THE UNIVERSITIES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 11 February 1933, Page 7

THE UNIVERSITIES

VALUES WRONGLY VIEWED “When the pressure of economies is severe and insistent in its demands, the universities, like all other great institutions, feel that their essential purposes are apt to be obscured,” says the “Glasgow Herald.” “University degrees and their values are wrongly viewed. Commercialism tinges them. The free play *of intellect, the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, the joy in surmounting difficulties that beset the mind—these things are lost, or seem to be obliterated, in the overwhelming need to attain the degree for purposes of a passport to a career. Unrestrained pushfulness towards the passing of set degree examinations, with all the adjuncts toward that end which modern ingenuity can devise, reacts unhappily on both teacher and taught. Specialism rears its head and the humanities are endangered. Standards of attainment are, indeed, higher, but it was never more essential not only to recapture, even for a moment, the fleetjng vision of ancient and honourable tradition, but to strive, with whatever difficulty, to get above and beyond the , harassing preoccupations with which university legislators in these days find th emsel ves encom passed. ”