A FEDERAL UNIVERSITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 143, 18 June 1926, Page 6

A FEDERAL UNIVERSITY.

! The Royal Commission on University I Education which investigated academic 'life and activities throughout New 1 Zealand last year reported strongly in ! favour of a complete (mange in our 'existing University system. Instead of | a University acting simply as an i examining body, whose chief function is to confer degrees, with four separate University Colleges affiliated to it, the j Commission recommended that we I should have a University constructed on I federal lines —a change which would ! involve the more direct control and 1 regulation of our academic system by a ' new governing body appointed to disI charge functions far more varied and ! comprehensive than those that the ! Senate now undertakes. Very naturally Government has decided that the high educational status of the Commissioners, and the importlance that attaches to their views, justifies it in proposing legislation on the lines indicated in the report. It may be 1 gathered, therefore, that the Bill to be i laid before Parliament this session will provide for the complete reconstruction 'of our University in accordance with the ■ Commission's proposals. The council or I governing body of the University should consist, it is suggested, of 21 members. ! with a principal at their head. Six of 1 these members may be nominated by Government, while the councils nnd teaching staffs of the Colleges and the j Education Department shall also be repreeentcd by election. The Board of Studies is to be superseded by an j Academic Board consisting of professors 'elected in various ways, and acting as I adviser to the council in all academic j matters. It is intended that the new University, ' composed of the four University Colleges, ', should exercise direct influence upon the educational system established by them. More especially by assisting in the appointment of the College professors, and by reserving its right to accept or | reject the degree courses proposed by j them, it will be able to play a far more important part than is at present possible in moulding academic education and raising tlie standard of the degrees that it confers. This system, it must be understood, is recommended by the Commission as preferable to the proposed scheme for four separate Universities, at the chief centres of population, each conferring its own degrees. .Separation, the report argues, would certainly be premature now, and is at present quite impracticable. But the advocates of four separate Universities may derive some comfort from the assurance of the ConiI mission that they regard the Federal University here outlined merely as -a temporary expedient, and that after it has done its work—which is "to giv c a number of small communities which are i hardly strong enough to function freely Iby themselves the support and j encouragement that comes from co-operation in counsel and action" the I four separate Universities must in- ! evitably emerge in the fullness of time.