The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 1929. UNIVERSITY FUNDS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 571, 25 January 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 1929. UNIVERSITY FUNDS

A SCATHING attack lias been made on the Education Department by Professor Macmillan Brown, Chancellor of the New Zealand University. The professor’s chief complaint is directed against the theoretical limitation of subsidy provided in the New Zealand University Amendment Act passed by Parliament last winter. It is difficult to see, however, that the provision affords any real basis for dissatisfaction. Under the old arrangement there was no limit to the subsidies payable. That is, suppose a philanthropist came along with a cheque for £IOO,OOO in his pocket, the Government delved into its coffers for a similar amount. By the 1928 amendment, the limit of subsidy now payable is £25,000. Were New Zealand a country of Leland Stanfords, Rockefellers, or the like, this limitation would no doubt be serious. But in this Dominion the occurrence of benevolent plutocrats will be sufficiently rare to allow ingenious beneficiaries to ai'range payment of the money in instalments. This would overcome the limitation. It is easily seen that the difficulty is not insuperable. Under the old system of unlimited subsidy the University could employ its surplus funds as it wished. The policy beloved of Professor Macmillan Brown was to hoard it away for the purposes of scholarships. Yet while this nest-egg was accumulating, the work of the professors and lecturers was being cramped for lack of funds. It was impossible under such a system to give brilliant scholars the attention and encouragement they deserved. Lacking the brilliant men to justify its existence, the scholarship fund bore a quaint semblance to a motorgarage built by a man who owned no car. The aim of the readjustments in the financial system is to alter this —to provide more money for staffs and lectureships, and so stimulate the production of first-class men. Such a rearrangement curtails the money avilable for future diversion to the scholarship fund: hence Professor Macmillan Brown’s annoyance. The queer part of the almost vicious attack made by the censorious professor is that while there are undoubtedly certain distasteful implications about any limitation applied to educational funds, the limitation in this case, is accompanied by a more generous scale of Government grants in another direction, so that the constituent colleges are richer, instead of poorer, by the change. The public is liable to be misled by the fact that the University itself is one institution, while the separate colleges are three others. It is true that the unlimited subsidy will be replaced by a fixed subsidy plus an annual grant by Parliament, but the grant will not necessarily be niggardly, as opponents of the new scheme would have the public believe. The fact that it may be determined by Parliamentary majorities of differing and perhaps radical political opinions is an unsatisfactory feature; but political colour would really have very little influence, nor Avould its intrusion be tolerated by the public. History tells repeatedly of great Universities that have had to have their purposes defined and their energies guided by tlie interventions of Governments. It has happened to Oxford and Cambridge not once, but often. In the case of the University of New Zealand, there is no suggestion whatever that the council was pursuing a wrong policy; but the Education Department saw a chance of doing good, and seized the opportunity. In his protest against the department’s attitude. Professor Macmillan Brown is not supported by anything like a unanimous opinion among his colleagues of the academic councils.