Vice-Chancellor Replies To Mr Muldoon

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31922, 25 February 1969, Page 1

Vice-Chancellor Replies To Mr Muldoon

The Minister of Finance (Mr Muldoon), in considering future university spending, should not be allowed to create the impression that the battle was to be fought on economic grounds alone, said the Vice-Chancel-lor of the University of Canterbury (Professor N. C. Phillips) at yesterday’s University Council meeting.

What New Zealand could afford for higher education depended on many things, including the efficiency of its universities, but including also what the country chose to devote to higher education, Professor Phillips said.

This factor was a matter of social philosophy on which a Minister of Finance had no presumptive insight beyond that of any other citizen.

Mr Muldoon was entitled to dislike this state of affairs, though there was no positive evidence that he did, said Professor Phillips. He was not entitled, however, to transfer to the universities the responsibility for altering it. If it was to be altered, it should be done substantially after a proper debate, in which it could be assumed many New Zealanders would want to take part. “It should not be made by procedural devices within the university, such as the arbit-

rary raising of the entrance standard, or by such financial pressure on the universities that they must restrict entry,” Professor Phillips said. “A Luxury”

It might well be that, unlike almost all other developed countries, New Zealand came to the conclusion that higher education was a luxury it was prepared to forgo for other social objects. “If so, however, let it be decided quite consciously and openly, having heard the evidence of the interested parties, which will include the Treasury and the universities,” he said. Mr Muldoon, said Professor Phillips, had explained the calculation which enabled the Treasury to decide that a student failing three subjects cost about $3OOO, or $lOOO a unit. This was arrived at as follows:

Income forgone by a student during the university year, about $l4OO. Current university spending per student, about $lO4O. Current cost of occupying buildings, about $620.

This was a total of $3060, which has been rounded to $3OOO If each unit failed cost $lOOO, then there was a total waste of $lO million, which Mr Muldoon had said was a measure of the degree of waste, and not a 1 recise calculation. “Air Of Unreality” “One- does not need Mr Muldoon’s expertise as a cost accountant to appreciate that the calculations he published bear an Alice-in-Wonderland air of unreality,” said Professor. Phillips. The assumption was that if a full-time student, taking a typical three-unit year’s work, failed in all his units, the ' waste cost s3ooo—and that waste was to be reckoned at $lOOO per unit failed. Conceding, for the sake of argument, that $3OOO was the cost of a total failure by a full-time student, it by no means followed that a student who failed one unit and passed two incurred one-third of that cost.

“The complete failure, let us assume, has wasted a year and departs, no longer to darken the portals of the university, though it is always possible that he may return and pass all his units, as a result of the experience gained during his ‘wasted year,’” Professor Phillips said.

“But the student who has failed a single unit has not necessarily wasted a third of the expense of maintaining him at university. He may make up the lost ground the next year and still graduate in the minimum time.” Two Fallacies Professor Phillips said that there were two general fallacies which no critic of Treasury arithmetic could fail to expose. The first was that units were totally undifferentiated, though it was well known

that costs per student differed from faculty to faculty and from subject to subject. “Any conscientious calculator would, therefore, make some inquiry into the incidence of failure in different faculties or departments. It so happens that the failure tends to be at its highest in one of the least expensive faculties —commerce,” he said. The second fallacy was the fundamental assumption that all the resources of the university were concentrated on getting students through examinations.

“It is enough to state the assumption to reveal its absurdity—to anyone who understands universities,” Professor Phillips said. Discussion Mr C. H. Perkins said that if the Government decided that future university spending was more than the country could afford, and then left matters to the universities, it should face up to criticism of the result. There was pressure and a desire for university education, and even if entrance standards were raised, young people might well be able to reach them. Mr Perkins urged that information as to numbers entering university, sitting examinations, and passing them, should be obtained and publicly stated. It was also not

generally realised the strain under which some university departments were working. The English Department had 1500 students.

If it was felt that too many people were desiring to reach university education, the Government and the universities must decide priorities of expenditure.