Fewer Posts In Britain For Graduates

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 12

Fewer Posts In Britain For Graduates

Well qualified British graduates were available to take university teaching posts In New Zealand if only they could be persuaded to come here, but “most prefer to stay in the rat race in Britain,” Dr F. J. Llewellyn, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter and former chairman of the New Zealand University Grants Committee, said in an interview in Christchurch.

From the presentation of the Robbins Report to the end of the United Kingdom university quinquennium in July, 1967, universities underwent enormous and rapid expansion, Dr Llewellyn said They took an abnormally high proportion of their own best graduates for teachers “With the onset of the new quinquennium, that has ceased,” said Dr Llewellyn “The universities • are no longer recruiting graduates at recent rates, and industry and commerce have also diminished recruiting be cause of economic circum-

stances. The bulge in the production of first and seconddegree graduates has not yet been reached. The university labour market in Britain has therefore become relatively over-supplied.”

The University of Exeter noted this in increased applications. “I advertised a chair recently and got 129 applications, 25 of them from per sons already holding chairs in various parts of the Commonwealth. For an assistant lecturer’s post I get 50 to 80 applications and I rarely look at a potential assistant lecturer who has less than three years post-graduate experience,” said Dr Llewellyn. “Most of these assistant lecturers could hold down a lectureship here." Dr Llewellyn said there were dozens suitable for New Zealand if they could be persuaded to come here. Salary was not everything. It seemed that unless there were family ties, the kind of work wanted, or other appeals, the conserjvative Briton preferred to 'stay at home.