PROPOSED NEW UNIVERSITIES

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28976, 18 August 1959, Page 6

PROPOSED NEW UNIVERSITIES

“111-Timed Step”

Criticised

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, August 17.

Expressing the “alarm felt by large numbers of New Zealand graduates and academics at the Government's decision to establish new university-type institutions” at Hamilton and Palmerston North, D. M. Stewart, writing to the "Manchester Guardian" from Wadham College, Oxford, says this step appeared particularly ill-timed at a moment when existing universities were I less than ever competitive, in terms of facilities and salaries, in the search for academic talent of high quality. i "On any of the usual grounds iof argument—problems of overcrowding, staffing, academic standards. educational democracy, and the best use of available money—it is hard to see why the provision of reasonable conditions of work in the established centres of learning is a less urgent requirement than the creation of branch institutions which will inevitably involve further fragmentation of a scattered university community,” he says. "If the Gqvernment wishes its commission to report comprehensively on university education in New Zealand, why has it prejudged a vital question by hastening against much academic opposition to establish two subuniversities? "Glorified High Schools” "Apart from the civic pride of small-city notables, the existence of teachers’ training colleges in the two towns seems closely connected with the new foundations which, one suspects, will be largely devoted to adding an inexpensive academic gloss to unacademic training colleges. And what kind of identity and integrity as university institutions can the new colleges be expected to develop when, if reports are right, they will offer only the first year or two years of degree courses?

“It is quite true that exclusively English standards cannot sensibly be applied to New Zealand universities, but that is a side issue. The important point is that university standards should be applied to university institutions and this is what the present policy implicitly denies. "Access to higher education in New Zealand has always been much less restricted than here. If that valuable liberty is to preserve any meaning, the education offered must in fact be ‘higher’ and this is unlikely to be achieved by starving the established and well-reputed universities and by opening ambitiously titled glorified high schools,” he says.