TEACHING UNIVERSITIES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1215, 20 January 1886, Page 6

TEACHING UNIVERSITIES.

In reviewing an article in the " Melbourne University Review," the •• Leader " very sensibly remarks that there is a " class of one-sided academics to import old world ideas of the place and use of a university in a Colony like ours They seem to forget that when the senior-European universities were founded they possessed a monopoly of knowledge such as it then was. Now we have the hun-dred-handed presß scattering broadcast elaborate books on every conceivable branch of study, and converting every intelligent home into a teaching university. The professor in his expensive chair usually imparts his instruction much more imperfectly than the skilfully prepared treatises do. Let us maintain by all means an examining university, but how much more just and sensible it would be to multiply high class Bchools and colleges in populous Colonial centres and expend a goodly portion of the £25,000 per annum now absorbed by the University in distributing the services of the University professors over the country than in supporting the costly staff of lecturers at Carlton, who block the way of hosts of poor but clever country students. If tbe latter wish to take a degree they are charged fees for attendance on university lectures they cannot attend. The University of London does not act on such mean and prohibitory principles, sacrificing the use of the university to honorable dealing and to the incomes of the professors. Any educational institution that can only exist on a foundation so unsound loudly calls for reformation."