Large Number Of Ex-Servicemen Trained By Massey College

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 42, 30 April 1948, Page 7

Large Number Of ExServicemen Trained By Massey College

Three farms —sheep, dairy and poultry—surround the Massey College main building, a massive, creeper-clad centrepiece which, with easy hill country at its back, dominates the fertile Manawatu landscape, adaptable equally to sheep •and to dairy cattle. Up to 750 students now pass through the College annually, and of these a considerable proportion are ex r servicemen. More than 1400 of these men have now undergone courses at the College. It was in 1944 that the College, while the war was still* on, increased its war-reduced enrolments by 90 ex-servicemen. They were the vanguard of an oft-changing company which reached .its numerical peak in 1947.

Massey College has had only one principal, Professor G. S. Peren, and it is fitting that, in 1924, he should have been appointed to fill the first Chair of Agriculture of the University of New Zealand, at Victoria College. A year later Professor W. Riddet was appointed to a similar'position at Auckland .University College. Two or three years of work severely limited by urban sites convinced the two colleges that a rural setting and the pooling of resources were essential. Accordingly the first of the College farms, the property of the late Mr J. Batchelar, was purchased in December, 1926, the Massey Agricultural College Council met for the first time in February, 1927, and in June of that year the college entered into occupation of the property and set about organising it for' teaching and research.