“BADLY PAID AND OVERWORKED”

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21685, 20 January 1936, Page 10

“BADLY PAID AND OVERWORKED”

♦ ’ Research Staffs I n New Zealand COMMENT BY AN SCIENTIST j Having met professors of th« University of New Zealand who are engaged in scientific research Prol fessor E. W. Skeats, an eminent Australian scientist now in Christchurch, is convinced that many of the research workers in New Zealand are both overworked and badly paid. The professors he met, hj" said in an interview last evening, all had hopelessly inadequate staffs, but even in the face of tins handicap they were doing work which he could not help but admire. Professor Skeats is a member ol the executive committee of the Australian National Research Council and professor of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Mdbourne. He is on a holiday visit to New Zealand and has already spent some time with geological experts here. He drew an interesting parallel between the conditions obtaining for research workers in Australia and New Zealand in his particular field. He said that whereas pro-’ fessors of geology in New Zealand had one assistant, or in some cases, none, in Australia most of the leading professors were equipped with staffs of three and four. Australia was a bigger country; but even so, New Zealand research workers, in this field particularly, had far too* much work to do and were not paid as highly as they should be.

There was no doubt of the value of the work they were doing, Professor Skeats said. Although much of it was purely scientific laboratory work it most frequently found a valuable practical application, and in certain fields was absolutely essential. He gave as an example the economic geologists who were required for mining work in Australia. For % years Australia had neglected the geological and geophysical side of mining, and only recently, now that gold was more hardly won, had the country recognised the value mid employed the services of experts. There was such a demand for them that men had to be imported from America and they were doing most valuable work, assisting consider- 1 ably towards cutting down mining r expenses.

In New Zealand the scientists in the university colleges were doing a great amount of useful work. He had intimate knowledge of it, partly through having marked New Zealand degree examination papers for five years. He greatly admired the work that was done in New Zealand and he could only repeat that the professors should be bettor equipped and better paid.