"MUTILATED."

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 19, 23 January 1929, Page 10

"MUTILATED."

UNIVERSITY FINANCES.

REFORM POLICY CONDEMNED.

"DISASTROUS RESULTS."

CHANCELLOR SPEAKS OUT.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

DUNEDBJ, this day. The Council of the New Zealand Uni versiiy met this morning.

i The chancellor, Professor J. Macmillan Brown, in his opening address, deplored the mutilation of University finance by Government interference. The University policy of putting aside a surplus for accumulation as a scholarship fund had been rewarded by the late Ministry's action in removing the University's annual fixed subsidy. Finding £32,000, shown as a credit, th-> Government had assumed the University was rolling in wealth and had Socialised (to use a mild word) that slowly-accumulated scholarship fund at a moment when the University needed it most.

The need for more scholarships, said the chancellor, became more urgent each year. That applied particularly to postgraduate scholarships and fellowships. New Zealand was on the eve of an era when all its best talent should be brought out to develop its resources, for, handicapped by its distance from great markets, the problem confronting the Dominion was how to cheapen production without cheapening labour, and this could be done by nothing but invention and research. In this crisis the Government, instead of amplifying the University's resources for drawing out talent, had disastrously curtailed them. Worse still, this mutilation of finance endangered the University's liberty. It would have to go cap in hand to the Government for funds and submit to State control. There was, indeed, a danger of the University losing all liberty and ultimately becoming absorbed by the Education Department.

Another point the chancellor condemned was the lessening of subsidies according to the amount of legacies bequeathed. This, he said, must ultimately cxtinguish public benefactions. He concluded by saying it was time to call a halt to this downward path, and the council should call the new Ministry's attention to the disastrous results certain to come from such a policy,