Benefits Of University At Ham

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31857, 9 December 1968, Page 8

Benefits Of University At Ham

A marked increase in the selling prices of property is shown in a study of the effects of the growth of the University of Canterbury at Ham on the surrounding community carried out by a sixth-form student at St Andrew’s College, David Hay.

The survey, based on answers to a questionnaire submitted to 100 householders within a radius of one mile of the university, has received high praise. The results have been written as an essay which won first prize in a competition for junior members, or secondary school pupils, organised by the Canterbury branch of the New Zealand Geographical Society. According to David Hay’s geography master, Mr G. Innes, the panel of judges was so impressed that it was felt the survey report should be printed in one of the journals of the society. “It is an excellent and very thorough piece of work,” Mr Innes said yesterday. "All credit is due to David because he alone carried out the sample and it is statistically sound.” Eighteen-year-old David, who plans to go to university to study for a bachelor oi commerce degree and then possibly go overseas, is matter of fact about his effort.

Boys of VIA taking geography are required to make a detailed study of some aspect of their work in which they are particularly interested. David lives in the Ham area, and the survey “just grew.” It tied in with his school work, he said. There had been an excellent response from persons on whom he called with the questionnaire. The most obvious and popular effect of the university development at Ham seems to have been on the standards of the area, the survey concludes. If the area now used by the university had been developed as a Government

housing area, the Ham area would not enjoy its present good name and high social standing, the report says. “The university has been largely responsible for raising the social status of Ham to a fairly high level. “The Ngaio Marsh Theatre has been important in establishing Ham as a cultural centre.”

Some who replied to the questionnaire said that the educational standards of neighbouring schools—Ham primary, and Kirkwood Intermediate—had been lifted considerably. But while selling prices of property have risen, there have developed large numbers

of flats of various standards and differing costs, the report says.

“It appears that the community could be more helpful to the university in supplying board for students who need it,” It adds. “There is a large number of single people, or even people with a spare room, who could quite easily accept a boarder and give students a good ‘home away from home,’ rather than some of the poor ‘digs’ that some students do live in.”

The survey has shown one aspect of the university to be unpopular. This is the tall chimney “which can be seen for some distance around the

university and constitutes a large eyesore.”

Summing up, David says of the survey: “The general population of the Ham community seems to have universally accepted the establishment of the Ham University in its midst, and indeed seems to derive a certain amount of satisfaction from being associated, however remotely, with it.

“In the five years the university has been established at Ilam it has had an over-all beneficial effect on the community, and I would conservatively say that, within 20 years, the university complex will completely dominate the Ilam area.”