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Chapter One The Idea of a University at Auckland, 1854�82 HE Inter nineteenth century was n major period of university foundation in T English-speaking countries. Colleges or universities were launched, in the new worlds of settlement, in Otago in 1869, Canterbury in 1873; Adelaide in 1874; Montreal in 1876, Manitoba in 1877. The University of California at Berkeley was founded in 1872, Connecticut University in 1881, and Wyoming in 1886. The contemporary British foundations were universities or colleges ar Leeds (1874), Bristol (1876), Sheffield and Birmingham (1880), Nottingham (1881), and Liverpool (1882), Reading (1892), Cardiff (1883), Bangor (1884), and Dundee (1883). A complete list would he lengthy, though less so than that for the next great burst of university creation in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. The establishment of a University College in Auckland in 1883 must not, then, be thought of merely as a local phenomenon, to be described and explained purely in local terms; rather, it was part of a movement as widespread as contemporary and former British Empires. It would have been surprising if the Auckland citizens had not attempted to found a college. Similarly, the British immigrants in New Zealand wanted to have their town corporntions, parliament, law courts, and most of the institutions they had known in Great Britain. How they would all turn out was another matter. As early as 1848 the Otago Association in Scotland had a proposal to establish a college in the settlement it was planning. So had the English Canterbury Association A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND in 1850.1 But almost nothing could be done during the initial years of colonization. The first person known to have discussed university education publicly in New Zealand was Hugh Carleton, Member of the House of Representatives for the Bay of Islands, in North Auckland. Carleton had been 'sent down' fr om Trinity College, Cambridge, after a 'town-and-gown' disturbance, and had later studied in London and in Europe.2 In a debate in 1854 on the electoral rolls he advocated bringing more educated men into the House. He recommended starting universities in each province. They would be secular bodies, their business being examining and granting degrees. Each religious denomination might establish its own college, where teaching would take place. University Members of Parliament, as in England, would be created, and each male graduate would collect an extra vote with his degree. 3 The first proposal for a specifically Auckland university was made in 1862 in an Auckland journal, Chapman's New Zealand Monthly Magazine, in an article 'On the Establishment of a University in Auckland' by '].G.', initials still, over a century later, concealing the author's identity.4 Strangely enough, like Carleton, the author advocated creating a non-teaching university. Despite the great criticism and indeed abuse that the later University of New Zealand was to meet, there seems to have been something peculiarly receptive to a non-teaching university in the New Zealand intellectual air. This was also true across the Tasman. When W. C. Wentworth was pressing for a university in Sydney he argued for a secular, examining university with teaching colleges modelled on the University of London. Probably this was because London seemed more democratic than his own University, Oxford, and hence would have had more local appeal. 5 '].G.' asked what sort of university Auckland required, and replied that it needed one like the University of London, 'a truly national University', which presented 'to all classes, all denominations, all schools, and· all colleges throughout the United Kingdom, a given standard of attainments to which she encourages them to aspire ... .' The business of a university ought to be to direct the education of a country 'but not to become itself the educator'. The University of London set exams for all who offered themselves, and granted degrees to those who passed. It was, '].G.' said, 'The People's Universicy'-an expression later to be repetitively applied to the Auckland University College. There was no reason why a university should not be started at once. 'No grand building is required'. All that was needed to start with, as in London, was an office. '].G.' alleged that the University of London itself was to be found at the Thatched House Tavern. The author thought that students fr om two local schools, St John's College and Wesley College, might sit either for matriculation or degree examinations once the university was established. ln the same year the Auckland Provincial Council, the provincial government set up under the 1852 Constitution, appointed a Committee to consider how to employ the revenues from a Grammar School Trust which had been established by Governor Sir George Grey in 1850. The Committee took evidence from educational, church, and other community leaders who were asked, among other questions, whether 'the nucleus of an Auckland University' should be formed when funds were available. Of the thirteen witnesses, nine favoured starting a local university, three thought it premature, and one was uncertain.6 The witnesses, such as Hugh Carleton, William 2 THE IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY AT AUCKLAND Swainson, the Colony's second Attorney-General, and Sir William Martin, its first Chief Justice, included some of Auckland's most prominent citizens. Some of their evidence seems prophetic, almost suggesting witchcraft or clairvoyance. The Reverend J. F. Lloyd asserted that no building was needed, merely some professor­ ships and a lecture room. To start with a single hired lecture room would do, Swainson and Carleton claimed. 'An University need not have any material existence', said the latter, for the denominational schools could affiliate to the University and do the teaching. Only the Presbyterian minister, the Reverend Oavid Bruce, spoke of the need for a site and a building. J. E. Gorst, later the author of The Maori King and a prominent English politician, was one of the few witnesses who emphasized that it was 'impossible to have a university in anything more than name until there are good secondary schools.' Most of the witnesses favoured founding a university rather than a grammar school. One Presbyterian minister, the Reverend John Macky, thought that 'a Grammar School provided at the public expense is not a pressing necessity'. It was considered-and not by him alone, for the same view was to be expressed a few years later by the Reverend Robert Kidd, who was to become the first Registrar of Auckland University College-that the state should care for primary and university education while 'the operation of private demand and supply' would provide for secondary schools. Those schools, like the British public schools and grammars, were to be kept free of state control, but the witnesses obviously felt that, without government assistance, no universities at all could be created in New Zealand.7 Not everyone shared this opinion. Early in 1867 there was talk in Ounedin, now grown rich from its gold rush, and for a generation the largest town and chief com­ mercial centre, of starting a university. The Rector of the Otago Boys' High School, the Reverend F. C. Simmons, an Oxford man, thought that this was premature. He petitioned Parliament in Wellington to establish a number of scholarships to enable New Zealanders to attend universities in Great Britain. A Joint Recess Committee of both Houses of Parliament was set up to look into this suggestion. It sent a question­ naire to selected gentlemen. Of the fifty-one who replied, thirty-four favoured scholarships, but half as many wanted to start a teaching university. In Auckland alone a majority of seven out of the ten witnesses wanted a local university. Some of the people elsewhere who favoured overseas scholarships, like Judge Richmond, feared that all New Zealand could produce by way of a university was 'a stunted tree': far better to remain 'a healthy branch'. Others, like Judge H. S. Chapman, pointed to the supposedly unfortunate precedent of Melbourne (and he could have added Sydney) where in the eighteen-fifties universities had been started which attracted few students for many years. Sydney University, founded in 1850, had only seventy­ four students in 1872.8 Bur there were also strong arguments in favour of a local institution. One was the fear, often and reasonably expressed then and thereafter, that a system of scholarships would simply lead to the export of many of the cleverest New Zealanders-the dreaded 'brain drain '-a term first used a century later, but a phenomenon which existed throughout those ten decades.9 When Francis Oillon Bell raised the question of scholarships in the House of Representatives similar arguments were advanced. The gloomy William Rolleston said that the time 'even for an Australasian University is not yet in my judgement 3 A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND come, and may never come.' The colonies would do well 'to look to the mother country as their metropolis'. In a very striking statement, E. W. Stafford, the Premier, said that soon Parliament would clearly have to spend public money on education, and not leave it to the Provinces, because 'we arc approaching ro n condition of nationality-faster, I believe, thnn some of us arc awnrc'. Much of the argument wns about whether the children of the poor would or would not have access to university education,10 an issue which was to become dominant in discussions of higher educa­ tion. A democracy should only pay for what was democratic and egalitarian. Farquhar McRac, the Rector of the High School in Auckland, wanted to start a university like that in London, which would examine while the schools taught.

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