GROWTH OF MASSEY COLLEGE

Grey River Argus, 20 April 1948, Page 5

GROWTH OF MASSEY COLLEGE

PALMERSTON N„ April 19.

The graduation ceremonies at Massey Agricultural College this week hold more than usual interest for the public and for present and past students, in that the College has now reached its majority. It has “grown up” so vigorously that it has earned a well-recognised position in the ranks of agricultural colleges in the British Commonwealth for number of student enrolments and the great variety and extent of research work undertaken.

Though institutions mark their milestones in centuries and their fractions, the attainment of 21 years of age (which, incidentally,, is approximately the average of the 400 students now at the College) will not be allowed to pass without official recognition from the authorities, staff and students. A greater number of ex-students will attend this year for the week commencing today (April 19), and the Ex-Students’ Association is making a determined effort to enlarge its membership. Britain, the United States, India, Kenya( China, Australia and the Pacific' Islands are all represented by students now attending the College. Others who have already returned to their native lands have taken with them a knowledge of modern sheenfarrriing, dairy-farming and horticultural practices, an app v eciation of the New Zealand type of farming which has great possibilities for raising a country’s general standard of living, and an abiding love for the quiet, serenity, orderliness, and upsurging growth on the farms and around the stately buildings called Massey. It is a university on a farm, in a farm, and indissolubly belonging to the world and to its own New Zealand and Manawatu country-side. This 21 year-old institution, besides giving back to the world its own visiting students, has fitted New Zealanders, including two Rhodes scholars, to take important positions in its own country and overseas. Teaching and research work go hand in hand along avenues, not only of primary production, but also of wholesale manufacture and processing of butter, cheese, and of milk for the liquid trade. All these, and more, combine to make up New Zealand's primary industries, which are responsible for some 90 per cent, of the total value of its exports.

Invasion of Ex-servicemen Three farms—sheep, dairy and poultry—surround the Massey College main building, a massive, creep-er-clad centrepiece which, with easy hill-country at its back, dominates the fertile Manawatu landscape, adaptable equally to sheep and to dairy cattle. Up to 750 students now pass through the College annually, and of these a considerable proportion are ex-servicemen who have been granted short-course bursaries by the Rehabilitation Board. More than 1400 of these men have now undergone courses at the College. It was in 1944 that the . College, while the war was still on, increased its war-reduced enrolments by 90-ex-servicemen. They were the vanguard of an oft-changing company which reached its numerical peak in 1947. Side by side with this pressure of numbers was that from “civilian” quarters—-from farmers who realised that the demand of the future would be for men with that wide agricultural training which could not he obtained on any one farm, and from analytically-minded men who foresaw that a scientific training in agriculture would in the future lead to manv professional opportunities both in New Zealand and overseas. As, a result, enrolments have far outstripped accommodation, and the position will not be improved to any extent until building materials are more freely available. Massey College has had only one principal. Professor G. S. Peren, and it is fitting that, in 1924. he should have been appointed to full the first Chair of Agriculture of the University of New Zealand, at ■ Victoria College. A vear later Professor W. Riddot was appointed to a similar position at Auckland University College. Two on three years of work severely limited by urban sites convinced "the two colleges that a rural setting and the pooling of resources were essential. Accordingly the first of the College farms, the property of the late Mr J. Batchelar, was purchased in December, 1926, the Massey College Council met for the first time in February, J 927. and in June of that year the college entered into occupation of the property , and set about organising it for teaching and research, the headquarters for which were for four years located in the two-storeved homesetad, until completion of the present main building in 1931. , . . Palmerston North’s geographical position made it appear advisable to concentrate there as much, agricultural research work as possible.