DRAWING NEAR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 45, 23 February 1937, Page 9

DRAWING NEAR.

UNIVERSITY YEAR.

OPENING ON MONDAY WEEK.

SPECIAX. UGCTTTRI! SYLLABUS

With the opening of the 1937 university year drawing near, there are eigna of renewed activity at the Auckland University College. New students ■re beginning to make inquiries as to courses; other students are beginning to think in terms of text books end lectures, and generally to take up the thread of university life which they left with the completion df examinations last November. Actually, lectures begin next Monday week, March 8, out new students, or freshers, as tiiey are called, will be enrolled on the Friday and Saturday preceding, March 5 and 8. Because of that, it is scarcely possible yet to form an estimate of the numbers who , will be attending lectures thi3 year; but the registrar, Mr. F. R. O'Shea, said this morning that he did not think there would be any alteration from the trend of other years, a slight decrease. In that connection he referred to a graph he had made of the percentage of lads leaving secondary and postprimary schools who went to the university. The graph showed that while in 1931, the year generally agreed to be the worst of the depression, the percentage was 9, in 1934, when the depression was lifting , , the graph line had fallen to o per cent —and that was 2 per cent higher than in 1929, which was the last of the boom years. The graph, he eaid, was evidence for the conclusion that lads came to the university when they could not be absorbed elsewhere, and that as soon ae a demand in commerce and industry awoke once again they did not bother •with the university. Helping the Freshers. A definite effort was made to bridge the gap between the secondary school and the university by having the coureee of every first-year student approved by the dean of the faculty in which the etudent proposed to take a degree. Not only the course, but the general career of the etudent was thoroughly discussed at the eame time. On the etudente' side, good work was being done for the freshers by the different student clubs; end in particular by the Evangelical Students' Fellowship, which "had organised an information bureau. There the new student could gain knowledge of the incidental life of the university, while the fellowship also arranged to help students for the first few weeks until they had become absorbed in the general student life of the college. Special courses of lectures given last year in the different schools, were being continued this year. The Carnegie Corporation had given the School of Music an electric gramophone, a loud-speaker, records, scores and literature. Professor H. Hollinrake, professor of music, intended to have regular recitals for the whole of the etudent body, not only for those taking the music course, with the object of making possible a greater appreciation of music ae an element in culture. Professor W. A. Sewell, who holds the Chair of English, had the same object in giving; his lectures on different aspects of English literature. Additional lectures would this year, too, be given in the School of Engineering. Professor S. E. Lamb said that an American engineer. Professor Hardy Cross, Professor of Structural Engineering at the University of Illinois, had written a book giving a much simpler method of calculating the stress on complex frames. This was particularly important to civil engineers and architects, and recently the Government had insisted on knowledge of the method from those to whom it proposed to give employment. The School of Engineering ■vva* devoting one hour a week to the special course.