AGRICULTURAL TRAINING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19119, 10 September 1925, Page 11

AGRICULTURAL TRAINING.

ONE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

SITE IN NORTH ISLAND.

NO, PROVISION IN CITIES. INADEQUACY OF RESOURCES. [BY TELEGRAPH. —SPECIAL REPORTER.] WELLINGTON, Wednesday.

One agricultural university college for New Zealand, formed by combining the present schools at Auckland and Wellington, and situated elsewhere in the North Island, is recommended by the University Commission. The commissioners consider that Lincoln Collego, New Zealand's earliest effort to provide agricultural training, does not meet the requirements of a degree course, either by itself or by its present attempted co-operation with Canterbury College. They find many defects in the degree course in agriculture and describe the whole arrangement as a makeshift, quite insufficient to provide the quality of agricultural leadership the Dominion requires. The inclusion of non-matriculated students taking the lower course designed for practical farmers interferes detrimentally.

Regarding Auckland and Wellington, the commissioners say:—"The commis sion learns that the establishment of a chair of agriculture at Victoria College was not part of a well-considered scheme for agricultural education adopted by the Dominion Government, but was the result of a gift to the college of £IO,OOO. This sum, supplemented by a subsidy from the Government, is just sufficient to provide the salary of one professor. We learn further that the Auckland University College is also the recipient of a bequest of £20,000 to enable a School of Agriculture to be established in that city and that a professor has recently been selected. In this case, also, the amount is not adequate for the development of the school on satisfactory lines. Large Stag Required.

"Accordingly, if the present arrangements are maintained, New Zealand is committed to the maintenance of three agricultural schools within the university, not one of which can continue efficiently without a considerable increase in the national expenditure."

After citing American and Canadian examples to show that an efficient agricultural university college requires a very large staff and great capital expense, and that it is dangerous to engage any but the best men obtainable, the report proceeds:—"Our purpose" in quoting these examples is to impress upon New Zealand the necessity of facing the position and establishing one really efficient agricultural college of university standing. The attempt to maintain the three centres now in being must, in our opinion, end in failure. At best, eacll school will be doomed to what due witness called 'anaemic mediocrity.'

"There are certain fundamental considerations which must be kept steadily in view to-day. The subject matter of agriculture is divided: into large departments, with {specialists in charge of each — for example, agronomy, animal husbandry, dairying and horticulture. It is absurd to expect one man, however well informed, to profess and to teach the whole of the work of an agricultural course, and, further, the technical subjects should not be dominated by instruction in sciences taught without regard to thenapplication to agriculture. Combination of Resources. "We are of opinion that an agricultural college, in association with the univei'sity, should be established in some suitable locality in the North Island by a combination of the schools proposed for Wellington and Auckland. It should provide courses for. degrees in agriculture and post-graduate work, and, in addition, should offer such lower courses as diploma courses for farm youths and short practical courses for adult farmers. .As in the American and Canadian colleges, departments of home economics and ultimately of training for rural teachers should be associated with. it.

"Such a college will necessarily be a residential institution and there is no reason why it should not ultimately develop into a complete residential university, grouped appropriately around the study of agriculture as its leading subject. This would be strictly in accordance with the fitness of things in a Dominion so dependent an is New Zealand upon the work of its farmers. Moreover, any such scheme under which education in liberal studios would be associated with training in the more directly practical concerns of rural life and work would do much to help toward the development of a culture; of the country as distinct from the culture of the citv."