LEARNING POORLY PAID

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 298, 8 March 1928, Page 10

LEARNING POORLY PAID

NEW ZEALAND LOSES GOOD MEN PROTEST FROM PROFESSOR ( Special to THE SUK) CHRISTCHURCH, Today. “Managing clerks in city office* get as much salary as university professors, drapers’ assistants get as much as lecturers. I have no hesitation in saying that the professors and lecturers of Canterbury College are scandalously underpaid.” This opinion ■was expressed by Dr C. C. Farr, F.R.S.. D.Sc.. professor of physics at Canterbury College, to a reporter of the "Sun” who approached him on the subject of the effect of the attraction of salaries outside New Zealand upon scientists in the Dominion. Dr. Farr claimed that salaries paid to professors and lecturers of New Zealand University were ridiculously inadequate. “When I was a young man,” he continued, “professors, 24 and 25 years of age, were brought out here from Eng. land and were getting in salaries as much as the matured learned men of to-day who occupy the same positions. It is ridiculous to say that they were as good as the professors of to-day, but the value of their salary was greater and had a greater purchasing power. “By our policy of keeping salaries down we cannot be getting the best class of teacher available, or if the best man is ob ained his salary is not as high as he should get.” Dr. Farr continued that New Zealand had lost such men as Dr. J. a Condliffe and Dr. D. B. Copeland because the salaries offered them were not large enough to hold them in New Zealand. The Commonwealth was buying the best men. “After a man spent many years working for a college and has paid into the superannuation fund all the tune, the highest superannuation he can get is a measly £ 300,” concluded Dr. Farr.