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at Victoria College pays as much as the studeut at Otago, but he lias left out a very important consideration, and that is what the student obtains for the fee. While a student at Otago can take up mining and medical courses, and so on, the student at Victoria College is not so privileged. The work we do at Victoria College is confined to the teaching of arts, science, law, and commerce, and the student has not the privilege of obtaining a medical course at Victoria College. The result is that he cannot take these expensive courses, and what Mr. Hogben proposes is that the student who takes a course at Victoria College should nevertheless pay a fee equal to the average fee, which includes some students who do take tin , expensive courses in medicine and engineering. Another factor is that we are unfortunately only a night school. No student working at night, however great his energies, can cover the same number of courses as one working in the day. Dunedin students are all day students, and naturally take more courses than the students at Victoria College, so that tin , proposal here amounts to punishing evening students. Although they have the disadvantage of attending in the evening it is proposed to charge as much for the poorer work that the teachers are only able to give them as the students who attend in the daytime in Dunedin or Christchurch. The student at a college which only teaches in the evening, of course, has a very restricted time during the evening in which he can attend the lectures, and therefore he cannot cover so many subjects. The correct way of arriving at this is just to obtain a table of fees showing what each student pays for a given subject in the two centres. You will see that before this year the fees at Dunedin were not two and a half times as great as at Victoria College, but the fees for students taking the same course were twice as much at Dunedin as at Victoria College. At the beginning of this year we raised our fees for all subjects to the same as at Dunedin, with some minor exceptions. The fees are, I believe, practically identical lor new students at both Victoria College and Dunedin University. We can now see whether Mr. Hogben's estimate of £4,456 is correct or whether the £3,000 is correct. I venture to say that the £4,455 is simply a ridiculous estimate. There is no sound basis for it. The effect of the increased fees at Victoria College has been to seriously diminish the number of students attending the College. 1 suppose that implies, among other things, that the students are not prepared to pay the same fees for the oourses in the evening. There is no doubt that some of the students we lost were good students, although I do not say all were. We had seen that we had to increase our fees if we were to come before this Committee on an equal basis with the other University colleges. The doubled fees for new students only yielded an increase of £160. What will be the increase in the fees if all the students pay at the higher rate? At most the increase for second- and third-year students will be £320. It will probably be less, because there are not so many second- and third-year students as first-year students. Mr. Hogben, on a basis which is theoretically unsound and opposed to our experience, estimates the increase will be £3,500. The fees paid this year were £2,167, and if you add on £320 for the increase in the fees of second- and third-year students a total of £2.647 is obtained, which is well below the estimate 1 made of £3,000. Ido not think there is any warrant for the £4,455 in the report. At the conclusion of the last table you sec there \\a> a deficit of £3,500 according to our estimate, and £2,300 according to Mr.Jlogben. Mi-. Hogben lays down certain proposals for meeting that deficit, and they are stated on page 15 of the report. If you assume, for the sake of argument, that Parliament increases the proportion of national endowment devoted to education to one-third —Mr. Hogben proposes to allocate £10,000 equally between the four colleges, which makes £2,500 for each college—even then, according to our estimate, the deficit for Victoria College would be £1.000. while according to Mr. Hogbeu it would give a credit balance of £155. On the estimates it is proposed to increase our grant from Parliament to £8,500 per year. Mr. Hogben proposes that we should only receive £7,000 from Parliament. 6. The Chairman.] I do not think that is right—that is only for this year. That was a special grant to meet the wants of the College for this year?—lt seems to me that would be very important information to the Committee, that the Minister recognized we should have a statutory grant of £8,500 this year, and therefore recognized the accuracy of the figures which the Council has placed before him. 7. You are putting it wrongly) —The Minister of Education recognized that Victoria College required £8,500 this year, while Mr. Hogben lavs down that in the future it will only be necessary to give an additional grant of £2,500, which is problematical, from the national endowment. So that the effect of Mr. Hogben's proposal would be only to give an additional revenue of £1,000 above what we will get this year. 8. I think you are working on a wrong basis. The position put before us was that you were £1,500 to the bad, and therefore we suggested that the Minister in his estimates should make provision for that. You must not treat it as a statutory grant?—l am not putting it as that. The position which the Victoria College Council put before you is that we have an annual, not an accumulated, deficit of £1,000. The increased expenditure proposed by Mr. Hogben's report amounts to something over £2,000 according to the table on page 10 of the report, and consequently £3,000 new revenue is required to meet it. You will see it is stated in the report that it is not proposed to alter the present arrangements as to day and evening classes. On page 9 it says that the " present arrangements as to day and evening classes are to be continued." The decision of both the Professorial Board and the College Council at Victoria College is that the most urgently required improvement is the introduction of day teaching, and I propose to give evidence in regard to the effect of evening teaching with reference to science. I am not so familiar with the details of its effect on other subjects such as arts and law, but it is well known to any university teacher that the effects are similar. 9. The statement in the report is not a .definite statement that it is to continue. You must read the context. It states, " I could hardly, therefore, make any other assumption for the

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