The big move towards maturity

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33215, 3 May 1973, Page 5

The big move towards maturity

I am delighted to have this opportunity to add my personal congratulations and good wishes to the felicitations which mark the University of Canterbury’s celebration of its first 100 years.

This is a time when the university, its friends and well-wishers, can take stock of the position it holds in the community, of the part it has played and will continue to play in the life of the nation.

Universities everywhere are well aware of this call for the continuous assessment, and the recently published history of the University of Canterbury is a valuable contribution to the country’s literature of education, and of social evolution. The distinguished visitors who are giving papers on the present situation of universities will add greatly to the significance and value of this occasion.

For my own part, I welcome an evaluation of the function of universities in the community. Among the responsibilities engaging my attention the position of tertiary education ranks high. I use the term "tertiary education” because I do not mean just university education. For me, personally, this marks a point of progress and a part of the evolution of our educational system.

In the past in New Zealand the universities were left to carry most of the load of education beyond the secondary school. They were castigated as night schools, and criticised for the lengthy, piecemeal courses taken by large numbers of parttime students. But they were necessarily comprehensive, developing to meet the needs of small communities with limited means. We have now emerged from this stage, and other institutions are growing in importance, adding to the range of opportunities and to the effectiveness of the whole field of education.

This growth is becoming familiar; the teachers’ colleges and the burgeoning technical institutes are finding an increasingly important place in the higher education system. Less familiar, and still perhaps to be properly assessed, are the needs of what is loosely called “continuing education,” “lifelong education,” or “further education.”

As the spectrum widens, questions rise about relationships and functions. The university, as it ceases to be comprehensive in the old sense, must find its relationships with technical institutes and teachers’ colleges, and seek for its proper role in further education.

Studies have been made overseas in all these fields. Education is an organic process; as it lives it changes, and so one seeks for progress reports rather than final judgments. I am concerned that public policy in this country should be carefully considered and directed towards what 1 hope will be an enlightened, progressive, and undogmatic view of the whole tertiary sector. To this end 1 have taken steps to have some aspects of tertiary education renewed, and I await with interest the outcome of this work.

But there is one matter I would like to emphasise: as the whole of tertiary education improves and evolves, as it must, some of the traditional features of the universities must remain. I refer of course to their responsibility to extend and impart knowledge without

interference and to that characteristic of the New Zealand universities—that young people who qualify for admission shall be able to enrol and have the opportunity to graduate.

This has never been an unqualified right. Some faculties are restricted in size for good reasons; reasonable progress must be made with studies, and so on. But the customary and well understood framework of admission as it now stands must be allowed to continue. The reform of tertiary education cannot be allowed seriously to modify these features of our universities.

Our universities are the most mature institutions in the tertiary sector. They have been in existence a long time; they have coped with rapid growth for over a decade, and the scale and setting of their work has changed and, I am sure, improved in the process. This phase of growth, although not by any means completed, is probably working itself out. Attention is switching to the technical institutes, as they in their turn come up to a period of expansion.

As far as the University of Canterbury is concerned, this mature phase is associated with the move to the Ilam site. 1 was privileged to be responsible for one of the last in a long chain of approvals when the Government recently agreed that tenders should be called for the last of the main teaching buildings at Ilam—the modern languages and history blocks for the arts faculty.

The future looks assured for the University of Canterbury; the difficulties of growth, makeshift, and movement will pass and be replaced by a more stable period in the new surroundings. For the second century, with all the new challenges it will bring, go my very best good wishes to the university.

A message from the Minister of Education

(Mr P. A. Amos).