SANDERS SCHOLARSHIP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22976, 2 March 1938, Page 17

SANDERS SCHOLARSHIP

Sir, —1 was astonished to rend in your report of the proceedings of the Auckland University College Council that there were three candidates lor the Sanders Scholarship, hut that, on tiie recommendation of the examiners, no award was made. This is to me an amazing statement. Is pot the Sanders Scholarship a memorial to a brave Aucklander and, as a proof of our grateful recognition of his worth, the gilt of free university education to a son or daughter of some man of the naval or mercantile marine service!' It is not, therefore, an award to brilliant scholarship—indeed, at this date it is still likely that all candidates are children of men who served in the Great War, and who are on that account suffering from the mental and financial disabilities which that has entailed. Are not the examiners, then, exceeding their powers in recommending that no child should benefit? Is not theirs the work of discriminating between candidates? To the council is the linal responsibility, but are they not merely trustees, awarding the benefit to the candidate who is first oil the list. Once the award is made and the successful competitor has entered upon his (or her) undergraduate career, the professors have it in their power to recommend cessation of payments to a student whose work is not being carried on conscientiously. Surely members of the public have a right to ask wlmt is the standard expected by the examiners. It is from the precincts of the university that comes the. cry, "New Zealand has too few full-time students." Are the examiners taking a university instead of a school standard in this particular instance, and thereby making it necessary for one more needy student to use his university college merely as a "night school"? Inquirer.