. The hope is, however, entertained in academic circles, that, as the community becomes relatively wealthier, the advantages accruing from such intensive study as is possible when students are (while at the University) devoting their whole time to study, will so appeal to parents, that they will practise the necessary economies and make the necessary sacrifices to enable their sons and daughters to pursue their studies under more favourable conditions. What has been found possible in Scotland, for generations past, should surely be found comparatively easy, under present day conditions, in New Zealand.

To achieve any real distinction at a Scottish University some thirty or forty years ago entailed a student's entering upon his course with from five to seven years of Latin and from three to five years of Greek. At Aberdeen University (for example) 1000 marks were assigned for the subjects prescribed for Entrance Scholarships—400 marks to Latin prose, 100 to Latin, 100 to Greek, and 100 to each of the remaining subjects prescribed! Latin was a veritable incubus. The classical tradition is, of course page 50 still well maintained in Scotland. Though science has made enormous advances and secured infinitely higher status in the curriculum of the British Universities, it can scarcely be said to have, so far, acquired the prestige and recognition to which its claims and triumphs entitle it. The classical and literary tradition seems still to retain precedence. The clay cannot be far distant however, when "a good collection of books," valuable and indispensable though such a collection be, will be regarded as, after all, but a very indifferent equipment in the quest for a liberal education.

The classical incubus is practically unknown in this Dominion. Students can enter upon professional and utilitarian courses of University study with but a modicum of classical and literary equipment. Social and economic pressure renders it almost inevitable that it should be so. In Scotland forty years ago a large percentage of medical students secured arts degrees before beginning their medical course; and an M.A. degree is, to this day, a pre-requisite to a degree in law.

Under the old regulations the M.A. degree was taken in three sections: the classical—Latin and Greek; the philosophical—English, metaphysics, logic, psychology and ethics; the mathematical—mathematics and natural philosophy (physics). Each section involved a two years' term of study. In these latter days degrees can be obtained, subject to much stricter conditions in the matter of pre-requisites, very much as under the auspices of the University of New Zealand.

The traditions, ritual and nomenclature, connected with the unofficial and social activities of the Scottish University students, present somewhat remarkable features. In olden times, first year students were known as "primers," second year as "secunders," third year as "terners," and fourth year as "quaterners." In these latter days they are known, respectively, as "Bejants" (i.e. yellow-beaks!), semis, tertians, and magistrands or graduands. There has always been a good deal of "class-consciousness" (with occasional feud and friction) displayed by the students in the different years. There has been, from time immemorial until comparatively recent times, a very elaborate ritual of initiation for freshmen (Bejants). In olden times the ceremony went by the name of "depositio cornuum" (the dishorning!). Freshmen had to appear in motley before the previously initiated students. They had to wear caps, or head-gear, to which horns, long ears, and tusks were attached. An official known as the "depositor" subjected each of them to a symbolic overhaul with a carpenter's plane remarking as he did so: "Literature and the Arts will thus polish your body." He reminded them of the necessity of putting off the beast and putting on the man. Then he poured a large basin of water over the head of each of the novices in turn and dried it with a coarse towel! A common practice in quite recent times was to have freshmen assembled in a hall and to insist upon their delivering speeches before the general body of students. To those who gave a good account of themselves as orators a cup of what was known as "Caudle" (a mixture of wine, eggs, bread, sugar and spices, usually given to invalids) was administered. Those who acquitted themselves only moderately well were given "caudle" with a liberal supply of salt-water added, while to those who were accounted failures a pint or two of salt-water "neat" was administered!

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Students though regarded, after this initiatory ceremony, as fit and proper persons to partake of the luxuries of a University education, had to undergo several years' exacting discipline and humanizing instruction before receiving their "cap of liberty." Scarcely a shred or symptom of the symbolism of the old "capping" ceremony proper is retained in what goes by the name of a capping-day function in New Zealand. The liberated Roman slave received what was known as "a cap of liberty" (pileus), and our University capping ceremony is said to be derived from this Roman practice. The student, while an undergraduate, was regarded as, educationally and academically, not fit (intellectually) to be at large. The graduate was formally "capped"—given the cap of liberty—as a symbolic indication of his fitness, in the opinion of a University faculty, to be, academically and intellectually, at large. In the older Universities, after the "sponsio academica" (Academic oath) is administered to the graduands the Chancellor (or in his absence the Vice-Chancellor) while repeating the formula of investiture places a cap very much like a University trencher of hoary antiquity on the head of each. The capping ceremony proper presents the appearance of an apostolic laying-on of hands by way, as it were, of consecrating the graduate to the service of humanity in one or other of the learned professions. The "cap" used in the ceremony is said to be centuries old, and let us hope that, in these days of abnormally active bacilli and microbes, it is frequently fumigated and sterilised!

Since the Scottish students are devoting the whole of their time to their studies they are in a position to partieipate to a much greater extent in various student activities. There are classical, literary, Celtic, philosophical, theological, dramatic, musical and debating societies, as well as the usual gymnastic and athletic clubs in all the Universities. These societies and clubs meet, as a rule, weekly. Two social entertainments—a lesser and a greater—are held during the Session under the auspices of each of the societies and clubs—the lesser known as a "solatium," the greater as a "gaudeamus."

What, perhaps, most strikingly differentiates the Scottish Universities from the University Colleges of New Zealand is the magnitude of the teaching staffs, of the libraries, and of the laboratories. The only Scottish University that can be reasonably compared in point of number etc., with Victoria University College is that of St. Andrews. It is the oldest of the Scottish Universities. Though founded in 1411 it has always remained a small University. The number of students rarely exceeds 600; yet its teaching-staff, year or two ago, consisted of 34 professors, 48 lecturers and 28 assistants. Its library contains over 170,000 printed volumes. When it is remembered that Victoria University College with some 800 students has a teaching-staff, all told, of but 26, and a library of considerably under 20,000 volumes, our handicap in the matter of staffing and equipment will be readily understood.

Hugh Mackenzie.