Danger of elitism seen in tertiary education

Press, 11 April 1979, Page 5

Danger of elitism seen in tertiary education

PA Wellington New Zealand’s tertiaryeducation system will be undermined by ■'elitist economising” unless the technical institutes, the teachers' colleges, and the universities co-operatively put their houses in ordei. according to the professoi of history al Massey University. Dr W. H. Oliver. He told the annual graduation meeting of the Central Institute cf Technology that some legitimate costs of maintaining opportunities for financially and socially underprivileged students were mistakenly being regarded as waste and so were being made the primary target of the “economisers.” Because socio-economic status correlated highly with the capacity to gain forma] academic qualifications, but not necesarily with innate ability and intelligence. the present system had always favoured those with bet-ter-off parents. Until now, however, it had been possible to preserve at least some degree of openness to the benefit of individual students and society as a whole. That openness was now threatened as the idea

gained ground that socalled waste could be eliminated by cutting out of the system those who might, in theory, arbi'rarity be considered the most likely to drop out He could already see the danger of savings ol this kind being attempted by the further raising of tot mal entry requirements or by obliging some classes of student to pay the lull costs of tuition. "Here is where economy and elitism meet." said Dr Oliver. “It is not just that there is an impelling call to save money. There is also a covert desire to refine the educational system as a device for recruiting and sustaining the elite. “The hatchet men of the Treasury are stalking through the ternary system displaying both their power and their ignorance. Wherever the axe falls you may be sure that it falls upon those ways of

spending wlnch offer some hope that the rigidities of the system will be tempered by a second chance " Dr Oliver said, this was happening in spite of the fact that underprivileged and sec-ond-chance students often made belter use of their opportunities than others. The stringent enforcing or raising of formal entry conditions, or both. Mould frustrate potential achievement. probably without doing anything to lower waste. He foresaw the possibility ’‘that an allowance of the economisers and the elitists will reduce to insignificance the already slender element of egalitarianism in the New Zea land educational system." The effects of that would be "as observablf and as damaging in the technical institutes and the community colleges as in the universities and the teachers* colleges."