(The Editor, "Smad.")

Dear Sir,

Up till now. we at Victoria have preserve some semblance of University training, for the legal page 9 course is the only purely vocational course; and even here there are cultural subjects. Jurisprudencc is essentially philosophic; Latin, philosophy and English will not extort exorbitant fees from cringing and suspicious clients. But with the institution of accountancy subjects the way is laid open for the vocation crammer pure, who does nothing to further the pursuit of learning but feeds on what can be given him to secure the necessary qualifications for a profession. The student, on the other hand, is not limited by fixed courses; but sets out to gain as much knowledge as possible, for its intrinsic interest. He will try to collect and build up new information and advance the total sum of human experience and knowledge. This does not decry the social value of the vocation crammer, but his sphere is not that of progress and advance through the growth of knowledge.

Now, obviously, these types must be fed by very different institutions, for the one we have the vocational training school, where courses will be fixed with rigidity and confined within their respective spheres of utility. For the other there Is the University, where there will be greater freedom of research, and where the main aim will be to educate a student for his own sake, and not for the direct social utility of definite services, such as professions.

Victoria College is indeed far below the ideal University, but we have preserved some semblance of a University, and New Zealand has reaped manifold benefits from that measure of University training we have maintained. We must foster this— the moving spirit of all progress—and not pander to the insipidities and dull formalities that mark the highest ambition of many professionals. We are a danger to the country if we lure students here under the pretence of being a University and then destroy their interest, crush their original thought and frustrate their intellectual pursuits by surrounding them with an environment indirectly opposed to originality and hostile to all the features of education. We have many institutions for vocational crammers who cannot or will not follow the higher line of advance; but the University should be preserved for students. The accountancy course has no redeeming features of non-utilitarian subjects. The extra crowds will burst already overtaxed utilities; the greater proportion of vocation crammers will mean the total disregard of real students in such matters as the drawing up of syllabuses and the buying of books for the library. To introduce such lectures is indeed a triumph for the business point of view, the industrialisation of education.

Surely some protest must be made against the utter degradation of one of the few ennobling and enlightening influences in our present mode of life. Once such brazenly utilitarian subjects as bookkeeping are admitted there is no logical reason why University facilities should not be extended to any activity of an economic nature, to sweeping, typing, digging. Special diplomas could be founded and exams, instituted. The ludicrous nature of such an undertaking is obvious. But lectures in accountancy subjects are just as ridiculous.