THE BURSARY SYSTEM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25303, 13 August 1943, Page 4

THE BURSARY SYSTEM

In admitting the other day that a youth who had been a defaulter, with a gaol sentence as part of his record of protest against service, had been awarded a dental bursary, the Minister of Health showed some slight embarrassment. This bursar, Mr Nordmeyer remarked, when taxed by Mr Poison, had “ slipped in and been allowed to remain”; and the Minister let it be known that he was not very happy about the position. On the case as stated by Mr Poison he had small reason to be. Hot only, it appears, had this bursar shown a reluctance to serve the State whose generosity he was prepared to exploit, but he possessed “nothing like the high academic qualifications one was led to believe he had.” The palpable concern of Mr Nordmeyer over the bursar—one of a small number of persons awarded dental bursaries — who “slipped in” still provides no explanation of how the slip was made, and the question arises whether it is, as the Minister implies, a singular case of a bursary going to a person who may be said to lack insistent claim to one. The bursaries, as we emphasised when they were announced, are awarded entirely at the discretion of the Minister of Health and his colleagues. The teaching staffs of the Medical and Dental Schools are not paid the courtesy of being consulted. If the selection is made by the Government or by the Minister, upon any standard system, the public has yet to be told of it. The position is that with the introduction of bursaries upon a fairly liberal scale it would be possible to make a selection of men and women who showed by test special qualifications, both academic and psychological, for pursuing the professions of medicine ‘and dentistry. But while the allocation of the bursaries remains at the' disposal of Government, or, to put it bluntly, subject to political influence, an innovation admirable in principle can arouse only distrust in the public mind—rising to disgust at the revelation of such a “ slip ” as the Minister himself has now admitted.

CAUSE FOR CONCERN There is certainly nothing parochial in the decision of the Dominion Executive of the New Zealand Manufacturers’ Federation to impress upon the Government the need for an improved cargo shipping service between the North and South Islands, with particular emphasis upon a situation which virtually amounts at present to discrimination against South Island manufacturers. The limitation of cargoes of ordinary consumer goods and essential raw materials for shipment from the south to the north must tend to aggravate the lack of balance which already exists and thus, as the federation has pointed out, to create an unequal distribution of goods in the Dominion. It would be absurdly anomalous if, because of a lack of shipping facilities, manufactured goods or materials eagerly sought by North Island manufacturers were permitted to accumulate in southern centres while a condition of shortage was developing in the north. The federation claims that even now it is possible to foresee the position arising in the south where more goods will have been produced than are required to meet local demands, and where North Island shortages will have become worse, with storage in the case of perishable goods presenting additional difficulties. A little intelligent co-operation between the Government, manufacturers, and shippers is surely all that is required to prevent any such wasteful and uneconomic consequences of the lack of frequency in interisland shipping services. It is no doubt true enough that the shipping companies are hard pressed to meet all the calls which, in existing circumstances, have to be made on their reduced fleets. But it is at least reasonable to suppose that the peculiar difficulties of South Island shippers could be overcome to a large extent by the careful revision of coastal shipping time tables and itineraries, with the object of increasing the amount of cargo space available at South Island ports. It must be the Government’s concern to see that shortages of consumer goods are not permitted to develop in any part of the country when all that is required to ensure an even distribution is the provision of transport between the two islands. The demand for increased production which is constantly addressed to manufacturers and' producers can have small meaning while conditions such as those complained of by the Manufacturers’ Federation are allowed to hamper and perhaps thwart their efforts..