UNIVERSITY REFORM.

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2680, 28 January 1916, Page 6

UNIVERSITY REFORM.

Sir, —May I, with your good leave, offer a few remarks provoked by sonic recent utterances of the Chancellor of tlie University at the meeting of the Seuate?

The Chancellor's expression of regret that tho Board of Studies should have spent time in making recommendations which the Senate has no power to carry into effect is absurd, besiuis being open to a strong suspicion of disingenuousness, because the powers of the Senate, as indeed he presently admits, can readily bo extended by legislation. His objection to the institution and maintenance of two standards of examination in arts and in science, on the alleged ground that the like treatment has not been recommended in other faculties presents tho same characteristics of disingenuousness and absurdity. The true position is, that the ground formerly covered, sparsely enough, by the faculty of arts alone, the ground, that is to- say, of general culture, is now shared between the two faculties of arts and of science, between which, however, there is 110 sharp line of demarcation. In each of these two faculties, accordingly, there is room for a lower, or pass, or Bachelor's degree, to indicate the attainment of a wL SOlla ' J k standard of general culture. Y en pushed beyond the pass stage to the professional stage, the study of arts or of science is 110 longer general, but special. Arts being then broken up into literature, languages, history, jurisprudence, philosophy, etc., while science forks into its many branches, Pin® and applied, in which a student may specialise 011 a higher plane, intensively. "What is to happen'," says the Uiancellor, "in the law, medical, musical, engineering, and other technical defines does not appear." Possibly not to the Chancellor, though it must be sufficiently apparent to anyone else. \\ uat would be the sense, for instance, of granting a pass degree in such a faculty as engineering? It would in- ). c , s°, er general culture, for lack ot breadth, nor professional competence, m. depth and height. Ihe same weakness is again painfully apparent in the 1 Chancellor's criticisms ot tho movement—tho propaganda, if ho prefers that word —in the direction of having the examinations of the University conducted by 'the University itself, and not by alien or absentee examiners. •By a trick that is no doubt quite legitimate in litigation he has mads this to appear as a proposal to make tho examinations internal to the several colleges as distinct from the University, and even to allow the individual professor to examine his own pupils for degrees.' It is needless to say that no such nonsensical notion can ever have been entertained by- the Board of otudies.

He has. 'tried further confusions with uhe Senate and with the public by quoting the alleged practices of other, universities, in wliicli express provision exists against, the examination of any candidate by his own teacher. Now, I dare say (the Chancellor was perfectly honest in this argument, for he may have overlooked one very important point—ono that I consider a vital point —in which our practice has departed from that •of tho older universities. Oxford (the only ono of which I have personal experience) holds that the essential part of every examination is the oraL part, and that the paper work is only subsidiary. The papor work, she considers, is of a comparatively mechanical and wholesale character, and is made necessary, or at all events convenient, only by the largeness of tho numbers of the candidates. The written answers to a printed paper can be looked over and marked by squads of assistant examiners, each of them taking only one question, or even a part of a question, as directed by his chief, lhe idea that any examiner could discriminate in favour of his own pupils is sheer nonsense. But when the preliminary paper work has been dealtwith, and the actual examination, tho oral examination, begins, then would be the time when a candidate's coach, ,f . allowed to examine him, could put mm through a preconcerted catechism, and so defeat the purpose _ of tho examination.. My principal . reason for advocating tne abolition of the external examiner is that I hold very strongly the Oxford view—indeed it has been forced on me irresistibly, by my sorrows as an examiner the view that an examination is essentially oral, and that no true examiantion can be effected unless the candidate is personally confronted with the examiner. Now, this theory of examination has been lost sight of by the University of New Zealand; the ancillary paper 'work has been allowed to usurp the whole realm of the examination, and the New Zealand degrees accordingly resemble a paper currency without a gold basis. The most rudimentary sense of humour would have saved the Chancellor from the absurdity of arguing that if the teaching staff of tho University is w> be allowed to examine for degrees it will be necessary to abolish the Pub-' he Service examinations and others. Does he expect us to take him seriously, or is he merely committing a witticism, when he_ proposes that the results of a competitive examination should.be determined, by the rival tutors of the candidates? ' Bearing in mind the pitfalls of consistency and uniformity that ever yawn round the lawyer, the philistine, and the politician, ono is tempted to wonder that our good Chancellor has not rather proposed, in conformity with ] > ls , avowed principles, to conduct our l üblic Service examinations in .the mounains of the moon or in the Orkney Islands," instead of holding thorn at Wellington.

My purpose, however, in addressing 70 11 1 sir, is not to argue the case for the abolition of examination by absentee examiners, a case which is strong enough to argue itself, but only to call attention to the falsity and absurdity of some of the arguments urged on the other side. The cause of the absentee examiner must indeed be pretty desperate when his advocate stoops to complicate the question of the purity and dignity of our examinations with a question of the summation and balancing of sixpences. "Why was this waste of the ointment,made?"—l am, etc., VIVA VOCE.