University Admits All With High-School Diploma

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31782, 12 September 1968, Page 9

University Admits All With High-School Diploma

Montana State University admits all students who have a State high-school diploma (“which is not too hard to gat”), they pay tuition fees of about $lOO a year—and about half fail to graduate. But Dr K. Emerson, associate professor of chemistry at the university, said in Christchurch that the State legislature would rather give wide opportunities for university education than deny entry to any who might succeed.

Dr Emerson said there was virtually no limit to the number of “tries” a student could make at a subject, but many baulked at the stiffer mixture of mathematics and sciences than they had encountered at high school. However, such students might find the liberal arts easier.

Dr Emerson, his wife, and family arrived in Christchurch this week on a ninemonth Fulbright scholarship under which he will undertake structural-chemistry research at the University of Canterbury. In spite of the nature of Montana State University, Dr Emerson sud its reputation was good, particularly in

fundamental sciences. It should always be remembered that most of the American State universities evolved from land-grant agricultural and mechanical colleges, founded in the late 1800 s. These had grown, in the case of Montana, to 6000 students in a full range of faculties from liberal arts to agriculture.

Most of the students still came from within the State, but more from outside were now coming in at increased fees. However, the State universities still aimed primarily to serve their own communities. In Montana, this meant one of the smallest States in the union in the northern Rocky Mountain region, with a long border to Canada south of Banff, and about half the territory in a great plain. Dr Emerson said all this was “not too different from Canterbury.” But the Montana plain was at 5000 ft, under snow at some stage in the winter, with frosts as hard as 30 degrees below zero. The “growing period” was reckoned at not more than 90 days.