THE UNIVERSITY AT THE CROSSROADS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 359, 10 May 1946, Page 12

THE UNIVERSITY AT THE CROSSROADS

(Written for "The Listener"

by

PROFESSOR

I.A.

GORDON

University. This week I hope to be more cheerful. Not that the causes of gloom have disappeared. Far from it. Our college roll at Victoria is over 2,000. My first-year class of 320 packs in somehow. There is talk of-an increased grant .. . there is talk of army huts. But there was an item in the newspapers recently which overshadows these rumours, though its ‘significance may not have appeared obvious. New Zealand is sending a group of four representatives to a conference of the Royal Society of London, the | oldest organisation for scientific research -in the world. The four men are the secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, the head of the Cawthron Institute, and two University Professors, of chemistry and _ of bacteriology. This official recognition of the place of research work in the University. is welcome and timely, for the Dominion must soon make up its mind whether university work in this country | is to go forward or go back. The answer | lies almost entirely in the facilities provided for research. FEW weeks ago I wrote a very gloomy article on the Where Originality Counts What differentiates university education from every other kind of education is the emphasis laid on original work. There are many things to be done in a university. The duty of teaching and examining, the training for certain professions, the reassessment of the values on which our civilisation is built, the scholarly and balanced analysis of problems in science and economics and other fields of social significance-all of these fall to the lot of the university worker. But there is one thing common to all subjects and all departments. The true university worker is continually extending the frontiers of knowledge. He is a specialist, who knows something thoroughly, not because he has read it carefully in somebody else’s text-book, but because he has done original work on the subject himself. This is why such stress is laid all over the world in appointing people to university work on concrete evidence that the man or woman is capable of independent work, whether it be in discovery or in judgment or in critical insight. What is research? I suppose to many people it is a new discovery, say in biology or in physics, like penicillin or the atom bomb. This is only one side (though a very important side) of research. Research is the application of critical intelligence and independent judgment to any problem that is capable of systematic study. Sometimes its "usefulness" is obvious, as

in the discovery of a new drug. Sometimes its "usefulness" is not so immediately apparent. Half an inscription is

turned up in Asia Minor; some scholar works out the details of Elizabethan printing. Who cares? For the moment perhaps only a handful of men and women; though the final result may be a revolution in our conception of history or a new insight into the plays of Shakespeare. Fundamental and Applied Research Scientists make the distinction between fundamental and applied research, fundamental research with no "practical" end in view, applied research with the practical job of finding a specific product such as a new plastic. It is significant that applied research can be built systematically only on a basis of fundamental research, which so can turn out in the end to be remarkably practical. A good example of this is in psychology, where the findings of fundamental research on the working of. the human mind have in workshop and factory exceedingly useful results in the applied research of Industrial Psychology. Research does not stop here. Insight and independent judgment set to the problems of politics, education, economics, history, literary criticism (to name but a few of the fields of human endeavour) all come within its scope. In the humanities, research often produces not so much new facts as a new synthesis, a new interpretation, and an original point of view. A Choice Must be Made To-day the University in this country stands at the crossroads, and a choice must be made which is of profound significance for the future of New Zealand. Does the University continue, as it has largely had to do in the past, to provide only the basic training for young undergraduates in the sciences and the liberal arts, or are we to develop in addition a research programme that will bring us in line with universities elsewhere? As a teaching institution, concerned with the primary training of young men and women, the University has (in spite of its obvious disabilities) done and continues to do a good job. Our young graduates are in most subjects up to English standards of competence and training and can compete on equal terms. But beyond that stage there is little or nothing. Staff and. graduate students who look towards advanced work in their subjects are faced with the inadequacy of New Zealand libraries, the poverty of equipment, and the lack of contact with co-workers. As a

teaching university for undergraduates we are as good as most. As a home for research we are nowhere. The inevitable happens. The University does the primary training. The students with scholarly leanings go overseas for their research work. Many never return. If they come back to university work, they are overwhelmed by teaching duties and, even where they have the character and persistence to continue, their research is ‘slowed down to spare-time occupation. Projects of a a few months’ duration under proper conditions tail on for years. The university worker himself is almost powerless to alter all this. His three or four hundred students keep him only too well occupied.

It is for New Zealand to decide whether she must continue to see her Rutherfords leave these shores forever (while we are happy to claim afterwards that they "did their M.Sc." in this country) or whether we can bring them back to work in conditions that can prove fruitful. One of the most disturbing things in recent years in the University has been the resignation of heads of departments. It is natural and right that assistants and lecturers should look around for better jobs. But when heads of departments (whose status is already as high as their profession can offer) join in the exodus overseas, we should begin to feel uneasy. Does Size Matter? There is no longer any real reason why New Zealand should continue to be in most subjects only a primary training ground, while the real work-the discoveries, the solid publication, the penetrating commentary, the documented history-is done overseas. The conventional objections are the smallness of our population and our isolation. But does this size matter so much? On the same arguments Denmark (which like New Zealand is small and dependent on primary production) might well have decided to confine herself to basic train- ing in her universities and send her scholars to do their advanced work in the larger European countries; instead of which we find that the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen just prior to the war did the pioneer work

in uranium fission, probably the most important and certainly the most powerful of recent discoveries in atomic physics. Nor are we any longer an isolated eorner of the Pacific. Our colleagues and co-workers in the rest of the world (as our diplomats have discovered) are only a few hours distant. Advances in microfilm technique bring the libraries of the world to our deskif we had the microfilm. It would be unfair to some fine workers to say that no research work has been done in our University. Some excellent work has been done, But it has been done under too poor conditions and there has been too little of it, too little recognition of the central part it plays in university education. Maybe things

are on the mend. I said at the beginning of this article that I would be cheerful, and I will be. Two Professors are leaving the Dominion. But they are going to a Conference on research and they have return tickets.