The Otago Witness, DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, AUGUST 18.

Otago Witness, Issue 1342, 18 August 1877, Page 13

The Otago Witness, DUNEDIN, SATURDAY, AUGUST 18.

In his paper entitled " Higher Education," in the New Zealand Magazine, Professor Shand has done good service to the cause. Again and again we have pointed out in these columns the fact that the University of New Zealand has been framed after the least desirable model that could well have been found in the whole civilised world, in so far as our own colonial needs are concerned. The University of London, upon whose lines it has been built up, is suited for the particular wants of a populous country where teaching bodies were very numerous, and examining bodies exceedingly few and far between. The need for such an institution could only arise where there had been extreme apathy and indifference going on year after year with regard to the supply of the higher education. Further than this, the reason of its existence is only to be found in the fact that overlooking from a high outside stand-point some hundreds of rival teaching bodies, it had a peculiar and almost unique duty imposed upon it of stamping on the alumni reared here and there the hall mark of its approval. The circumstances that rendered its creation necessary were such as could not by any possibility whatever arise in a new country. Was this obvious truth we wonder the reason why our Legislature — wise, perhaps, in many commercial, agricultural, and economic matters, but singularly, unwise, in all that concerns higher education — thought well to copy the most unsuitable model it could have found? We should feel more than half inclined

here to point a moral aa to unwisdom of Legislative interference with matters it does not understand, but that we are compelled to do our members of Assembly the justice to say that we believe nothing was farther from their minds in instituting the University of New Zealand than the creation of such a body as now drags out a useless life under that .title. By a series of unfortunate accidents, they have drifted into the present anomalous condition of things. No one, perhaps, would be more amazed at the existing abortion than the original propounders of a scheme for a Colonial University. The idea undoubtedly was that the Colonial University should be placed in Otago, and be wedded to the University of Otago, which body should supply the main teaching power. Professor Shand has reminded us how this proposal fell through owine to a series of Provincial jealousies. Nothing, perhaps, has suffered more wofully from this one cause than the higher education of the Colony. Every friend to it must, for this reason, be very glad indesd at the abolition of the Provinces. Is it not possible now to reconsider the situation, and, laying on one side the old bickerings and miserable jealousies, endeavour to do something for the Colonial institution which might render it of permanent benefit to the whole of the two Islands? We have already gained sufficient experience to tell us that — as might have been expected — many of the teaching bodies here are quite unequal to their tasks. If the reports of the examiners, which 'lave been referred to as evidencing "an unsatisfactory state of things," were made public, perhaps more attention would be given to the fact that throughout New Zealand scholarship is almost extinct, and that its place has been by no means filled up by proficiency in any of those other subjects which, in the minds of a great many, are of infinitely more importance than mere scholarship. It is simply shameful that the money voted by the Assembly should be put by year after year because there are no candidates for the scholarships to which alone the funds are devoted. The mere existence of this one fact is sufficient to show that the Colonial University has proceeded in a wrong direction, and that it is attempting what is not required, while it is leaving undone what is essentially requisite. A lot of useless under-officered teaching institutions exist now for less than half a million of people, doing little superior work at all, and doing that little very badly, two bodies, and two only, in Otago and Canterbury, rising above Grammar Schools to the dignity of Colleges. These can never in the future, as they have never in the past, do the work wanted. The Colonial institution remains, and will remain for half a century, a head without a body — a building without foundations. "We look to. the Assembly to remodel it.