The University

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 390, 13 December 1946, Page 5

The University

POINT made by all those who contributed last week to our discussion on the University was that professors are human beings. If they did not say it in so many words they all said it in effect, and it is always a part of the answer to such questions whoever asks them, Whatever makes a professor less human makes him less effective and in general less wise, whether it is external examinations or internal uniformity or mere distance and space. It is not true however that professors can’t do good work in the conditions in which most of them find themselves in New Zealand-much good work has been done in our University every session since it started; but it has always been true that better work might have been done in better conditions, It is only when they are asked how soon and how fast changes should be made that university administrators arrange themselves in two camps, and even then no one recommends going slow for educational reasons only. It is the administrative and financial problems of change that arouse anxiety, but no ome is anxious enough about them to advise going on indefinitely as we are. What is happening is rather that the conservatives are shelter-

ing behind the fact that the system has never broken down completely in the experience of any student or teacher. It no doubt seems a hopeless situation when 300-students enrol in a subject taught by’ one professor and one lecturer; but it has never proved quite hopeless when put to the test. Somehow or other most of the things that can be said with truth about our University theoretically are made to sound ‘thin; and hollow when our graduates mingle with those from other universities. Professor von Zedlitz explains it as a case of good material to begin with, That is generous; but if there had not been good treatment of the materialga far greater proportion of it would have been spoiled, and then we would all have been reformers.