Careers for New Zealanders.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20909, 17 July 1933, Page 8

Careers for New Zealanders.

"The Times," in a leading article on the jubilee of Auckland University College, quoted in the cable nev/s at the end of the week, complimented New Zealand " upon possessing citizens well qualified to " serve the State, • which can offer " eminent and distinctive careers." It is a pity that such anxiety to flatter should result in such devastating irony. The truth is that careers in the State service in New Zealand are so unattractive that every year

many of the ablest young men and women in the country go abroad and stay abroad. The reasons are not hard to find. A few weeks ago the very institution which has drawn the compliment of " The •"Times" to the Dominion, Auckland University College, advertised for four professors at a salary of £BOO, less two cuts of 10 and 12i per cent., giving a net salary of £630. The attractions of a career are not always measured by its financial rewards; but it is difficult to believe that an able scholar or teacher, having in mind the restricted scope of academic work in New Zealand, would accept a professorship on these terms if he could obtain even a modest lecturership in an English university. Moreover, even before the cuts were imposed, university salaries in New Zealand compared unfavourably with university salaries in almost any other part of the Empire. Nor is ic only the inadequacy of the rewards that deters New Zcalanders of exceptional ability from entering their State service. The system of recruitment into the Government departments in effect excludes university graduates unless they arc prepared to begin in the lowest grade, in company with clerks who have qualified by passing an examination rather below matriculation standard. It is a curious anomaly that while New Zealand graduates have opportunities to enter the colonial civil service, their own civil service makes no effort to engage their talents. There has never been a time when the country was more in need of its ablest men and women; and it is expensive folly to drive them overseas in search of the " eminent " and distinctive careers" which, through false economy and bad organisation, are denied to them at home.