THE "BEST BRAINS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 14, 16 July 1937, Page 11

THE "BEST BRAINS"

LOSS Of .GRADUATES

PREVENTING EXODUS

(Special to tho "Evoning Post.*) ! CHRISTCHURCH, This Day. What the Dominion needs to prevent the exodus of its "best brains" among university graduates is the type of publicity adopted in England where the universities "sell their students" to employers, according to Professor I. L. Kandel, of Columbia University, New York, who, when told yesfcidaj' of complaints which had been made at times, criticised the principle practised in the Dominion of advancement by seniority rather than by merit, and questioned the soundness of the Dominion's sjstem of placing its emphasis on part-time, study in the university to the discouragement of fulltime study.

As in Britain and the United States, there should be some prizes or rewards in professions—prizes such as positions important enough to carry adequate salaries—which would attract the Dominion's best graduates, Professor Kandel said. New Zealand was a small country, but there was still an opportunity for keeping its "best brains." One of the causes for students not remaining was the principle of seniority and the relative subordination of merit in the selection of men for positions. This made for mediocrity, and. more than that, it suppressed initiative. '

What was needed in New Zealand was the education of the public to a different attitude, he added. The trend ■here discouraged higher education, and it was in three or four professions only—teaching, law, medicine, and perhaps advanced engineering—that higher education was pursued. The present trend of the apprenticeship system, for instance, militated against technical education. Employees in the Civil Service, moreover, were usually promoted or appointed to positions by seniority, and the university man with the qualifications of his continued education did not always find it easy to secure a position. In England, the position of the university man had been improved j greatly by the establishment of appointments committees in the universities, their function being to interest employers in all classes of professions and industries in taking on university people. Questions of social and financial policy, of the general attitude to education, and of full-time and part-time study were raised, he said. So far the people of the Dominion had not built up an understanding of the meaning of higher education, which was not merely the acquiring of a degree or the passing of an examination. Tnere was not a true appreciation of full-lime study. An institution for higher education had two functions, and these were (1) public service, giving what the public demanded; and (2) advancing scholarship and research work, and this could not be done on a part-time basis.