The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORORATED The Evening News, Morning Nwes and The Echo. SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1911, A NEW IDEA IN UNIVERSITIES

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 24, 28 January 1911, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORORATED The Evening News, Morning Nwes and The Echo.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 1911, A NEW IDEA IN UNIVERSITIES

for the cauie that lacki assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

Although we hare never professed to be aible to agree with Mr. E. Taylor's views about most public questions, we have generally 156611 prepared to admit that Die brings a great deal of intel lectnal freshness and vigour to bear on any subject that he discusses. But we fear that if he has been fairly reported in the Christchurch press, we must make an exception in regard to the opinions he'has just expressed about our University system. Not that we agree with them; indeed, we regard them as wholly lacking in the qualities that usually distinguish Mr. Taylor's judgments. In plain words it is clear that Mr. Taylor knows very little indeed about University education; for other; wise a man of his intelligence could hard> ly have committed himself to such extraordinary statements as are credited to him; and we can only hope thai the conception of academic training which, he has sketched for the public benefit is j not shared by any .iarge section of that ! strongly, democratic, class .of thinkers which in many waye Mr. Taylor tubly re-' presents. According to Mr. Taylor, it is a very serious matter that "so many of our students go to the Old Country for their University training and degrees , '; and ho urges that our own University system ought to be so complete and efficient that there would be no legitimate excuse for a student going to the other end of the world to study for his degree. We find it very difficult to take this contention seriously, but surely Mr. Taylor does not expect the New Zealand University Colleges to rival Oxford and Cambridge, Edinburgh and London, in their equipment, and the facilities they offer for advanced literary or scientific study, j Take the single subject of medicine, which is the course taken up by most of the New Zealanders studying abroad. Is it conceivable that any imaginable expenditure of money at the present time could supply to medical students in New Zealand a fair substitute for the enlarged experience and the wider range of study and observation that is offered in the great medical schools and hospitals in the Old Land? As soon as the question is clearly put, it carries with it its own answer, a complete refutation of Mr. Taylor's crude and limited ideas. In our opinion it would be most unfortunate for our University that ite students should share Mr. Taylor's conviction that even if our lecture rooms and laboratories and hospitals were as large as any in -the "world, they 'would gain nothing by going Home. JLt present in any case competition with the I Old World institutions on these lines is (hopelessly impossible, and even to suggest it savours of that narrow insularity and dogmatic eelf-asdertiveness which have made certain types of "colonial , ludicrous at Home. As to Mr. Taylor's dictum on "the divorce of teaching and examination in our University, he has evidently ibeen reading the Reform Association's petition, and we can hardly expect that this will throw much light upon his intellectual dark-, ness so far ac academic matters are concerned. But as an intelligent observer, Mr. Taylor should never have made ifch'at unfortuiiate Temark about "duplication in the four University Colleges." Anybody who essays to pro- 1 noun cc an opinion on. the subject ought to know that at each of these centres the professors are so heavily overworked that they are constantly calling out for assistants, because their classes are unmanageably large. As to the possibility of one central University supplying the needs of the whole Dominion, at which Mr. Taylor appears to hint, -we need hardly remind our readers that the existence of four separate University Colleges. is due solely to the geographical disadvantages of a country in which the population is so scattered that one central University wDuld ■Dβ quite useless. On the whole we fear that Mr. Taylor's suggestions about University training will add nothing to his reputation, and Mre trust that in future he will confine himself to subjects of which he has a more familiar and accurate knowledge-