A Single “School Of Agriculture”

Southland Times, Issue 23377, 8 December 1937, Page 4

A Single “School Of Agriculture”

The School of Agriculture Bill, which was introduced into the House of Representatives yesterday, gives effect to the Government’s promise to co-ordinate the activities of Canterbury Agricultural College, Lincoln, and Massey Agricultural College, Palmerston North. These two colleges are to be formed into a New Zealand School of Agriculture which will be administered by a council consisting of eight members appointed equally by the two boards of governors. The School of Agriculture will be linked to the New Zealand University through a member of its council having a seat on the University Senate. According to a summary of the Bill printed this morning the responsibilities of the council will be to co-ordinate the work of the two colleges “with a view to the development of a progressive policy of agricultural education”, to determine a general policy of research and to collaborate with State departments in the preparation and adoption of special programmes of work. The amalgamation of the two colleges is long overdue. As teaching institutions with a common purpose, they have for years past maintained an extraordinary independence. Nor has there been any better coordination of their research work. Each has planned its own scientific investigations, with the result that there has been overlapping, waste of effort and, very often, disappointing achievement. The financial needs of the two colleges are apparently to receive better recognition in future, for the Bill provides for an annual State grant to the combined school of £27,000 compared with the £15,000 which is now given to Massey College. The Government has also stated its intention of spending up to £40,000 on equipment and improvements to the dilapidated buildings at Lincoln. It has been a standing rebuke to a primary producing country that its facilities for education in agricultural subjects should be so inadequate and so poorly organized. The amalgamation of the two centres of agricultural education under a single authority and the provision of more funds will go a long way towards remedying this situation.