CRISIS IN THE UNIVERSITY?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 347, 15 February 1946, Page 14

CRISIS IN THE UNIVERSITY?

(Specially Written for "The Listener" by Professor

IAN A.

GORDEN

Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Victoria University College)

of the University of New Zealand, after delivering one of the best addresses ever given befor@é the University Senate, gloomily remarked that that body was administering a third-rate University and called for a five-year plan to improve this state of affairs. This startling statement from such an authority has come as something of a shock to a community which has been more accustomed to being told that its educational system is one of the best in the world. The truth is that university education in this country is rapidly breaking down. Unless some immediate and _ substantial financial aid is found for the colleges, university education, as it is understood all over the world, will disappear in New Zealand. | FEW weeks ago the Chancellor "On the Cheap® This Dominion has always ruc a University C= me cheap, and in tne last few years the position has grown progressively worse. More and more young men and women are turning to the University as the proper place in which to equip themselves for professional and for public life. Unfortunately in our present plight each additional studeni, instead of bringing a new accession of strength to the University, reduces the chances both for himself and for others of their receiving a proper university training. Staffing, buildings, equipment, which were inadequate ten and twenty years ago, are to-day quite unequal to the task. Classes are enormous. Roomfuls of two and three hundred are so common now that they have ceased even to be a grim joke. In my own college the largest classroom has had to be fitted with a microphone and a couple of loudspeakers to carry the voice of the professor to the .farthermost corners. Laboratories are packed morning, afternoon, and evening with relays of students queueing up for the available apparatus. The pressure on the library is so great that students face examinations without having had a chance of getting near some of the important books. In most departments, apart from some junior assistance, there has been no addition to the staff for years. In a typical de-~ partment’ the number of students has grown in 15 years from ofte to three hundred. The staff is still two teachers of full status. The only change is that

a part-time assistant has been replaced by a full-time assistant. No institution with these conditions can claim to be offering real university education to the students of this country. More and More Students The rise in the last few years in student numbers has been one of the most remarkable social changes in the Dominion. I quote the figures for my own college because they are most available, but they can be paralleled in every other university institution in the country except for the medical school, which has placed a severe limitation on the number of entries. Until the last war the college roll. was round about the 400 mark. From 1920 to 1936 the figure was stabilised at something over 700. Just before the recent war numbers began to rise. In 1937 the numbers first rose over 900. In 1938 and 1939 they were over 1,000. The mid years of the war, when the men students were largely in the forces, saw numbers drop to about 800. As the Dominion settled to war conditions numbers rose once more. In 1943 they were over the 1,000. again. In 1944 they were 1,200. In 1945 they were 1,450. In 1946, with the full return of men from overseas, the generous granting of rehabilitation bursaries, and the release of many young men and women from manpower restrictions, the numbers ‘must be considerably larger-1,600 is a conservative estimate and they may well be near 1,700 or 1,800. But whatever the numbers for the coming session there is the certainty that they cannot at their lowest be less than double the average numbers for the years 1920-1936. There has been absolutely no attempt to provide equipment or staff for a college which has doubled itself in ten years. The Dominion must give up the idea that its University is a small affair. The total number of students in the University of New Zealand was, in 1943, 5,440; in 1944, 7,320; in 1945 (the exact figures are not yet available), well over 8,000. If we compare this with the enrolments for British Universities (the figures are for 1939, the last figures available for a non-wartime year) the results are staggering. If we reckon by enrolment figures alone, the only British university which is larger than the University of New Zealand is London. Cambridge is smaller in size (6,000); Oxford is smaller (5,600); Manchester with its 2,800, Leeds with its 2,150, Edinburgh with its 3.700, and ) Glasgow with its 4,500, are comparatively lesser affairs; while "smaller" universities like Aberdeen (1,250), St. Andrews (1,100), Birmingham (1,600), and Bristol (1,200) are almost insignificant. On this basis there are from a dozen to 20 British universties or university colleges which are each smaller than any one of the university ‘colleges of.the New Zealand University. "We Ought to be Proud..." On these figures we ought to be proud of our University, proud of the oppor- | tunity it is affording the young men and women of the Dominion to equip themselves. in the scholarship, in the liberal arts and in the technical skills which are

