OUR UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 948, 27 February 1897, Page 2

OUR UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

A Costly I/Uxtiry

Another appeal is being made through the newspaper press to the people of Auckland to avail themselves of the^ advantages of the local University College and its lectures. It seems that our young people do not take kindly to the one or the other. They prefer lawn tennis to English literature, or cricket to mathematical disquisitions and problems. This is strange — very strange — but nevertheless passing true. It is now many years, since our University College was established, and extravagant predictions were made of its future usefulness and popularity. Those predictions have not been verified. University education is aspired to by very few indeed, and these chiefly of an indifferent intellectual standard. So far as the lectures are concerned, they are wretchedly attended, and as often as- not a beggarly array of empty benches faces the lecturer.

Some time ago, it was estimated that every mathematical student at the University cost the country £125 per annum. To-day, it might fairly be calculated that the lectures on such a popular subject as English cost £10 or £12 a head. The pupils pay ten shillings each, so that the loss to the public revenue is considerable. And of those who attend these lectures, a fair proportion are simpering misses in their earlier teens, or lads, intent upon availing themselves of any and every method of cramming for the j uuior scholarship examinations.

Surely this is paying a stiff price for higher education that the community neither avails itself of nor appreciates. Given a fair proportion of students, the advantages of a University in a city like Aucklandwoald.be incalculable. But the young people of Auckland don't appear to' care a tinker's curse for University training, because they would attend these lectures in crowds if they did care, and seeing that the objects aimed at by the establishment of a University are not being achieved, the question arises whether it iB right or proper that -large sums of money should be expended in providing higher education for which there is " nodemand, thus furnishing four" or five pro-

lessors with snug sinecures. la •. it reasonable that the public purse should be taxed to famish John Jones or Clara Vere de Vefe with £40 worth of education for ten or fifteen shillings?

■ . Thiß money might be better spent in the endowment of a Kindergarten or the founding of a creche, which would be useful in their own way, and which would find plenty work" to do. Or, better still, it might be profitably employed in financing a technical school or college, worthy of the name, and in which bur rising generation might be trained in mechanical knowledge. If there is no work in the community for the University to do by all means let us shut it up, and spend the money now wasted upon it in some more useful and profitable parpose.