The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 1959. Branch Universities

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28983, 26 August 1959, Page 12

The Press WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 26, 1959. Branch Universities

In his address to the Senate of the University of New Zealand, the Chancellor (Sir David Smith) has contributed little to the solution of the universities’

problems. Many responsible persons, both in New Zealand and overseas, strenuously oppose the Government’s approval of branch universities at Hamilton and Palmerston North and consider that, because of the impending appointment of the University Inquiry Committee, so important a policy decision should have been deferred. The controversy itself justifies the view that the matter should have been referred to an independent, expert inquiry. This view is apparently not shared by Sir David Smith, who devoted much of his Senate address to an elaborate but unconvincing defence of the decision. After recalling briefly the original objections of both Auckland University (which has unwillingly assumed parenthood of the Hamilton branch) and the Victoria University of Wellington (to which the Palmerston North branch will be attached), Sir David Smith speculated on the means which the Government, after university devolution is complete, might adopt to coerce a university into accepting responsibility for new branches. In the establishment of the Hamilton branch. said the Chancellor, “ serious diffi- “ culties ” could have arisen if Auckland University had been “ free of the controlling powers * of the University of New “ Zealand It has always been assumed that, after complete devolution, some form of centralised co-ordination will succeed the existing central machinery of New Zealand university government; but what will autonomy be worth if the central body can order a university to accept duties it may feel incapable of performing properly? Auckland’s opposition to the Hamilton branch was overridden only by a direction of the Senate; and in the Waikato district there is still dissatisfaction that a new university, separate from Auckland, has not been planned. The Victoria University was reconciled more easily to the scheme for Palmerston North; but its views in 1954 should not be forgotten. Then it resisted the scheme generally because “questions’ of over-all uni-

“ versify policy ” were raised. It foresaw difficulties in providing teaching facilities far from its main campus. It emphasised the prior need to determine, first, whether additional university institutions were required and, second, their nature and situation. These are matters fundamental to the forthcoming university inquiry; and nothing Sir David Smith has said invalidates the conviction that branch universities should not have been contemplated till Sir David Hughes Parry’s committee has reported. Sir David Smith has said plainly that the branch universities are being established to help the Education Department to train graduate teachers. If the universities had not cooperated. the Government might have been forced to establish its own university institution. Sir David Smith continued that “ a small college “ (thus established] to provide “some courses of study apart “from the regular university “ system would, however, suffer “ from obvious disadvantages “ which I need not elaborate Why will the “small colleges” in Hamilton and Palmerston North be immune from these disadvantages? And will not their disadvantages have repercussions upon the main universities? The Education Department, presumably, is concerned to maintain the quality of its graduate intake. If university standards are compromised by fragmentation of facilities, how can the quality of graduates be maintained? Sir David Smith has predicted that “branch universities may “ be, in the long run, the way “in which to provide for those “students who at present enter “ the university, but who prove “ later on not to be up to degree “standard”. This is surely a confession of lowered standards in the branches. Why call them universities if they may produce no graduates? Elsewhere in his address, Sir David Smith wisely observed: “Ours is a small “ country and . . . we do need “to ensure that our available “ resources are used to the best

advantage in the national

“ interest ”. In other words, we need ■to avoid spreading our butter too thinly over too much bread. That is precisely what we shall not avoid by proliferating sub-standard university institutions and neglecting the urgent demands of the main universities.