STUDENTS AND POSITIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 38, 14 August 1939, Page 8

STUDENTS AND POSITIONS

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —As an ex-first-class honours graduate of our University, and as one who has since quitted the world of a- demic intellectualism for the more satisfying steely realities of the commercial and industrial world, I would like oto express an opinion on this clamourng of students for the Government to find them some big jobs in its service. If the university student is what he claims to be surely he should have the virility and will power to fight his own way to the bigger jobs, as every other section of the community must do, Avithout the pampering care of our Government.

The trouble, Sir, with the average college and university product is that he wants to beign straight of! in some big executive position for which by experience and ability he may be quite inadequately fitted. What we want in New Zealand today is men who can build up industries, men who can devise better systems of food production and better methods of distribution —men in short who have the practical ability to create, who have the brains and the grit to tackle the rough groundwork upon which future creation and progress must be built.

Let our university students first give practical proof of their abilities in the industrial, commercial, or socialistic world. They will then find that society as a matter of course will give them the actual measure of reward they really deserve. In our midst we are developing far too many individuals who want to be executives, bosses, organisers; in other words, a whitecollared aristocracy. What we want is.more men who can produce the real goods. Let our college and university students face up to these facts. —I am, etc.,

FACTS