OTAGO EMERGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26713, 6 March 1948, Page 6

OTAGO EMERGES

The Church and Higher Learning

"Ample provision will be made for teaching every branch of a liberal education . . . usually taught in the Universities .... The whole institution will be conducted on Christian principles." So ran an article in the first number of the “ Otago Journal,” John McGlashan’s magazine for publicising the new colony. It was the intention of the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland to put their colony on a sound religious and educational basis from the first. They made provision for financing their scheme in the “ Terms of Purchase." But it was 20 years before an institution of higher learning could be established.

The founding of the University of Otago was the direct result of the Church’s need for training its ministers. In 1861 the Synod set up a College Committee to consider “the best method of encouraging young men to give themselves to the work of the ministry and of securing for them a thorough literary and theological equipment." Approaches to the Provincial Government for cooperation met with no success, mainly through lack of funds. But a new event changed the face of things. The Government took over the provision of primary education. The ■ Church could have used its educational trust funds for furthering its own schools, but preferred rather to divert those funds towards the provision of higher learning. Accordingly, it decreed that onethird of its trust revenues should be used for “ educational purposes,” to provide the salary of one or more Professors in a University or Theological College in Otago. With that offer it again approached the Government, and as a result, on June 3rd, 1869, the University of Otago came into being, the first institution of higher learning in New Zealand, and the first University in the Empire to allow women to attend classes and obtain degrees. Now that the University has become financially independent of the Church, it is worth recording that over £134,000 has been paid in grants by the Church to the Otago University. It is also peculiarly fitting that in this Centennial year the close relation of Church and University should be emphasised by the conferring of a high University degree on the Chancellor, the Very Rev. Dr D. C. Herron, and by the fact that the principal speaker at the Synod celebrations will be a leader in both Church and University circles, the Very Rev. Dr John Baillie, past Moderator of the Church of Scotland, and Professor in the University of Edinburgh— G. D.