University Life

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 386, 21 June 1928, Page 15

University Life

From yesterday’s late Edition.

ITS APPLICATION TO BUSINESS NEEDS TO-DAY’S CAPPING ADDRESS “Some day our university will be set free, and no longer dragged at the heels of a college system. It is our duty now to prepare it for that day,” said Sir George Fowlds, president of the Auckland University College Council, at the annual capping ceremony yesterday. “In five years' time the college will celebrate its jubilee,” said Sir George. “By that time the college will have its feet firmly set on the path toward its proper place in the community. The problem ever confronting those responsible for the proper working of a modern university is this: ‘How can we bring it into and keep it in touch with the community whence it derived its birth, and in the midst of which it has its daily life and being? I shall in this sense to-day call the college a university, and not a university college, for because of the unexampled (so far as New Zealand is concerned) growth of this great province and city of ours, the college cannot for ever be I dragged at the heels of a college sys- j tem instituted at the founding of what j has been called "that unfortunate ac- J cident of 1536 which placed a purely examining body on the university! throne in London.' EMANCIPATION “Some day our university will be set free to merge fully into its own community, and it is our duty to set it now upon lines which will prepare and fit it to ciaim that freedom and then to use it wisely and well. “Universities have always been moulded by the needs of their times—although often they have lagged behind changes in their communities. The universities of the 12th and 13th centuries, Italian, French and English, were professional schools for the study of medicine, law and theology. Universities have ever been vocational — even the earliest purely cultural universities, as these contemplated the three learned professions. The liberal arts originated as vocational studies and remained so through the Middle ! Ages. “In order to obtain the right perspective. one should realise that Latin ; was the Esperanto of that period—the common medium for all cultural and scientific education. This must not be taken to mean, however, that university education should be exclusively vocational, but that it must inevitably have a professional bias. The ideal involves: (1) The higher training of young men and women for specific vocations in life; (2) provision for investigation in all fields of human knowledge; and (3) arising out of the former two, intellectual service to the community . “In addition to the formal education conducted within its walls, the university should also be the centre of adult education and be prepared to take the lead in the intellectual life of the community and the solution of its , problems.” CIVIC EDUCATION Sir George said that that cay he. had the pleasure and privilege of referring to the step taken by his. Worship the Mayor in approaching him with the request that Auckland's uni- I versity should provide a series of lectures on the more practical aspects of comparative local government. and finance. His aim was the creation oi a well-informed body of adult citizens capable of intelligent examination of civic affairs. Such a step was unique in the history of the Dominion, and in so far as it specialised in examination of local government as distinct from national public administration, unique probably in the Southern Hemisphere. He [could say advi&edly that it maik.«*d an

epoch in the history of the university and the city, for properly handled, it would grow into a civic research department which would be one of the outstanding assets of the community, and which would forge between town and gown that link which was ever imperatively necessary for the complete growth of a modern civic university, and for that creation of that mutual interest, which was the vital urge in the joint growth. Sir George Grey held man’s highest education to bo that which taught him the rights and duties of citizenship*. No call could be more noble—indeed here was the essence of all service and religion. “TRUSTEE OF WISDOM” The following definition of one of the duties of a university had always appealed to him: “A university Is a trustee for. the wisdom, philosophy, taste and literature of the past, the warden of the gains of the human spirit which have accumulated through the ages.” Now of what use, asked Sir George, was that trusteeship in an isolated institution cut off from the mother-love of its parent community as a whole? The link they now contemplated was a small beginning toward that chain which in years to come would make the city and the university an integral whole. In New Zealand they were apt to consider that university education, being still in its infancy, in an infant country, could make no appreciable contribution to the knowledge of the world. It should be known, however, that the colleges of this country contain, scattered through their staffs, the beginnings of our future corps of resarch workers—men who, in their pursuit of knowledge, spent all their leisure in that work, and part of their none too sufficient income in the purchase of apparatus for the better carrying out thereof. The universities could not expect to he allowed to guard the accumulated knowledge of the ages without being called upon to show aji annual profit and loss account. They were expected to show an annual interest on the capital endowment sum. They must always be careful, when considering scientific research, to frown on any attempt to press for results immmediately applicable to industry. The greatest practical results had never been immediate, but their greatness had been in no wise diminished on that account. THE FULL LIFE A university should not be merely a seat of learning and research. It must 1 be a seat of the highest and best teaching for every department of technical and professional life. In the present stage of development of the country and of its university education, they were not yet faced with the task of finding in the business world a market j for the university graduate, with the j exception of the graduate in science, I who had fitted himself for a particular niche in a particular department of ! industry. At present the reverse held. The j young man obtained his position in the ■ commercial world, and after the day’s | work came for evening lectures Jin subjects which related, in the majority, exclusively to his own particular line : of business. Ho then as a rule went straight away to study in the short period remaining between his arrival at his home and the hour of his retiri ing to bed. He missed a great part of | the glorious university menu always spread out for the man of adequate | standard who can and would partake |of it—the mixing at leisure with J fellow'-students of kindred intellectual attainments, the arrival at the realisation that he could hold his own with the next man in all developments of university life as well as he can hold it in the lecture room. The playingfields, the students’ club, the debating societies, could teach him that he had something more than mere intellect—that every student, each in his own degree. had character and power which would determine his success in other walks of life.