E.—7A

58

is regarded elsewhere, we may mention that a recent Conference of the Australian Universities unanimously resolved that one University School of Forestry, to be developed at Adelaide, was adequate for the needs of the Commonwealth. Another consideration which should not be overlooked in any proposal to establish a special school is the welfare of the student. To tempt a young man or woman to devote years of study to a course when in the nature of things there must be great difficulty in finding profitable employment at the end of it, is both unjust to the student and uneconomical for the nation. The difficulties under which students residing in centres far distant from special professional schools labour, should, we consider, be met by the provision of a special maintenance allowance. The students awarded such special allowance should be those whom careful inquiry and examination show to be possessed of the aptitudes and educational attainments necessary for success in the course proposed to be undertaken. Our inquiry has convinced us that the finance of any Special School should be kept quite distinct from that of the other schools of the University college with which it is connected. As we have already pointed out, the cost of maintaining a Special School is necessarily much heavier than that of maintaining the ordinary College Faculties, and the fact that it gives a valuable professional qualification, which may be imperilled if defects are not made good, gives the demands of those immediately responsible for it special weight, when the distribution of moneys between the different branches of college work is under consideration. If, therefore, the Special School and the other schools of the college are maintained from a common fund, it is almost inevitable that the Special School will tend to appropriate an increasing share of the common fund, to the detriment of the other schools. This has occurred both in the case of the School of Medicine and the School of Mines at Dunedin. According to the accounts handed in, the Arts and General Fund paid over last year £2,250 to the Medical School and £1,900 to the School of Mines. This grievance is aggravated by the fact that a Special School serves the whole of the Dominion and not merely the district in which it happens to be situated. It is obviously unfair that the needs of a national school should be supplied in part from the funds required for the maintenance of the local college with which it happens to be connected. We recommend that in future the grants for the maintenance of every Special School shall be entirely separate from the grants for the maintenance of the ordinary Faculties of Arts and Science of the University college concerned, and that the finance of the two schools shall be kept entirely distinct. FOUR UNIVERSITIES OR ONE : SEPARATION OR FEDERATION. The discussion upon this question has produced the most conflicting evidence and it is the matter upon which we have found most difficulty in coming to a decision. On other points —e.g., examinations, accrediting, professional schools, degree courses, &c. —both educational principle and the weight of evidence on the whole concur, and have left little doubt in our minds as to the recommendations which ought to be made. But the points at issue in this case are not so much educational as practical, and even political. There is a general agreement amongst the academic witnesses that federation offers no permanent solution of the question and in this we concur. The position of those who oppose separation most strongly may be summed up in the words of the Vice-Chancellor of Otago, Mr. W. J. Morrell, speaking on behalf of the Council of that University : " While all will recognize that separation must ultimately come, the Council is strongly and with almost complete unanimity opposed to separation now or in the near future ... in twenty or twenty-five years' time, perhaps." Again there is a very general agreement with regard to the weak points of the present system —the absence of freedom of teaching, the dominance of external

Special maintenance allowances recommended.

Finance of Special Schools.

Shortcomings of the present system.