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Otago Daily Times, Issue 22258, 10 May 1934, Page 16

Britain is lamentably short of first-class brains, according to Sir Charles Grant Robertson, principal ami vice-chancellor of Birmingham University. He says that 40 years of university life have implanted in his mind these two convictions: " That the percentage of first-class brains in any class and in ail classes in the nation taken together is very small, perhaps 4, or at most o, per cent.; and that at the bottom of the scale there is an uncomfortably large percentage, perhaps. 20, in every class and in ail classes taken together which is subnormal in intellectual capacity. The perpetual and often baffling porblem of all higher education is how to keep that 20 per cent, out of the universities” Sir Charles goes on. The ‘ploughed’ B.A. is a civic and social problem, while the B.A. who ought to have been ‘ ploughed.’ but somehow or other was not. is the real problem of university. education, and appointment boards.”