so essential for the life of the community. Instead we read our Chancellor’s comments on our third-rate standing with an unpleasant feeling that he is in some ways near the truth. ‘The reason is not far to seek. The generosity of the Government and of some private indi--viduals has made it possible for almost any competent student, whatever his or her financial position, to come to university and read for a degree. But no authority, governmental, municipal : or private, has ensured that once the student reaches university he will meet conditions that are comparable with even one of the lesser British universities. How much atténtion can the New Zealand student expect from his teacher? In 1944 the roll at Victoria University College was 1,200. In that year there were on the staff 33 full-time members and 11 part-time assistants and parttime lecturers, the latter doing roughly one quarter of the work of a full-time teacher. This gives a total of 37. In Aberdeen (which is not accounted a wellstaffed university) during the year 1939 there were almost the same number of students -1,250. The teaching staff, however, totalled 126 full-time members and 60 part-time members-on the same basis (four part-time lecturers as the equivalent of one full-time lecturer), a total of 141, or four times the staff of Victoria University College. The critic may reply, "But this is Scottish education, which has a tradition." Let us take an example from England. I will avoid Oxford and Cambridge and the major northern Universities and choose the smaller regional University of Bristol. Its enrolment in 1939 was also 1,000. Its staffing in that year was 215, or more than five times the staff of my college with the same number of students. A university can give just about as good value as the community is prepared to pay for. If this Dominion is content with a university with a staff less than one quarter of that of a British provincial university of the same size, then it has only itself to blame if the university begins to feel the strain. If, after the British Treasury has recently increased for post-war work the block grant to the British universities from £2.3 million to £5.9 million, New Zealand is content to sit back and watch its university struggle with the increasing pressure of numbers till suffocation is. reached, then the community has only itself to blame if the lamp of university learning becomes extinguished in this country. : The Lamp Still Burns The extraordinary thing is that the lamp still burns. In spite of a third-rate staffing ration, both staff and students have done some really first-rate work. The quality of the work is excellent; the quantity is an index of the poor conditions under which it is carried out. But our good graduates can be outstanding. The newspaper reader sees in his daily paper references to "The University." It may be eagerly-awaited lists of University Entrance Examination passes, or (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) a note of some newly-appointed university professor, or a report of discussions that take place on the University Senate. To the reader "The University" is the same place in each report. And so it would be in any other country. The student, the matriculation candidate, the professor, the Senate would all all be members of the one institution. But the

university structure of New Zealand is such a ridiculously complex affair that few people even Concerned with it really understand all its ramifications; and its complexity, no less than the apathy of the country, is a reason for our impoverishment. The University of New Zealand is made up of four University colleges and to it are attached the two agricultural colleges. These colleges are éach (except in their method of control and the fact that they do not individually grant degrees) precisely what in Britain, America or elsewhere are regarded as "universities," i.e., they have the teaching staff, libraries, laboratories and a body of students which make up the corporate university. The colleges are governed by college councils, each of which administer such funds as they possess, whether from endowments or from government grants. The University of New Zealand (which is essentially an examining body), though it is made up of the colleges, has an existence independent of them. Its governing body is the Senate. Officially the Senate can be concerned only with the conditions under which degrees may be examined and granted and not with internal affairs in the colleges. Until the recent speech of the Chancellor, the Senate has shown no interest (partly because it has no official jurisdiction) in such vitally-important matters as the equipment of laboratories and libraries and the staffing of its component collegés. We are thus in the odd situation that the supreme authority in the University is unable to make a direct approach to the Government for extra funds for component colleges, even when individua) members of Senate know that the situation in the colleges is desperate. It is to the College Council and not to the Senate that a college must look if funds are required. Here a real difficulty arises. None of the College Councils carries enough weight with the Government and none of them has been able to meet the rapidly-worsening situation in the colleges. They have secured

in the past few years only a trickle of extra moneys for the work of the colleges. The Senate has the necessary weight of authority, but it has no jurisdiction. The Council Have the right to ask for finance, but they have neithér the influence nor the initiative that, amid the clamour of Government departments all demanding further funds, alone can secure a hearing for university education. "We Have Been Let Down..." That is one part of the story. We. have, quite frankly, been let down by our governing bodies, and, behind them, by the Government, who will have to rise speedily to a sense of their responsibilities if the institutions which they administer are to remain much longer worthy of the name of university colleges. The other part is the curious, leck of interest which the community at large shows towards the University. I suppose in a newer country it is understandable. After all, New Zealand was founded without the help of a University. It is a commonplace to say that only in Dunedin is the University regarded by the public with anything approaching respect and. affection. Yet this country needs its University, just as the University needs the backing of the whole community. We need the University not only for skilled practitioners in the different professions, but for that width of interest and balanced grasp of principles which are essential for men and women who must face the world of the coming years, things which they are unlikely ever to acquire if they must be educated by droves with minimal supervision as if they weré components on an assembly-belt and not the youth of the country and the citizens of tomorrow. University education, it must never be forgotten, is not just the responsibility of a handful of university teachers. It is the responsibility of the whole community, a debt they owe to their young people and to their own future development. Help is required-quickly-to° save university education in New Zealand. What happens to the wealth.of this small! country with che highest standard of living in the world? It certainly doesn’t come our way. We could allay the Chancellor’s fears and have a first-rate university in this country within a few