ENTRANCE TO THE UNIVERSITY

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26204, 30 August 1950, Page 8

ENTRANCE TO THE UNIVERSITY

DR. R. S. AITKEN ON ACCREDITING

MINORITY OPINION IN REPORT TO SENATE

(New Zealand Press Association) DUNEDIN, August 29. Although he agrees that accrediting should be continued does not advocate an immediate radical change in the system, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Otago (Dr. R. S. Aitken), “cannot regard the system as satisfactory.” This statement is made in his minority opinion, the only one submitted, in the report of the special committee of the New Zealand University Senate which investigated the accrediting system. The committee’s recommendations were released at the Senate meeting last Thursday, and Dr. Aitken’s opinion was released to-day. The important advantages of the present system would be retained, and the chief drawbacks removed, Dr. Aitken thinks, by an alternative to accrediting in its present form such as the following proposal which was presented to the ' Senate: “A foursubject examination for all candidates based on prescriptions broadly drawn and designed as a qualifying examination, not a competitive examination, together with school assessments of all candidates based on their full records to be submitted in confidence and used in conjunction with the examination performance to decide pass or failure.” Dr. Aitken agrees that the full knowledge of the pupils possessed by the schools puts them in a better position than external examiners to judge their fitness to enter university, but he says that the present accrediting system sets that knowledge aside in just those cases where it is most needed —the borderline candidates from accrediting schools who are required to sit the examination. Dr. Aitkerr finds considerable weight in certain arguments brought against the accrediting systeih. The chief of those was its unfortunate, and possibly unforseen, effect on the smaller non-accrediting schools It was implied that non-accrediting schools were inferior, yet a much wider extension of the right to accredit involved the risk of lowering standards.