The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1964. University Salaries

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30530, 27 August 1964, Page 12

The Press THURSDAY, AUGUST 27, 1964. University Salaries

The new scale of university staff salaries should at least check the export of talent from New Zealand universities, although it cannot yet be considered fully competitive with the United Kingdom and Australian scales. The 1150 members of university staffs in New Zealand will receive an average increase of £331 under the new scale. Non-medical professors will now receive £3250 to £4OOO (averaging not more than £3500) compared with £3400 to £4750 (averaging £4200) in the United Kingdom. Though professors in Australia now receive the equivalent of £N.Z.3675, this figure is likely to be increased substantially before next year. Readers and lecturers in New Zealand also receive salaries averaging less than in the United Kingdom and broadly comparable with the present Australian salaries.

The wider range of salaries, particularly at the professorial level, is an acknowledgement of the wide range of ability and responsibility to be found in senior positions in universities. Used with discretion, this salary range will enable each university and university college in New Zealand to reward outstanding service, attract good recruits, and offer the inducement of more substantial salary increases to young appointees. Used ill-advisedly, it could hold second-rate men in positions in New Zealand they could not attain elsewhere, or cause jealousy and resentment among university staff members. The new scale will make bigger demands on administrators and place more power in their hands. Spokesmen for university teachers have expressed disappointment with the new scale because it fails to make any allowance for the expected increases in Australian professors’ and readers’ salaries. The Government has apparently been more concerned to raise the salaries of lecturers, who comprise the great majority of university teaching staffs. A married university lecturer with a young family will probably be at least as well off in New Zealand, after allowing for differences in taxation, family benefits, and schooling, as in Australia or in England. In the senior posts a difference of a few hundred pounds a year is less important to the dedicated teacher and research worker than the environment, reputation, and facilities offered by a particular university. In some respects, New Zealand has special attractions for certain university workers; in others—such as proximity to overseas centres of research and learning—it will never be able to compete, whatever salaries are offered. In all the recent discussion of university salaries too little reference has been made to the most important people in the university, the students. The recruitment and retention of an adequate teaching staff are only means to an end: the education of some 20,000 of the best young minds in the country. This year’s vote for higher education (excluding expenditure on buildings) was £5.1 million, before the salary increases. The increases amount to an estimated £381,000, payable for the whole fiscal year. The community is spending about £275 a year on each student, and the student population must now show itself worthy of this expenditure. The Government and the universities should keep a watchful eye on entrance standards, pass rates, and scholarship and bursary standards.