THE EXTERNAL STUDENT.

Evening Star, Issue 21934, 22 January 1935, Page 8

THE EXTERNAL STUDENT.

We cannot help feeling that the Senate of the New Zealand University very nearly perpetrated an injustice to a large group of students last week, when it proposed to differentiate between internal and external students. A motion, emanating from the Academic Board, asked that diplomas foi degrees be marked “ external ” in cases where the student has been granted exemption in more than four units of his course. In recent years there has been a considerable increase in the number of exempted students on the books of the university colleges, especially in the country districts where young men and women cannot afford "to go up to the main centres. One feature of this is that nearly all the larger high schools (outside of the four university centres) have now in their sixth forms groups of senior pupils sitting degrees. Wc doubt if this was ever intended. The university professors consider that the internal student stands to benefit in general to a greater extent than the external student who has merely crammed up his subjects from hooks, has had no contacts with his teachers and fellow students, nor taken any part in the social life of 'college societies/ In short, the one has been educated, the other has only passed a degree. But the matter is by no means as simple as all that. lie stand open to correction, but it seems probable that to-day, when each college has well over a thousand students, a largo proportion of these take practically no part at all in the life of the college, but merely attend a few lectures weekly and depart. 1 hey aie then no more educated than the external student. Again, it is not proved that the external student who has to ferret out his knowledge for himself is through the process less educated than the student whose main method is to copy down and swot up a professor’s lecture notes. As Mr j.. A. Valentine pointed out, as long as degrees arc -awarded purely on examination, no differentiation between internal and external work is possible, for a degree to be specially marked “ internal ” there should be refillired guarantees that the student has really profited by university life, a matter which it is scarcely practical to assess—-though it is attempted in America. As things are at present, with New Zealand still a new country, it would be manifestly unfair to country students and others who have to work for their living for their degree to be branded with what could only be looked on as a mark of inferiority. This does not mean that the professors are not right in their grievance, but we feel they have .chosen a bad method to remedy it. As Mr U. Deans Ritchie pointed out, to face the question properly the >;• should decide whether it would admit external students to degrees at all. It is quite within its power, say, to grant only certificates of proficiency to external students, and to confine degrees to bona (idc internal students, as is mostly the case in Great Britain. It is doubtful if wc are yet ready for this here, but it would bo a more definite way of settling the problem. On the other hand, if external students are to remain, could not Ibc ''leges consider whether they might not do more for them than at present to ensure the high standard of nlyi' At one time there was a move for courses of lectures in some of the chief arts subjects to be given in such places as Timaru and Invercargill. Such a scheme might even pay for itself, and might serve to extend the influence of the university colleges beyond the four main centres.