GRADUATES IN ARTS

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30846, 3 September 1965, Page 18

GRADUATES IN ARTS

Business Value Discussed

Members of the council of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce differed on the practicability of employing university arts graduates as trainee business executives. Several members said that arts graduates were first-class business material because they had trained minds. Others felt that New Zealand’s requirements were for graduates with some specialisation in the field they planned to enter. Mr L. A. Holland said that two big international firms had found that the wastage of university graduates as business trainees was considerable. After two years only one in eight of the graduates who joined the firms remained. One member said that in the last five years not one arts graduate had applied to his firm for a position. “We would certainly be interested in training them into executive positions,” he said.

Mr R. K. Baker said that New Zealand was 50 years behind overseas countries, where graduates were besieged with offers of jobs as soon as they had a cap and gown. The offers were made to the graduates because they had brains. Overseas countries such as the United States and Britain preferred to get arts graduates and then to train them, simply because they were business executive potential. The subject had been introduced by Mr J. M. Tocker, who said that careers advisers had told him they had no evidence of Christchurch businesses wanting arts graduates.