South Canterbury Times, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1881.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2473, 21 February 1881, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1881.

The madness that appertaincth to “ much learning” has received a charming exemplification at the hands of that imposing and dangerously inflated institution, the Senate of the New Zealand University. The latest freak of the consequential nominees has been to pass a resolution instructing the Chancellor to write to the Government urging that in the event of a redistribution of seats in the House of Representatives, the University be allowed a member. It would be interesting to learn whether the score of gim-crack philosophers that constitute this Senate were in a serious frame of mind when they passed this resolution. The Tooley street tailors allowed their pompous vanity to carry them to a dangerous extreme when they assumed themselves to be the people of England, but the absurdity of their position is almost eclipsed by this aspiring flight

on tbc part of a handful of nobodics. This term “ nobodies ” is employed out of no sense of disrespect towards a senate that apes the intelligence and functions of the genuine article, but because there is no other term that can so adequately express the true nature of New Zealand University Senators. If they possess but a fractional part of the Education and intelligence that they assume when they preside over matriculation examinations they can hardly he unconscious of tbc fact that Government nominees and political nonentities arc synonymous. Like spoiled children they are constantly crying for some new toy, but this latest cbulition is so ludicrously ambitious that it can hardly fail to excite general derision. It is difficult to imagine on what ground this dignified and learned body can advance any claim to a representative in Parliament. If tbc Senate is dangerously inflated Its valour should be tempered with discretion. To flaunt their mythical importance before Parliament and the country is simply to bring down on their devoted beads the crushing effects of popular ridicule. The University balloon with its chancellors, vice-chancellors, registrars, librarians, professors, and lecturers is, after all, but a very transparent piece of buffoonery. It has only to be punctured and it must collapse. No doubt our universities arc ornaments, and very expensive ones, but on the score of practical utility tbc less said about them tbc better. They arc in the position of fat bullocks on a magnificent pastoral estate. Their graduates are nobbled, and in tbc absence ol students the positions of the professors arc neither more nor loss than sinecures. The severely denounced squatter and land shark is but a harmless caterpillar alonsidc of the magnificent parasites who luxuriate in these so-called universities. If they were universities in reality as well as in name, something might be said in their favor, but they are simply mockeries. In other parts of the world universities are to a certain extent self supporting, but here we have grazing institutions fed from hundreds of thousands of pastoral acres. This application on :he part of the Senate should have the effect of directing attention to the actual position of the New Zealand University. What are its functions ? For what purpose docs it exist ? It is true that it comes into existence periodically for the purpose of examining candidates for matriculation, scholarships and degrees ! But the honors it confers are of the most gingerbread description. Outside of New Zealand they carry no weight whatever. Its students are self-deluded. The professorial clique who fatten on its incomes lead a life of comparative idleness. The receipts for actual work done would not be sufficient to keep them in the tobacco that is needed to save them from dying of ennui. And this is the sort of institution that wants a seat in the House of Representatives. If political opinion runs in the proper direction steps will be taken not to create a University member, but to denude the educational ornaments that lead a bovine existence in this colony of their immense endowments, and to divert some of the money that is now wasted on studentless chairs in the direction of the State schools. A great deal is constantly urged about the burden of national education, but is these useless Universities and not the State schools that are subsisting on the patrimony of the public and rendering higher education such an unbearable incubus.