HONORARY DEGREES.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 228, 26 September 1928, Page 6

HONORARY DEGREES.

The New Zealand Universities Amendment Bill contains an interesting clause which proposes to invest the University Council with power to grant honorary degrees. Hitherto our University, unlike other academic bodies of similar status, has not possessed the right to confer such degrees, and this defect in its constitution should certainly be remedied. The reasons that from time to time induce "other universities to include in their list of "alumni" eminent public men who have not attended lectures or passed examinations should appeal quite as strongly here as in Britain or America. Not only distinguished strangers, but citizens of our country who have gained or deserved fame in the studies or pursuits of Arts, Science, Law, or Literature, outside our colleges, might well receive such recognition, and the University might be sure that, to use the timehonoured formula, in honouring them it would be conferring even greater honour on itself. This enlargement of the powers of the University Council seems to us highly desirable, and no doubt the proposal will be promptly endorsed by Parliament.