OUR UNIVERSITY

Otago Witness, Issue 1499, 7 August 1880, Page 22

OUR UNIVERSITY

It is rather hard, considering the poor show the Otago University made in the degree lists of last year, that it should be deprived of any credit justly its due. At the degree-conferring ceremonial held in Christchurch on Thursday, Mr Fredekick Fitohett, who came up for the degrees of M.A. and LL.B., was presented as a student of the Canterbury College. We understand that Mr Fitchett read for his B.A. degree in Ohristchurch, but that his later course has been taken at the Otago University. Mr Fitchett's academical career has been a brilliant one, including, we believe, the Senior Scholarship for Latin, the Third Year Scholarship for Greek, the Bowsn Prize, two degrees and first-class honours in Arts, and a degree in Laws, and we cannot afford' to allow Canterbury College entirely to appropriate the credit of all this. It seems, moreover, absurd to summon a student residing in Dunedin to Christchurch to receive degrees, the whole of the work for which has been done here. Apropos of degrees in Laws —a distinction which the New Zealand University has been able this year to confer for the first time —we observe from the Calendar that the only law lectureship in the Colony is in connection with the Otago University. The Education Commissioners state, indeed, that v the rudiments of a law school exist in each of the Southern Colleges." As respects the Canterbury College this statement is erroneous, the Calendar just issued showing no trace of any provision, even of a rudimentary kind, in that institution for teaching law. A " law lecturer" figures on the staff of the Otago University, and lectures are actually delivered during the session—the lecturer's remuneration being fixed, we understand, at the truly economical rate of L6O per annum. Howmuchsyatematioinstruotionin law the University ought to be able $p buy foj?

£50 per annum we may imagine by reflecting on the probable gains of a legal practitioner in conducting asingle Supreme Court case. We believe the University gets a great deal more than it haß any right to expect, the gentleman who holds the appointment doing his work con (more, on principles, we suppose, of general philanthropy. There is no longer, however, the slightest need for accepting gratuitous services. The University, thanks to the increased income from Barewood, is, or speedily will be, m j an excellent financial position. The Bcale of the law lecturer's payments should be revised, and inducement afforded him to meet his students within the precincts of the University building ■$3tead. of, as at present, holding a buddled meeting in hia consulting-room, before or after business hours. We should be glad to know what use the University Council purposes making of its increased income. The library needs enlarging ; a Chair of Physics is much to be desired ; the scale upon which the Btaff is remunerated would bear revising in other instances than the one we have referred to. What ib the Council's programme ? The debate the other night on Mr Tole's University Bill revealed the fact that taeir wealth is exciting envy in the "Northtlsland, where provision educaion is yet to make. They will not . be safe in hiding their talent in a napkin.