Untitled

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19, 24 January 1911, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY,JANUARY 24, 1911. UNIVERSITY REFORM.

In the criticism of the University reform programme, which occupied a large part of the address delivered by Sir Robert Stout, as Chancellor, to the University Senate last week, he said: " What is asked is practically that professors and lecturers should really dominate all our University institutions, and that they should be- the governors in all matters dealing with curricula and syllabuses. ' Another demand is that there should be no external examiners, and that for the ordinary pass degrees the. Professorial Boai'd should be tie examiners of each college." We expressed in a previous article our agreement with the Chancellor's objection to a professorial domination of University management, though we were unable to see; that the objection was soundly based" upon the condemnation of this exp&rt. The export is probably regarded as supreme within his own sphere. For- s professor of Hebrew we must have a man who knows Hebrew and who knows ■ it well, but his knowledge of Hebrew no more proves that he possesses the business faculty needed for the management of a University than it proves thathe can teach mathematics. Supreme in. his own subject, the expert is apt, by season of the very specialisation which, secures that supremacy, to be les* -competent in ordinary business management, than the undistinguished, all-roand man who has not specialised, in this sense \ expert management is really inexpert management, and it is no more to be tolerated than any other form of in- ! expert management. In the present case, however, it is 'to be-noted that the advocates of University reform nave never claimed a monopoly of power for the professors, nor does Sir Robert j Stout allege that they have. " What is asked," he says, " is practically that professors and lecturers shall really ilominate all our University institutions." Ihe saving word " practically," of course, implies that this power has never been expressly claimed, but that in tho Chancellor's opinion what has been claimed will not fall far short of producing that effect. We are as strongly opposed as theChancellor himself to any such far-reach-ing change as this being brought about, but we are by no means satisfied that the examination system is as it sEbtdd be, or that it cannot be amended in the direction advocated by the University Reform Association without producing the effect or the tendency of which he is afraid. To the demand that the extejraa.l ggaminafcion shall be abolished--

which appears to be the principal aim of the reformers — Sir Robert Siout adds -as their secondary one "th.at, for the ordinary pass degrees, the Professorial Board should be the examiners of each college." Such a demand would be certainly intolerable, but in Wellington, at any rate, it has not been put forward -either by the professors or by the University Reform Association. To allow the Professorial Board of each college to examine its own students would, as Sir Robert urges, produce a lack oftcoordination among the colleges, and as it would practically make the college the degree-granting authority, it would soon provide us with four Universities instead of one. It would also look very like allowing a professor to cover up his incompetence by passing his own pupils for a degree which they did not deserve. But how much of the Chancellor's argument applies to the actual proposal, viz., that the examination in each subject should be conducted by a board comprising the four professors of that subject in the several colleges? Such an arrangement would moke for co-ordination and uniformity, and not for diversity and disintegration, and would give the examiners the advantage of some personal knowledge of a candidate's previous record, which might be of considerable value in doubtful cases. Even so, it might be desirable to have an additional check in the ] shape of some entirely independent ■ element. But the case against the external examination, conducted from a distance, seems to us a very strong one. Its tendency to convert the professors into coaches and cramming machines is one which the most conscientious of them canno"E entirely resist, since the most obvious test of his work is the success of his student at examinations, where nothing but the paper work can count. "What," asks Sir Robert Stout, "would be thought of an analogous demand ? Namely, that the Fellows of Balliol should pass their students, and the Fellows of other colleges have the same privileges." This argument hits the proposal assumed by the Chancellor, but not the proposal actually made. The Fellows of Balliol are not disqualified from acting as examiners for the University, and professors and lecturers habitually act in that capacity. The United States have frequently supplied Sir Robert Stout with a model, but on this occasion he leaves them alone. Is it not a fact that at Harvard and at the American Universities in general, the instructors conduct the examinations -on the subjects which they have themselves taught ? Checks are, it is true, provided by Boards of Overseers and Visiting Committees and the like, but the primary and principal responsibility is as we have said. In how many places besides New Zealand the system of external examination is retained we do not know, but South Africa is certainly one, and there its abolition seems to be the object of most of those who are intimate--ly concerned in University work.