The Evening Star MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1934. YOUTH'S OUTLOOK.

Evening Star, Issue 21845, 8 October 1934, Page 8

The Evening Star MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1934. YOUTH'S OUTLOOK.

To-day there was opened in Christchurch an employment bureau for University graduates and students. The purpose is not so much to find openings in the particular line for which preparation has been made at the University as to put applicants who register into touch with employer? of any kind, Practically any class of work whatever would be accepted,” stated the president of the Canterbury College Students’ Association, the body which has evolved this practical idea. The managements of business firms, sheep stations, and town and country organisations are being circularised, and it is to be hoped that tangible results will accrue. It is a poor compliment to our economic system that in a country such as this (which oversea visitors never tire of telling us is destined ultimately to carry a fairly dense population) an employment bureau at a University .should be con-' sidered necessary. Probably when the trade depression began and those leaving school had no openings in life visible, some of them decided to make a virtue of a necessity and spend the intervening time while matters economic righted themselves in preparation for a career which promised to bo more highly competitive than ever in preslump days. But things are exasperatingly slow in righting themselves, and openings for work are but slightly less rare now than they were at the beginning of a three or four-year period of attending lectures and sitting for examinations. If it be correct that entrances to the University have been stimulated comparatively recently by the cause indicated, there is the unfortunate situation of a higher number of qualified or cultured young people than would normally be the case competing for jobs which arc still numerically far below normal. The phenomenon is by no means confined to New Zealand. One hears of Sydney doctors and accountants at manual labour on relief works; the personal columns of 1 The Times ’ afford evidence of the desperate anxiety of graduates of English Universities to accept positions, however menial, so long as there is a prospect of keeping body and soul together and maintaining show of respectability Or vestige of self-respect; aud in the American labour camps and included in her vast vagrant armies of unemployed the “ college man ” is anything but an exception. It is a laudable ambition for the young to seek culture or to avoid idleness, presumably temporary, by study, even of subjects which they realise may be of little direct gainful value to them subsequently. The community life of n University is probably a good deal more attractive than that, of a labour camp, particularly if some private means, possibly slender enough, enable the student to participate in some ol the social relaxations which diversify

studies—or vice versa. But disillusion is the end of many ambitions, and Canterbury College or any of our New Zealand University Colleges appear to be providing examples of this. The fault does not lie with them. Nevertheless, it is significant that many business men fail to be impressed with University credentials. Recently in the London ‘ Spectator ’ an interesting correspondence has been passing in which the utility of the public schools has been discussed. It was challenged in the first place by a manufacturer whose experience led him to declare that there must be something radically wrong in the educational system or home training or both, “ Always the try goes up that young men cannot find openings,” he wrote after he had made continuous efforts to train young “ business-builders ” for partnership in his concern, but without success. His experience has been that the programme of boys deciding on a business life is to obtain by influence a post in a wealthy combine, a bank, or an insurance company, where a sure pension follows,' even if the .position is a relatively minor one. Thus thousands of youths complain that they cannot find an opening, while thb heads of hundreds of small and niediuni-sized businesses cannot find suitable recruits to carry on concerns successfully built up by toil such as they would not dream of asking the present generation to undertake, to say nothing of the financial risks. This manufacturer asks whether our educational system can only produce candidates for the overcrowded professions or official minds for the great combines where initiative is often suppressed with an iron hand. If the smaller concerns are going to survive in competition with the big combines—and it is a poor outlook for our future if they do not—they must have the right sort of recruit, and not the stereotyped linenterprising mind which puts “ safety first.”

Naturally such an indictment drew a number of replies. The “ careers ”« master in a modern school admits that commerce is too often the refuge of those who do not know what else to do and does not attract the boy with initiative. He also admits that the school authorities have to serve two masters —the universities which largely determine the curriculum, and the employers who demand definite results—an<i between them the needs of the boy himself often pass unnoticed. Another manufacturer insists that all boys leaving public schools who are going in for an industrial career should be given jobs as labourers in their particular industry for two years. His method when engaging new boys is not to consider the question of school, except that “ the lower the grade from the social Standpoint the better, because it means that the boy is tjot hampered by parents with surplus money.” Another concern of his is to know something of his father and mother and the family life. This last question is disconcerting, for one begins to ask to what degree family life exists to-day. In the eyes of youth what does the home stand for in this period of civilisation’s development which has been called the “ Road House Age ’’ ? Probably because there is so little work for the young to do they throw themselves with the more abandon into the public pursuit of pleasure. New Zealand has not delayed following the American .example in the multiplication of this style of cabaret. To avoid injury to the finer sensibilities of the dominion business interests involved, we borrow from a recent English description (a lady’s) of conditions at Homeßoad Houses have sprung up with a mushroom-like alacrity that beats even the bungalow, upon every arterial road within Bent-ley-distanee of London. Scarcely is the neon-lighting installed and the stucco dry upon the battlements when hordes of diligent and determined pleasureseekers arrive, to dance on floodlit floors, to dive into floodlit pools, to drink tasteless teetotal beverages on balconies, stoeps, patios, or in Tudor parlours, and to conduct floodlit amours in any or all of these surroundings,” and they can, if they please, go on doing so until dawn, which may be ushered in with an early breakfast. Is it a conscious shamefulness or a furtive facetiousness which elicits from those who surely are not utter strangers to this night life the complaint that it is difficult to give the young a serious start in life? Our university colleges are not negligible centres of social doings, and possibly it is a good sign that one of them is sponsoring an employment bureau, for practically any kind of employment, whether in town or country.