The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1930. FOUR UNIVERSITIES.

Evening Star, Issue 20510, 14 June 1930, Page 14

The Evening Star SATURDAY, JUNE 14, 1930. FOUR UNIVERSITIES.

Four universities in New Zealand are a development which the younger among us may live to see. There are arguments for it, or tho change would not have been urged at intervals for •as many years as it has been. It is to bo suspected that the main cause of Sir George Fowlds’s desire for it is his yearning for a medical school, to say nothing of a dental school, a more complete engineering school, and a school of forestry, for Auckland. It is an outrage ,to northern patriotism that Auckland should lack anything which is to be found anywhere else in the dominion. “The time is coming,” says Sir George, “ when we shall have either four separate universities or a university incorporating Auckland and Victoria University Colleges and tho Massey College as a university of North New Zealand.” It is not likely that Auckland would bo long satisfied to divide its educational lot with Wellington. The lesser development would make the most natural stepping stone to tho first. The persistence of Sir George Fowlds must bo reckoned worthy of a better cause. It is a touching spectacle which he presents of one Still nursing tho unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade. Four universities will come when' the wealth and population of New Zealand have sufficiently advanced, but there is no real cause at the present time why the transition should be hurried. For all but Aucklanders, at our present stage, a degree of tho University of New Zealand is likely to carry more prestige than one of Auckland University would do. The main effect which the change would be likely to have would be in assisting that multiplication of costly special schools which have most chance of being successfully developed when they are not multiplied. Instead of two brakes upon their duplication—the Government and tho Senate—there would be only one. A university for tho North Island and another for the South would be tho worst of all developments. There is too much North and South already in some. considerations of New Zealand. “ Tho University of New Zealand,” Sir George Fowlds complains, “ is trying to carry out an impossible task, ‘and is not doing it particularly well.” That belief may or may not bo born of tho special desires of Auckland which it would bo disastrous to grant. There have been other suggestions that the University of New Zealand is not doing all' it might bo expected to do, which do not involve the assumption that it has an impossible task. A special commission of five years ago made the scathing comment that “ the general impression- left on our minds is that the Now Zealand University offers unrivalled facilities for gaining university degrees, but it is less successful in providing university education.” Dr Condliffe, who can write of tho university with an intimate knowledge not possessed by him when ho speaks of tho primary schools and high schools, makes it a criticism in his latest book that “an absurdly large number of students are catered for by an inadequate staff working with poor equipment.” The number of students per teacher, ho points out, is almost four times the average of other British universities. The absence of adequate libraries is very' much of a fault. But these defects cau bo remedied without the necessity for making four universities. They might only bo encouraged by such a change.