Australians Conscious Of Universities’ Value

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28479, 8 January 1958, Page 7

Australians Conscious Of Universities’ Value

Australia would be another country for New Zealand to “export its brains’’ to and indeed this situation was already forming, the Professor of Philosophy at Canterbury University (Professor A. N. Prior) said in an interview in Christchurch.

Professor Prior, who has returned to New Zealand after attending a U.N.E.S.C.O. philosophical conference in Canberra, said there was a surprisingly large number of New Zealanders in the Australian National purely research institution—in Canberra.

Professor Prior said that when he was in Canberra last month Australian University people were full of something that had happened a few days before the conference began: the Prime Minister (Mr Menzies) had accepted almost all of the recommendations of the Sir Keith Murray Report which, had studied the needs of Australian universities. £22m Expenditure

The Australian Government’s acceptance of the import would involve it in expenditure of £22m on universities in three years, he said. In accepting the burden the Prime Minister had the enthusiastic support of the leader of the Parliamentary Opposition (Dr. Evatt).

The committee had found the high failure rate among Australian students disturbing and one of the main reasons it gave for this was insufficient staff. A better staffstudent ratio might also remedy something else the committee was worried about—the small number of students who came forward to do honours degrees, involving more intensive study than the ordinary pass degrees. The committee also recommended the establishment of a second university in Victoria in addition to the University of Melbourne; but it was flatly against a recent proposal to have the second university outside Melbourne, in the country somewhere. For meeting the needs of the country students, the committee’s

emphasis was on the setting up of residential colleges and halls in the main centres. Lesson for N.Z. At all these points, I think we in New Zealand could learn much from this report,’’ Professor Prior said. “The Australians are beginning to be conscious—at the top Government level they already are thoroughly conscious—of their country’s need for graduates, meaning by that not just people with letters after their names but people whose degrees really mean something.’’

Professor Prior said that the Sydney University had about 8000 students; the Australian National University which was a research centre had 67. The most impressive part of the latter institution was the astronomical observatory at Mount Stromlo, the largest of its kind in the Southern hemisphere.

The director of the observatory, a Dutchman called Bok, said he regarded the New Zealand amateur astronomers’ organisation as doing the best work of all similar societies in the hemisphere.