THE UNIVERSITY.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 357, 26 April 1946, Page 22

THE UNIVERSITY.

Sir-The address to the Senate of the University of New Zealand by the new Chancellor was an event in the University’s history. It inspires, and it gives a lead which the University has lacked. I think, however, that Mr. Justice Smith .would have made his strong case even stronger if he had paid a tribute to the quality of many of the University’s products. Numbers of students from our University have done ~ ell abroad, sometimes against the strongest competition. Not only have they won

many honours in overseas universities, but they have obtained important posts in many countries. The record of our Rhodes Scholars is good. I was particularly interested in Miss McQuilkan’s comment in The Listener. She cites New Zealand doctors in Britain. I have excellent authority for supporting her statement that they stand in high repute, "Very high," I should say. She also mentions New Zealand students of English. Some years ago I happened to be personally interested in the results of the English Honours School at Oxford. Of eight students who got a first that year, three were New Zealanders. Two were men from Auckland University College, and the third was a woman from Canterbury, who, I believe, went straight from a secondary school there to Oxford. Kenneth Sisam, now Secretary of the Oxford University Press, was a Rhodes Scholar from Auckland and a specialist in English. It is clear from the success of these students, those named by Miss McQuilkan, and others, that there must have been a good deal of sound teaching of English in our secondary schools and university colleges. Certainly the University system needs reform, but to say that these successes have been achieved in spite of the system would seem un-

just:

FATHER OF STUDENTS

(Wellington).