“Shortsightedness” May Limit Student Numbers

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28266, 2 May 1957, Page 9

“Shortsightedness” May Limit Student Numbers

“I can think of no country in which the demand for higher education is as great as it is in New Zealand and where there is so little opportunity for getting it other than through the university,” said Dr. F. J. Llewellyn, rector of Canterbury University College, speaking on university education in Christchurch last evening. “All the colleges are overcrowded, and Auckland and Canterbury will almost certainly be forced to limit numbers in science and possibly in engineering in 1958, 1959, and 1960. "Failed in Task” “This is exclusion, not on academic grounds, but because those responsible for planning for the future failed in their task, or failed to foresee what that task was to be,” Dr. Llewellyn said. “By 1962 or 1963 there should be sufficient space if all the building planned in Auckland, Canterbury, Victoria, and Otago is completed according to schedule; but in the interim period the university—largely through its own shortsightedness—has lost one of its freedoms and has become the pawn of expediency. The university will suffer and so will some potential students. “There are very real difficulties in limiting numbers in the exist-

ing circumstances and very real difficulties in deciding rapidly at the beginning of a university year whether or not it is necessary to limit numbers.” Dr. Llewellyn spoke of the problems of fitting in large numbers of students choosing tremen-dously-varied courses and mentioned how all applicants were placed in science this year only because some intending students did not come forward. Rearrangement

"It is time that some students had to rearrange their courses and that some others who sought enrolment in single subjects were forced into other subjects,” he said. "Our general principle would be to give a high priority to the best qualified, to those who had spent two years in the Sixth Form, but the illustrations I have given show that the final decision is not easy to make. “Nevertheless, we have gained valuable experience without doing any student any serious harm, and I -um sure that if it becomes necessary to limit numbers in 1958 and 1959 it will be justly done. This is not a defence of the limitation of numbers,, merely an explanation and an as<« surance of fair play,”Dr. Llewellyn said.