The Evening Star SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1928. THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY.

Evening Star, Issue 20137, 30 March 1929, Page 12

The Evening Star SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1928. THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY.

r.v the course of a striking address delivered in Canterbury College last week, Professor Wall, who holds the chair of English at that institution, made a very clear analysis of the problems which at present confront the university colleges in New Zealand. The occasion was the annual celebration of Commemoration Day to remember benefactors of the college, and incidentally to attempt to stimulate other people to follow suit. Though Professor Wall had his own college specially in mind, his remarks might equally apply to Otago University, and, indeed, to higher education generally. Ho has just returned after spending a year in the Old Land, following thirty years’ service as a New Zealand professor, and his keen observation of tendencies in the rew British provincial universities enabled him to make some very interesting comparisons of our own system with Great Britain’s, incidentally to warn local authorities against certain tendencies visible there, and to make recommendations for the elimination of evils already existing in our own midst. He found that, to quote the words of Sir Arthur Quiller-Coucb, concentration upon lectures had become “ the curse of the newer British universities.” Even Oxford and Cambridge, although they were “ no longer nurseries of idleness, snobbery, and athleticism,” were, in the opinion of ,so high at) authority as Lord Hugh Cecil, suffering from a. “ dreadful tendency to degenerate merely into a mechanism for passing examinations and taking degrees.” The older universities had still the best system of teaching by “ actively encouraging the students to acquire knowledge ” rather than merely copy down lectures; but to-day there was as much cramming and coaching going on as at the newer establishments. One obvious effect of all these tendencies was a decline in social life and “ the participation in the various college societies which has always been considered so vital a fact in a true university education. ’ The general result was that university education seemed to be used as a means of emphasising the money-making side of life, and so caused those controlling it to lose the ideal of its existence—the needs of the mind and the soul of the students.

Nor, coming home, (lid Professor Wall see things any better in New Zealand. The same tendencies were at work. Real education was a negative quantity, research was pushed into the background; and yet these should bo Ike two main functions of a university. Indeed, ho considered that the university—ns distinct from its special schools of engineering, medicine, law, etc, —had become, merely a special school to supply teachers for the various primary and secondary schools. Of what Aldous Huxley called “ the ..genuine philomaths,'’ or lovers of learning for its own sake, there was none. Ho called upon the university to develop and oneourago the corporate life of the college, which tended more than anything to make a real university. They should abolish or modify the present system of instruction by lectures alone. Evening lectures should bo kept for industrial requirements only. The practice of granting degrees to exempted or extra-mural students should be discontinued. A student should bo given less choice of subjects for an arts degree, and courses could be greatly improved by making the various subjects dependent rather upon intellectual needs than upon examinations. With regard to the present duplication in the. education of teachers by the university and the training college, Professor W all urged that these two institutions should be brought into n more harmonious relationship by the former attending to the theoretical and the latter to the practical side. The professor concluded by making a new suggestion that, leaving the present colleges to carry on as a series of special schools, a real university should ultimately be set up in New Zealand at, say. Nelson, where a selected lew of the best students should leisurely pursue learning for its own sake on the best, methods of the older English universities. This he considered the. only chance of getting hack to real university education. IVe hesitate, however, to agree with Professor Wall that all university students and their professors are hopelessly bound to a lecture and examination system with no direct interest in their study for its own sake, though things may not bo what they should he. We doubt also whether a university at Nelson would achieve a higher tone than the present colleges with their growing traditions. We think further that Professor Wall has failed to notice the increasing number of genuine .philomaths that are being gathered in by the extension classes of the W.E.A. This is where will he found those who pursue learning for its own sake —for love of it, not in hope of gain. And it may be that out of this work will ultimately develop a people’s university in the clays to come.