THE GRADUATE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 21, 25 January 1934, Page 18

THE GRADUATE.

HIS FUTURE?

SUPPLY EXCEEDS DEMAND.

THE CAREER PROBLEM.

(By A STUDENT.)

This article is not the work of "Indignant Student" inveighing against the Government's policy with regard to the decrease in the bursary grant, or of "Taxpayer" condoning it. It is a statement of the outlook of a large number of University students about to finish their degree course. There are at the University an enviable few who have mapped out before them the course which, if fate permits, they intend to follow in life. One sees himself a judge on the King's Bench. While slogging at his torts he already caresses, metaphorically, the white wig, the symbol of his success. Another sees himself as the headmaster of the Grammar School. He is teeming with ideas which he longs to put into practice. Meanwhile he is working for an object. He therefore works well, -jut there are a large number of students, of whom some are of more than average intelligence, who have no idea what the next year has in store for them. The University course is for them a long road. They see people working on either side. They are not idle, but they are like men who push before them along the road a barrow of which the burden obscures their view. They are not sure where they are going or why they are going there. They are not working for a particular object. As the end of the year approaches they make a tremendous effort, shelve for a while their doubts and fears, pass their examinations with flying colours, and emerge with a degree. Under such conditions they accept the only occupation offered them. They usually euter the Training College for teachers, and even that avenue is for the time being closed to them.

What Can He Do? Certain people have tieen icnown to say that school teaching is the last refuge of the feeble-minded. Everyone who knows anything about the profession is aware that it is an arduous and should be an honourable one. It ia true, however, that school teaching is in many cases the las f resc. „ of the feeblewilled. The Training College will admit anybody, more or less, with a degree. Other employers are not so accommodating. They have an unfortunate tendency to ask the aspirant to their employment what, he can do, a question which the aspirant has been asking himself for three years, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. Some can write excellent Latin. There is as yet, unfortunately, no public for Ciceronian prose. Some have attained proficiency in French, a useless commodity from the commercial point of view, save in academic circles. Some have a wide knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, of European history, of advanced mathematics. All that they can do with such attainments is to teach it to others, who may teach it to others, and bo on. What use, then, if the already overcrowded teaching profession ha 3 no attraction for them, are they to make of their abilities? Form a society, that dearly-loved stratagem of youth, parade the streets, and hurl their war-cry to the employers of Auckland, "We have brains. We have knowledge. We want work."

Easy Education. It is a lamentable fact that the University graduate does not enjoy the esteem that University graduates would like to enjoy. Perhaps the fault lies in the eaee with which he acquires his education. Any schoolboy or girl, who has passed the matriculation examination, and who has remained at school an extra year to gain a higher leaving certificate, has, till last year, had his University fees paid by the Government. The matriculation examination presents no diffaculties to those of even average intelligence. The final year at school is spent in many cases, in games and free periods, and in a certain amount of not very arduous study. In a book written on the life of Sir James Barrie, there is a description of the lot of many Edinburgh students in the days of Barrie's boyhood; students who lived on thirteen shillings a week, who lived three in a room containing one bed, so that sleep could be enjoyed only in shifts. How many of our students would gain decrees under such conditions? The author writes of the inspiration afforded to these students by their professors. The average student here finds his lectures as stimulating as milk and water. This is not the fault of the professors. The college is notoriously understaffed, and with the existing standard of entrance examination, the professor has often to lecture to intelligences far below the dignity of eloquence.

Looking Ahead. There are many advantages in a free and equal education. But these are enjoyed to the full only by the mediocre. And the mediocre crowd out the intellectual market. There are few who realise with any seriousness, before starting their University course, that a time will come when they must employ to a profitable purpose the knowledge that they are about to gain. So many bursars and scholarship holders take the education thus given to them as a matter of course. They content themselves with working for the ordinary arts degree, declaring at the same time that they have no intention of entering the teaching profession. Such an outlook, as many have learnt from experience, is disastrous. They find that the teaching profession alone gives scope for their attainments. Every prospective University student should have some idea of the career to which he means to devote himself after his degree has been completed. So few have. In these days there is room only for tho specialist at the top. Unspecialised culture has no commercial value. It must be combined with excellence in some particular branch.