UNIVERSITY DEBATING SOCIETY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3186, 10 September 1917, Page 3

UNIVERSITY DEBATING SOCIETY

PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. At Victoria College on Friday evening Professor T. A. Hunter delivered the presidential address to the College D&bating subject of the addrees was "The New Zealand University: What it is and what it might be." The functions of a university, the lecturer said, were tureofoici.' It shoul3 be the centre of the intellectual life of the community: it should bo an aid in the advancement of knowledge, and it should lorcibly influence the ideals of the nation. The present system on which the New Zealand University proceeded fell far short of this, the chief reason being that teaching was divorced from examining. The marking system, too, on which the granting of degrees was based, was a fruitful source of harm. Instead of oncouraging the pursuit of learning it tended to limit the scope of a student's work to that laid down in the syllabus, to dissuade him from touching on anything else, and to make the securing of the degree the one object of his life. Professor Hunter said that to combine teaching and examining would eliminate many of these evils, but what was really required was an altogether new university founded on totally different principles. A university which lived in a rented flat on a second floor, and restricted itself lo marking written answers and awarding degrees on the result, was worso than no university at all. But if any change were to be made, it must come from the students, for "ruin and recovery alike ore from within."