A university looks outward

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33779, 27 February 1975, Page 8

A university looks outward

t By

Professor N. C. PHILLIPS.

Vice-Chancellor of rhe University of Canterbury)

A distinct turning-point in the history of a university occurs only rarely: but such is the reassembly of the University of Canterbury on its site of about 175 acres at Ham, after more than a hundred years in the city centre. The foresight of' the College Council of 19-19 in deciding to accept the Government's invitation to seek a more spacious home now stands revealed.

The passing motorist sees from Clyde Road a massive mini-metropolis of concrete and glass rising from a landscape of green fields, shrubs and trees —

the outward sign of a deep inward transformation. For as the university has moved so it has grown. Student numbers have almost trebled; many new subjects are taught and much new equipment operates, as knowledge accumulates and national horizons widen; the whole organism is much more complex; and the taxpayer meets ninetenths or more of an annual recurrent expenditure of the order of $12,000,000. It is highly doubtful whether such expansion could have been possible from the old, gracious Gothic base in Worcester Street.. Certainly, there could have been no such fine recreational areas, no such student accommodation on campus, no such groves, woodlands and streams.

But vastly superior physical amenities — the envy of many universities — are only one reward for the long-drawn-out migration. Now at last, through the work of many minds and hands, a population of eight thousand or so is reunited. One of the hallmarks of a good university is the smooth interaction of its many parts: chemists should consort with sociologists, historians should find common ground with civil engineers, the en-

thusiasm for better teaching and research should be contagious, and even administrators should be observably human and helpful. In short, two populations can merge into a single community.

The gain, however, is not only domestic. The university is simply one specialised community within a series of wider concentric communities — the city, the province, the nation, the world. It is in and of society, which it exists to serve in various ways, though especially by attendifng to its own business of scholarship.

The transfer of the university three miles to the west is open to misinterpretation by those who see without thinking. Let there be no mistake: the university is leaving, but it is not abandoning, the city. It is, in the words of one of its distinguished graduates, exchanging “founders’ Christchurch for founders’ Riccarton, the drained swamplands of the middle Avon for a setting where the plains and the Alps can be seen and the Waimakariri shingle sensed”. Though nationally funded and international in its staff and student membership, the Univeristy of Canterbury remains at heart a Canterbury university, with a postal address of Christchurch, 1.

There is indeed some inconvenience in its relative remoteness from the business and industrial centre. But the direct contacts that most matter — in educational, cultural, commercial and sporting

life — are unimpaired. On the contrary, they are immeasurably enhanced by the splendid facilities at Ham For its part, the university is determined that it should be so. And it is aware that among those members most deeply immersed in civic affairs are the oldest inhabitants on the site — the artists, the engineers, the scientists.

May I end with a parable? The waters of the upper Avon, which wind i through the Ham campus,! flow at length past the! Christchurch Town Hall on their way to the sea. They: bear with them a univer-j sity’s offering to its city and province. Is it too much to hope that there i will be heavy upstream! traffic too? i