UNIVERSITY STANDARDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23591, 27 February 1940, Page 10

UNIVERSITY STANDARDS

Sir, —Judging by the published terms of Mr. W. H. Cocker's report and comments delivered to the University College Council at its last meeting on the proceedings of the University Senate, the progressive degradation of educational standards by that body .Tv l ould seem to have been "speeded up." The most important feature of the plan for accrediting candidates for matriculation by the schools in place of an examination by the University turns out to be the creation of a multitude of new jobs for "liaison officers," "specialists," and so forth. How familiar it all is! The other "reform" -enables degrees to be taken one subject at a time. Hitherto two subjects had to be passed in order to count; before that it was three. Most people would say this was lowering the standard, but Mr. Cocker explains on behalf of the Senate that it removes the incentive to award a pass to failures in , one subject by counting in their excess in another, so that the standard is really raised and everybody is satisfied. Can anybody take this seriously? For such a measure to be capable of. raising tlio standard it would have to. be the case that so many failures were being passed under the system of compensation as to constitute in a public scandal. Actually, in my own experience,, I cannot, recall a single case of a candidate failing in my subject who was afterward passed through this loophole.

The only possible explanation left us of the Senate's action as a. wholo is that this body is now completely under the sway of that coterie of fanatical opponents of the examination method as such that descends from the Wellington "Reform" movement of a few decades back, and of the claptrap educational philosophy by which their 'attitude is bolstered upj The i remedy is in tho hands of the graduates themselves. When they are prepared to take the necessary steps, as they effectively can, to rid the University of Now Zealand of its present inept, bigoted and disastrous leadership, and not until then, we may look for some improvement in the educational standards of tho nation. W. AxnEnsoN. Auckland University College. ,