Universities’ Plight COMMISSION FACES FORMIDABLE TASK

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28894, 14 May 1959, Page 14

Universities’ Plight COMMISSION FACES FORMIDABLE TASK

[Specially Written for "The Press” by JOHN H. EVANS]

“The Crisis in the Universities” is the title of an 11-page pamphlet written by Professor J. F. Northey, of the University of Auckland, in his capacity of president of the Association of University Teachers of New Zealand. As we are expecting the early appointment of a commission to inquire into university education in this country, the pamphlet is of great interest and importance to all who are interested in the matter. There is no doubt that the crisis is real and that the commission will be confronted with a formidable task. Professor Northey points out that the principal aims of a university are the education of young men and women and the conduct of research. This may seem obvious; but the matter of research is important, and needs to be emphasised for those who tend to regard a university as, a place where boys and girls go as a continuation of school. As far as education is concerned, the writer reminds us that our whole standard of living depends on the universities. “Not everybody has direct contact with a university, or need even be aware that the universities exist. But everybody benefits or depends upon the universities. Every time an agricultural scientist helps a farmer to increase his production; every time a child goes to primary or secondary school; every time a doctor sees a patient; every time a lawyer takes a case; every time a motorist drives down a well-en-gineered highway, the universities have contributed.” These are the direct and visible results of university; the indirect and consequential benefits are, also indicated in this pamphlet. Claiming of Research As for research, the report of the Murray Committee on the Australian Universities is quoted “ ... at the university level good teaching cannot live without research. Able young men and women of 20 and 21 are not just school children; they do not wish to be just taught . . . they want to see and .hear and talk with the men who are ‘making’ the modern knowledge. . . . They want to learn from the men who are working in the front line of science, and it is right that they should do so.”

It is not generally known that there has been a great increase in the amount of research in New Zealand universities in the last 20 years. Professor Northey gives a iist of the projects now being carried out. It is long and varied. His arguments are reinforced by what Professor Condliffe has said on the subject of research in his two recent books. We are also reminded in this pamphlet of the contribution made by the university teaching staffs to the life of the community at large. Apart from these general considerations we are also offered some facts and figures which can only be described as alarming. The provision of buildings depends on the Government, and although it has shown willingness to improve the position, and something has been done at Victoria University and the two universities in the South Island. Auckland (the largest of the four) has had only two permanent buildings since 1883. A comparison of the Auckland University Library with those of two other universities, one in England and one in the United States, is most depressing, but the staffing situation is the most deplorable of all. Unflattering Comparisons The student population is expected to treble in the next 20 years. The present ratio of staff to full-time students at Auckland is 1:14 (as compared to a ratio of 1:7 in the United Kingdom and 1:10 in Australia, a proportion which the Murray' Commission considered unsatisfactory). By 1967 the University will need an additional 194 lecturers to maintain its present ratio. Within 10 years our universities will need to double their staff to preserve existing staff-student ratios.

What is the solution? Buildings and staff salaries are in the hands of the Government. The Chancellor of the University of Canterbury (Mr D. W. Bain) has recently made some interesting but sad comparisons between the progress being made here and that being made in the University of New South Wales, where the State is spending nearly £1 million- on university buildings, and that at Mac Master University, Hamilton, Ontario, where some 175,000 square feet of floor space are being built in exactly 12 months, against more than 30 months for a smaller building in the University of Canterbury. Mr Bain also referred to the fact that there is no relief from income tax and estate duty in New Zealand to encourage the private endowment of higher education. This points the way to a partial solution of this problem. There is an immense amount of leeway to be made up, and the situation calls for heroic measures. One can only hope that the heroes will be forthcoming. Relatively Low Salaries The staffing problem is. of course, even more important. It cannot be said too often that the best buildings m the world will be wasted unless the right activity goes on inside them. Professor Northey has much to say about university salaries, which are lamentably low as compared with those paid elsewhere. Many university teachers have recently gone overseas; and the relatively low salaries offered here have made adequate replacement difficult or impossible. The conclusion is that university salaries must be related to those paid on the world market. No thoughtful person will quarrel with this. Unfortunately. it may be doubted whether such measures as the acceleration of building, taxation relief for educational endowment, and the raising of salaries will be sufficient in the short run to deal with the crisis. “The problem of staff shortages/’ says Professor Northey, “cannot and should not be met by restricting enrolment at the universities.” but it must be recognised that limitations on enrolment will be forced upon the universities by staff shortages." Mr Bain has also hinted at the possibility that, if certain steps are not taken, some method may have to be devised of restricting numbers. “If . . . the university system,” he says, “has to reduce the number of students to match the straitened facilities

available, then there will need to be renewed study and action in th® field of selection of students, their entrance standards, and their subsequent performance.” It is realistic to ask whether any salary scale which can be devised will attract 194 additional lecturers to Auckland by 1967, and double the staffs of the universities in the next 10 years. And even if this can be done, it will only maintain the present staff-student ratio. In short, it may be suggested that the decline has gone too far to be arrested merely by new recruitment without reducing the numbers to be taught for the sake of the quality of the product. As for research, the outlook is no better; and we can no more do without it than we can afford to be short of well-qualified graduates to do the ordinary day-to-day work of the educated man. Perhaps the ultimate answer is to be found in something similar to the Australian National University at Canberra, with its four research schools with graduate students and a small university college incorporated for undergraduates. But money must be spent generously if we are to keep up with the rest of the world. “On the Cheap” No-one can have proper education or research on the cheap. Unfortunately we have been too long attempting this, possibly through lack of foresight and failure to realise what these things rarely involve, possibly owing to a sense of values which puts other things higher on the scale. Mr Bain tells us that the annual non-recurrent expenditure for each student in New Zealand is about £2OO, as compared with about £6OO in the United Kingdom, £4OO-£5OO in Canada, and very much more in the better institutions in the United States, and he concludes that New Zealand should at least double the present rate of expenditure for the present number of students if the universities are to produce the quantity and quality of graduates that the country needs, and that it cannot afford to be without. A similar attitude should be adopted to the needs of research. Again, some may think that the building of residential colleges or halls of residence (not “hostels”, a word from which the “s” is all too easily dropped) in the universities would have a beneficial effect on the quality of university life. This is a field of activity in which the churches and private benefactors have a great opportunity. But the problems which Professor Northey so clearly brings to notice will no' be solved by the multiplication of university institutions up anc’ down New Zealand. They may be useful to the teachers’ training colleges, in the short run, but in principle this a retrograde step. In the New Zealand diary of Sydney and Beatrice Webb, recently published in this country, - Beatrice Webb, speaking of Auckland University College in 1898, says: “Nearly all the students are teachers actual or prospective.” Surely we have advanced since then. The new institutions will inevitably be for some time too small to fulfil the wider purposes of life at the university, which include the benefits to be derived from the contact of the mind with a great variety of other minds and the general widening of horizons. It is from the universities that will come the leaders that the nation needs and the cultivated men and women who will set the tone of our society. It is the function of the universities to impart what Professor Northey calls “a rounded education for living.”