The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1930. A DUPLICATE UNIVERSITY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 229, 27 September 1930, Page 8

The Auckland Star. WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1930. A DUPLICATE UNIVERSITY.

For the cause that lacks' assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that toe can do.

One of tlie most important suggestions put forward in the Atmore Education Report is the proposal for the division of the University of New Zealand into two Universities one for each island. Apparently the chief argument in favour of this step is the idea that it will £ « be in effect a step toward the ultimate establishment of four separate Universities for the Dominion, one at each of the large centres of population. We can see no necessary logical connection between two Universities and four, but the Education Committee, acting apparently on the advice of Professor Hunter, of Victoria College, has recommended this scheme in its report, and it seems to have secured approval in certain influential quarters. The amount of advantage to be derived from such a scheme is therefore a matter for serious public consideration. For all those who have not forgotten the long and arduous struggle of Auckland to break down the monopolistic attitude of South Island interests, entrenched in the University Senate, against the recognition of the local School of Engineering, the temptation must be strong to accept the proposal. This temptation is all the stronger in view of the complete control of the new University Avhich would be vested in the constituent colleges. This, it has been claimed, gives, to Auckland all the autonomy it could have desired as a separate academic institution. Unfortunately, however, this freedom is only offered at a price, and one drawback lies in the financial conditions attached to the scheme. The funds of the new University are to be provided by the colleges themselves, and their only new sources of revenue are to be the present resources of the University employed in examinations and derived from examination fees. As these funds are ' offered to the colleges for the specific purpose of improved staffing and libraries, and only just meet the estimated cost of these services, it is evident that the examining and scholarship awarding functions of the new University will be administered by parties in whose direct .financial interest it will be to reduce them to a minimum. Thus no secret is made of the fact.that the benefits to the colleges are contingent on the acceptance of the Committee's recommendations for the abolition of external examinations for degrees and the competitive award of scholarships. On its educational side, then, there can be no question that the liberty offered to Auckland is merely the liberty to have imposed on it the educational ideas of the promoters of the "University Reform" movement associated with Victoria College, Wellington. The anti-examination theories which the Committee shares with this movement are to be enforced by the financial pressure of the State Department. It is, of course, impossible to • take seriously the •'concession" offered to the upholders of an 'external element in the examinations, in the form of the unpaid co-operation of professors in.the other University. Without independence the authority of an external examiner is a hollow mockery. Apart from this, any attempt by the new University to meet the cost of a real system of examination by a system of fees Avould b'e paralysed by the express refusal of the Committee to make any provision to meet them in its proposed new scheme of bursaries. Does anybody believe, in these circumstances, that the examination question will be decided on its educational merits 1 Can anyone doubt that In the North Island the result will be the infliction upon Auckland from the outset of the alien conceptions, academic as well as Departmental, of Wellington? This is not a question of academic rivalries or parochial jealousies. It is a matter of.. educational principle, and it would be well for the representatives of academic training throughout the Dominion to realise at what cost the promised material benefits offered by this scheme are to be secured. So far as Auckland is concerned, freedom to organise her local schools is to be bought at the cost of the abolition of "external" examinations, the adoption of "University Reform" principles and practice, and the complete subordination of our academic development to the standards and ideals of the Education Department. Is the sacrifice on these terms worth making?