University Spending Alleged Unjust

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31922, 25 February 1969, Page 16

University Spending Alleged Unjust

The level of spending on universities in New Zealand had not been proportionately reflected in building at the University of Canterbury during the last three years, claimed the vice-chancellor (Professor N. C. Phillips) at yesterday’s University Council meeting. He said the university had been frustrated for too long.

The University Grants Committee’s report showed that in the two financial years ended March 31, 1967, expenditure on university buildings was $18,672,914. The allocation for the year ended March 31, 1968, was $11,200,000, making a total of nearly $30,000,000 in the three years. “But this level of expenditure has not been proportionately reflected in building activities at this university—the .second largest in the country and the only one which is being wholly rebuilt as distinct from being merely extended,” Professor Phillips said.

mindedness to take to the Government at least the last modest proposal. “This university has been frustrated for too long,” said Professor Phillips. “Consequently it has incurred a large back-log of accommodation needs. “The soft answer will be that these needs must be programmed in accordance with the needs of the university system as a whole,” he said. “But this soft answer should not be allowed to turn away our wrath; we have every right to expect that, as national programming has operated to our marked disadvantage in recent years, it will operate to our marked advantage in the years immediately ahead.

Since approval to call tenders for new science buildings in 1961, no major new building had been similarly approved at Canterbury. Only long-argued extensions to the originally inadequate School of Engineering and a national new development in forestry had kept building from coming to a virtual halt. “Recent national figures on university building expenditure conceal the hiatus in progress towards completing vital requirements in Canterbury’s building programme,” the vice-chancellor said. The university had the right to expect that 1968 would be the last of the lean years, he said listing these expected rights as well: Allowing the library-arts building to go ahead without further delay. The rest of the arts complex and the registry to follow immediately. That both church-sponsored halls of residence, to which the public had given generously, and the university halls, will be (given a place in the 196970 building programme. That the Grants Committee which had rebuffed three attempts to start permanent buildings for the School of Fine Arts would have the courage and fair-

“What we ask is no more than justice to the university and the community it serves.”