THE NEW ZEALAND UNIVERSITY.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4847, 4 October 1876, Page 3

THE NEW ZEALAND UNIVERSITY.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE NEW ZEALAND TIMES. Sib, —Although I am not a member of the New Zealand University, I beg the favor of space in your columns to reply to the views you propounded in your leading article of today, and which I think jou will admit are hardly fair. The University of New Zealand and that of Melbourne cannot be compared. Tho one is an examining, the other a teaching body. Many of us would agree with you as to the superiority of the latter, but we do not see bur way ‘to get it. Do you ? A teaching university must have land and buildings, a staff of professors, and a costly establishment. Would the utility of such an institution to other parts of the colony than that at which it was located be such as to induce the country to maintain it ? In the present state of tho colony that must be very doubtful. The point was well considered by all those interested and well able to judge of what was desirable, and what was possible, when the University was founded.

To compare the Melbourne and the New Zealand system fairly you should compare the former with the New Zealand University, together with all its affiliated colleges, for the latter are really an important part of our University system. I think the conclusion to which any comprehensive consideration of the whole subject must lead us is, that our teaching machinery must for a long time in this colony be local in the various great centres of population, and that the central body must be confined to the limited, but no less important, sphere of conducting the examinations for scholarships and degrees. You speak of the University as a mismanaged body. As having been for some years one of the examiners appointed by the Senate, and as

having the official duty of auditing its accounts, I am unable to agree with you as to its mismanagement. ' The cost of management is exceedingly moderate, and as large per centage of the funds as possible is devoted to scholarships in the affiliated schools and colleges. A certain expenditure is necessary to enable the Senate to meet once a year, but no one who has looked oyer the published accounts can say that these expenses are excessive. The members of the Senate draw only their necessary travelling expenses. They are not paid for time, and I see no other means by which a Senate, composed, as it should be, of men in different parts of the colony, many of them poor men, could otherwise meet. The present mode of constituting the Senate, by appointment of the Governor, is admittedly unsatisfactory; it was only intended to be temporary. But the difficulty of bringing together a Convocation, consisting of a large body of graduates, without a large expenditure of the funds of the University, has been the real obstacle to putting the governing powers into the hands of such a body. I much wish it could be overcome ; meanwhile I feel that we must wait.

The Bill now before Parliament is designed to enable the Convocation to exercise its functions of electing members ef the Senate without expense. That is the first step. It also will enable men of eminence in the Universities of ! the old country, of whom we have a fair sprinkling in New Zealand, to become members of Convocation, from which they are now excluded. It will also enable the professors and masters of the affiliated colleges to take their proper place in the ; centralandhighest educational institution in the country, from which they are now practically excluded. Some of them will undoubtedly be elected on the Senate. We shall then, I hope, see still further reforms in the direction which you appear to indicate. , But in the mean time I cannot think it right or wise to ignore the difficulties with which the institution has to contend arising fromthe peculiar circumstances of this colony, or' to assume that it is mismanaged becauseit does not perform duties which it was never intended to, and at present cannot , perform. Its work is only a limited; part of the work usually performed by what we call universities; the rest is done by the local colleges; but what it does, is not, so far as I am able to judge, by any means ill done. That it may become much more useful we all believe, and it is in that belief, that those who are anxious to take a part in the University, and who are excluded, are promoting the Bill now before Parliament.—l am, &c., James Edward Fitz Gerald. September 29.