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in a spirit of inquiry and not of blind faith in the authority of teacher or text-book. This cannot be effective when no real contact is possible between professor and student. Lectures to large classes may have their use, but lectures which are not associated with more intimate teaching and discussion in the tutorial class and the laboratory can never in themselves do much to produce the highly trained mind which is one of the main objectives of university teaching. When teaching in a subject consists wholly of lectures, and students are hardly known to their teachers, as we were assured was the case, it is more than likely that such classes contain a majority of those whom Newman in his " Idea of a University " describes as " those earnest but ill-used persons who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination, who have too much on their hands to indulge themselves in thinking or investigation, who devour premise and conclusion together with indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on faith, and commit demonstrations to memory and who too often, as might be expected, when their period of education is passed, throw up all they have learned in disgust, having gained nothing really by their anxious labours, except perhaps the habit of application," and, we may add, a university degree which should count for very little. The Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge Universities, 1922, expresses similar opinions in regard to large classes : "We agree with the opinion expressed by the Committee of Cambridge graduates to the effect that the highest type of university education cannot be provided wholesale, and that the - + andard of instruction must deteriorate if laboratories are overcrowded, if the number of pupils is too great for personal supervision, and if lectures have to be given to too large an audience. An increase in numbers at Oxford and Cambridge beyond a certain point would probably necessitate the abandonment of the tutorial system on which the greatness of both Universities has been largely built up."* The position in New Zealand clearly calls for remedy in this respect, for otherwise the country is deluded with the idea that it is getting the results of university training when in fact it is not. The evil effect of large classes and necessary adherence to the method of the lecture, not reinforced by tutorial or seminar work, is further accentuated by the practice so greatly in vogue among students in this country of devoting only part-time to university study. The considered opinion of the London Commission is valuable in this connection : "A university education is most effective when it is given before the struggles and pre-occupations of life in the world have begun. It is a training which ought to make great demands both upon the intellectual energy and the time of the student; on his energy because he is learning the methods of independent work carried on in an inquiring spirit; on his time because mental habits cannot be formed rapidly, nor if the mind is distracted by other cares and interests, and because if he is to get more from the instruction of the class-room or laboratory than notes in preparation for an examination, a considerable amount of leisure is essential for independent reading, for common life with fellow students and teachers, and, above all, for the reflective thought necessary to the rather slow process of assimilation."f We have the greatest sympathy with and admiration for the genuine seeker after a university education who by reason of his circumstances must necessarily become an evening student. But we are by no means convinced that all of the part-time students are unable to give full-time to their university work. Habits and customs grow up insidiously in a community, and the concessions rightly made to meet the circumstances of a special and small group of potential students have, we are assured, been taken advantage of by those who could, by the exercise of moderate self-denial, take the better course. Moreover, we learn from the statistics just prepared that 60 per cent, of the evening students are in the Government service or the teaching service. If the authorities could be induced to give to such of their young employees as were thought suitable for university work the necessary facilities for attendance at day courses, as is the practice in many other countries, the evening students would soon be reduced to manageable numbers and the emphasis of university work would be placed, as it should be, upon the day work. We are convinced that a thorough scientific and educational inquiry into the results of the practice of attending University classes on four or five

University education cannot be provided wholesale.

The evil of the large class is accentuated by the practice of evening classes.

Questionable whether many part-time students are so by financial necessity.

* Oxford and Cambridge University Commission, 1922, see. 185, p. 167. f London University Commission, 1913, sec. 65, p. 27.