THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1931. UNIVERSITIES AND BUSINESS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21390, 18 July 1931, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1931. UNIVERSITIES AND BUSINESS.

It has been estimated that in June of this year some two thousand graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities entered the labour market. The majority of these Cambridge graduates are entering commerce and industry. Had this been said of the modern universities, such as those, of London, Birmingham, and Manchester, r no one would have been greatly surprised, for all the newer universities deliberately provide at least a few courses which lead directly into business vocations. In the universities of the United States this principle is carried a great deal further; it is possible to secure courses in them in nearly all practical activities of the business world. This has indeed led to good deal of criticism of the American university system by those who do not understand its problems and its aims. The American system has to serve a large population of heterogeneous cultures and nationalities. Many of its new citizens and their families have to be “ socialised they have to be brought into immediate contact with the living world of work about them. To this end the university is utilised to discharge a valuable public service in the United States by being kept in constant communication with the world of affairs rather than of abstract studies. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have always stood in the main for the older ideals of the intellectual life, the pursuit of truth in the abstract as a worthy end, and the collegiate participation in the immense heritage of wisdom, art, and science that has accumulated through the ages. It is obvious, however 1 , that if the current continues to flow from them into the commercial and industrial world, it will not be long before an insistent demand will arise for specific business courses. Last year the Cambridge Appointments Board found positions for 501 undergraduates, of whom no fewer than 244 went into commerce and industry. Many of these have taken all sorts of jobs—some of them poorly paid—with the hope of securing advancement later on. This betokens grit. Those who have ability will rise. But the question remains whether an academic course of. general culture is the best preparation for a life of business and whether it would not be better for the universities to open up business courses as an annexe to their traditional studies.

In some respects, of course, the exisiting universities do assist their graduates to enter business by providing them with modern language courses. Spanish has in particular become popular owing to the use and advocacy of it by the Prince of Wales. But business men say that the university language courses, particularly the honours courses, divert the attention of the students from practical to academic ends. An English business agent in South America requires not a philological knowledge of early Spanish so much as an accurate and fluent use of that language in current speech and writing. What applies to Spanish applies also to Arabic—a language which has been too greatly neglected in the British academic world. The literary Arabic is archaic and unintelligible except to the pundit. The colloquial Arabic taught in many French institutions with a view to its commercial utilisation in the French colonies is that of which the business man has need. It is interesting to learn that some of the recent Cambridge graduates are becoming salesmen in department stores. There is, of course, no inherent antipathy between salesmanship and academic culture, but there is certainly an economic misdirection of the preparatory training. It would be unfortunate if men with an intellectual capacity that would qualify them for a good honours degree should in future avoid any academic study except that which is narrowly vocational. But it does seem necessary and possible that there should be a more judicious blending of the practical man with the savant, the executive with the doctrinaire, the worker with the thinker. A considerable number of the graduates will enter the teaching profession, and, of course, will in the main go to fields for which they are especially fitted. Women favour teaching. Among the honours graduates the number of women is everywhere increasing. Unfortunately for the race as a whole, high honours for women correlate with the marriage rate in an inverse proportion, for statistics show that the higher the honours the lower the chance of marriage for the woman. As a corollary of this, university women of distinction tend to leave no posterity, and so academic ability tends to be bred out of the race. Perhaps the

eugenist, who is mainly concerned with the negative work of preventing the defective from leaving his legacy to posterity, will bestow more attention on this constructive problem of maintaining the supply of people of intellectual energy, A survey of the whole position makes it clear that the demands of life will change even the oldest institutions. The University of New Zealand will not be exempt, although the need for change here will not be so great. The great traditions of the humanities and science must not be dried up, but new provision must be made for new needs.