"HIGHER EDUCATION".

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 91, 14 October 1926, Page 10

"HIGHER EDUCATION".

NEW AND FANCY SCHEMES

SOME AMEBICAN UNIVERSITY 1 NOTIONS.

(B,y TeleorapK.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") DUNEDIN, V is" Day. Dr. John Cairney, assistant professor of anatomy at Otago University, who has returned from America after, spending a year there in research work, made some interesting comments on the American universities. "I suspect, ;iml I have some reasons for suspecting,'* he said, "that what I have observed in the departments of anatomy is to some extent .symptomatic of the general tendency in American medical education, and, indeed, in tho American university generally—tho tendency towards new and fancy schemes, rather than towards the thorough teaching :of old-fashioned things which have stood the test of time." ,' He ' came upon a university where tho department of classics was empty, but tho department of commerce was full to the doors. Again ho know a university where the football coach, who lias no other duties, ranks as a professor (perhaps that university's most highly-paid professor), and is styled the head of the department of physical education. Yet another university once commenced a university course in undertaking, «but the Boston University, and by thii is not "meant Harvard, has established, so a weeklypaper states, the only course of its kind in the history of civilisation, a course in matrimony. It was further added, that when the graduates married, they could put -after their names letters C.8., standing for "certified bride." Dr. Cairney added: "I believe there has' been in this country in recent years a little too much unqualified admiration of things American."