DEMAND FOR ACCREDITING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 140, 16 June 1930, Page 6

DEMAND FOR ACCREDITING.

Last week the Council of' Education passed a resolution expressing regret at "the delay in the system of accrediting for University entrance," and urging the Senate "to accept the Education Department's assurance that adequate safeguards will be provided to ensure the satisfactory working of the system." It may be pointed out to the Director of Education and his enthusiastic that the University may very justly hesitate to accept any such assurance. The opposition to Accrediting is based primarily on the belief that as it would introduce a number of varying standards in place of a comparatively uniform standard, it is not well adapted to the purposes for which Matriculation serves. Further, as not even Mr. Strong would make the system compulsory at present, the Matriculation test would still be applied to a very large number of candidates, and the. attempt to combine the results of the two systems would simply "make confusion worse confounded." But the University objects .most strongly to this scheme on the ground that it has the right to .fix the conditions and prescribe the tests for entrance upon its academic course, and that this is a duty which it cannot delegate to any other individuals or'bodies. If a Leaving Certificate from our secondary schools will serve a useful purpose, let the Accrediting experiment be tried there. Bu't >so far no arguments worthy of serious consideration have been forthcoming to justify the substitution of Accrediting for Matriculation or to induce the University to surrender its natural t.nd indefeasible right to decide upon the qualifications demanded as a pre-requisite for taking a degree.