THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19448, 6 November 1925, Page 11

THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM

VALUE OF INDEPENDENCE. EXAMPLE IN SOUTH AFRICA. A lecture on “The University Question’’ was given under the auspices of the Auckland Institute by Profesor A. C. Paterson in St. Andrew’s Hall, Auckland. The lecturer briefly criticised the report of the recent University Commission. There was much that was good in the report, he said. The exposure of the present system was as merciless as it was masterly. The insistence upon the necessity of a corporate university life, if university education was to have any meaning, was timely. Among the commission’s substantive recommendations, too, were some that could make only for good. But the report was stultified by two omissions; first, the failure to insist in its substantive recommendations upon the utter inadequacy of the present financial provision for university education, and secondly, the failure to face the inevitable and recommend independence for the four university colleges. In recommending the continuance of the federal system the commission had quoted with approval the findings of the South African University Commission of 1914, but it had ignored not only the fact that the report of that commission had been a stillborn child, and had never even been discussed in Parliament, but also the recent phenomenal development of university education in South Africa as the result of the establishment of four independent universities subsequent to and in spite of that report.

Professor Paterson quoted figures from the recent Budget speech of General Hertzog, the South African Minis ter for Education. In .1911 the Government expenditure on higher education was £107,000, and in 1924-5 it was £353,000. During the same period the number of students had increased from 1125 to 4645. Those were the fruits of

independence. South Africa was no wealthier than New Zealand, but the current expenditure of her colleges in 1923, £430,885, was twice as much as the current and capital expenditure of the New Zealand colleges, £202,578, and three times as much as their current expenditure alone. A number of lantern slides of the Capetown and Johannesburg Uinversity buildings, now being erected at a cost of £1,250,000 and £750,000, respectively, were shown. The astonishing development in recent years, said the lecturer, was due to the grant of independence, to the enthusiasm of Generals Smuts and Hertzog, and to the interest and support of the local communities. The municipalities of Johannesburg, Capetown and Pretoria contributed annually £ll,OOO, £5OOO and £3OOO respectively to their own universities. Even tiny hamlets voluntarily subscribed £lO or £2O to their university centre.