E.—7A

16

evenings a week after a day's work, and of giving in addition many additional hours to necessary private study, would prove that the physical and mental wellbeing of the student suffers, and that neither the day's work nor the University work is of sufficiently high quality. We are of opinion that the University should not allow part-time students to enrol as a matter of right. Permission to do so should be granted only after inquiry, and enrolment should be associated with definite and well-considered restrictions as to the number of subjects to be taken and presented for examination and the number of evenings to be attended. By such a method the legitimate needs of a deserving class of students would still be met, while other students now giving only part-time to their university studies would, in their own interests, and in the interests of their future service to the country, receive much more substantial benefits from university life and teaching. Certainly in a country like New Zealand, with a well-diffused prosperity, the part-time students should be in a minority, and their supposed necessities should not, as is the case in some of the colleges, dominate the position. The change will come only when the public realizes more fully what sound education in a university can give, and when it is determined that nothing short of this will be regarded as satisfactory. Among the worst effects of a university system dominated by external examination and rigidly imposed syllabuses is the fact not only that these tend to make the teaching formal and lacking in stimulus, but that they also confirm and strengthen the popular view that a university is a place which students attend merely to secure degrees which have definite occupational values. The effect of such an idea strongly held in the community is most insidious and makes progress towards the realization of truer ideals of university life and work very slow and difficult. The late President Wilson, formerly head of Princeton University, pointed out that a university was not to be regarded as a great department store where each student came to purchase with the smallest outlay of time and money some definite commodity. The ideal was a university with the twofold objects of " the production of a great body of informed and thoughtful men, and the production of a small body of trained scholars and investigators." These two functions were " not to be performed separately, but side by side, and informed with one spirit, the spirit of enlightenment."* The University of New Zealand is merely an examining body and, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it was established in imitation of the University of London when that institution was simply an examining body. The recent London Commission puts the matter very plainly when it says, " Much that is defective in the present organization of the University of London can be traced ultimately to confusion of thought about what things are essential to university education and what things are non-essential. For example, whatever importance may be attached to examinations, an examining Board can never constitute a university ; and, again, technical instruction and advanced courses of study may be multiplied indefinitely without providing university education. Of course, any educational institution may be called a university ; but, as Dr. Rashdall says, ' the name has to be associated with education of the highest type :to degrade the name of a university is, therefore, to degrade the highest educational ideal.' We do not mean, however, that what we call non-essential things ought not to be provided, but only that they can be done without a university, although some of them can be better done by a university and in as close connection as possible with the woik which only a university can do."+ Another consideration which should form, the subject of special inquiry is the number of graduates in the professional schools which the Dominion can profitably absorb. A convincing case can be made out to prove that the burden of maintaining University colleges in four centres is necessarily a heavy one for a comparatively small population. As we have stated, the work in these colleges is lacking in effectiveness by reason of insufficient sta.ff and unduly large classes. The true interests of the Dominion would be best served by a steady improvement in the quality and quantity of the teaching staff and in the conditions under which they

Restriction necessary for evening work.

A change in the cleals of the public necessary.

Confusion of thought as to essentials and non-essentials.

Is New Zealand wise in sending so many students to the University under present conditions ?

* See " Higher Education in England and Scotland," G. E. MacLean. t London University Commission, 1913, sec. 62, p. 25.