PhDs by the thousand

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1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, accounting, biochemistry, botany, chemistry, economics, history, medicine, microbiology, PhD, physiology, postgraduates, research

A PhD is well worth celebrating! Graduates on 13 December 2014. Photo by Michael Thomas, courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

In 2007 the University of Otago reached a milestone so significant it held a gala ball at Larnach Castle. A large group of postgraduate students gathered for a convivial evening, celebrating the enrolment of over 1000 PhD students at Otago that year. Students of a century earlier could not have imagined such an event. They would have been shocked at the numbers, for a start, but many would also have no idea what a PhD was. The growth of the premier research degree is one of the significant changes in university life over recent decades.

PhDs are a fairly recent phenomenon in the British and colonial world. The PhD as a higher research degree had its origins in Berlin in the early 1800s and was adopted in the USA from the 1860s. Oxford did not pick up the baton until 1917 but by 1919 it was in all British universities. The University of New Zealand – the federal authority which set the syllabus, conducted exams and awarded degrees for all universities here until 1961 – introduced the PhD degree in 1922, but the programme quickly ran into problems thanks to a requirement for full-time study. That made it less flexible than existing higher degrees, which had been around since the 19^th century. By 1900 three Otago students had earned a Doctor of Science degree, three were Doctors of Laws and four Doctors of Medicine. For those degrees students presented a thesis or publication, completed without any supervision from the university. Settling on a uniform standard for the PhD was another difficulty and, in the face of few enrolments, in 1926 the University of New Zealand abolished the PhD degree.

By the time existing students had completed, there were just nine graduates from the University of New Zealand’s first experiment with the PhD. Three were from Otago, and it’s nice that they were distributed around three of the current four academic divisions: sciences, humanities and commerce. The honour of being the first Otago student to graduate PhD, in 1927, goes to Rudolf Penseler, whose thesis was ‘Experiments on the Synthesis of Apofenchocamphoric Acid’, completed in the chemistry department. He later did further research in England and Germany before returning to a varied career in New Zealand. Following Penseler, James Salmond graduated with a PhD in history in 1928 and Walter Boraman in economics in 1929. Boraman became a secondary teacher and school inspector, while Salmond became a minister, educator and leader in the Presbyterian Church (Salmond College is named for him and his sister).

Arthur Campbell teaching in the first-year chemistry lab in the early 1950s. He was lecturing during the day and working on his own research at night. Image courtesy of Arthur Campbell.

After World War Two, as the country came to value increasingly the research work being done in universities, the PhD degree was re-introduced, this time to stay. Otago’s first post-war PhD graduate was Richard (Dick) Batt, a chemist, in 1948. Like quite a few of that generation of PhD graduates he went on to a distinguished academic career, in his case at Massey University, where he became a noted alcohol researcher. The next made his career closer to home. Arthur Campbell, who was once Batt’s flatmate, graduated PhD in 1953. With the regulations now more flexible, he was able to complete his research part-time while working as an assistant lecturer; in fact he did most of his work late at night in the laboratory. After completing he spent some time researching in Glasgow before returning to the Otago chemistry department, where he later became professor. He eventually retired in 1987, noted as ‘an analytical chemist without peer’. A second 1953 graduate – Lyle Fastier, based in the medical school – completed ‘an experimental study of the mouse encephalomyelitis group of viruses’. The following year Margaret Di Menna became Otago’s – and New Zealand’s – first female PhD graduate, with her microbiology thesis on ‘Yeasts of the human body: their nature and relationships’.

By the end of the 1950s another ten PhD graduates had been added to Otago’s credit, all of them in chemistry and biochemistry with one exception, which was in botany. Through the 1960s the Otago PhD slowly grew in popularity, though it took a while before the prejudice against ‘colonial’ degrees was lost and the best scholars no longer felt compelled to travel overseas for doctoral work. The colonial cringe is now long gone, with candidates coming from all over the world to study here. Good Otago staff attracted good research students, with the medical school a particularly important draw for researchers. Though fields of study broadened through the 1960s and 1970s, a very large proportion of Otago PhDs in those decades were in biochemistry, physiology and microbiology, together with chemistry. Funding was significant in attracting students too. After the devolution of scholarships, once run nationally by the University Grants Committee, Otago committed heavily to providing support for PhD students. In 1995 it boasted of being the New Zealand leader in postgraduate support, granting 97 scholarships (paying full fees plus $12,000) to PhD candidates, plus 89 awards to masters students. Scholarships assumed ever greater significance as the government reduced the duration of its financial support to students.

In 1995 Otago had just under 500 PhD candidates in a wide variety of fields, with 38% in the sciences, 34% in health sciences, 19% in humanities and 9% in commerce. The following year Paul Theivananthampillai became the 1000^th person to graduate with an Otago PhD (the count began in 1962, following the abolition of the University of New Zealand). Like many before him the 1000^th graduate was already an Otago staff member; he completed his study on ‘the coalignment of strategic control systems’ while lecturing in the Department of Accountancy. The next 1000 Otago PhD graduates took just nine years to produce. Now (June 2015), the University of Otago boasts 3514 PhD graduates, together with 25 who graduated under the old federal system. Their research represents a pretty significant contribution to the sum of human knowledge! Some of that knowledge can now be accessed freely on the Otago University Research Archive, which has digital versions of many Otago PhDs – happy reading!

PhD graduates during the 25 August 2012 ceremony. Image courtesy of University of Otago Marketing and Communications.

Radical Carrington

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1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Arana, Carrington, Stuart House

A happy group of Carrington residents in the late 1940s. Standing (left to right): ?, D Whalan, ?, B Pohe, N Parris, R Williams. At front right is Ben Whitiwhiti. Image courtesy of Bill Dawson, from an album of Robin Cook.

When Carrington opened 70 years ago it had one major difference from Otago’s older residential colleges – it welcomed both men and women. That was pretty radical for the 1940s, and for a few years Carrington was Australasia’s only ‘co-residential’ student hall of residence.

The Stuart House Council’s decision to run a mixed residence was a pragmatic response to the needs and opportunities of the time. It evolved out of a successful experiment at their earlier student residence, Stuart House, which was absorbed into the new Carrington. In 1940 Harold Turner, the assistant minister at Knox Church, where many parishioners were students, came up with the idea of opening a small student hostel in the former Presbyterian Women’s Training Institute at 638 Cumberland Street (where one end of the Student Union is now). He formed a committee with several other enthusiasts, among them George Carrington (secretary of the Otago Education Board) and successful businessmen Cecil Wardell (of the flourishing Wardell’s grocery firm) and Gifford Laurenson (of the equally flourishing bakery firm). Turner later described them as ‘a private voluntary group on a religious but interdenominational basis’.

In 1941 Stuart House, as they renamed the Cumberland Street property, opened to 29 men, some of them accommodated in an ‘annexe’ at the former Training College building across the road (now part of the physical education school). In 1942, with many male students headed off for military service but an influx of women students, the council decided to change Stuart House to a women’s residence. Since some men had already been offered places, they found bedrooms for them in private homes nearby but kept them as ‘associate members’ of Stuart House, which they attended for meals and social activities. This makeshift arrangement proved unexpectedly successful; it was popular with the residents and Turner, the warden, was pleased that the house was ‘much quieter and more orderly than it was last year’.

With no shortage of demand for student accommodation, the Stuart House Council always had an eye out for suitable buildings which might be converted. In 1942 they persuaded the university to purchase Arana, the home of the late Sir James Allen, and lease it to them. It opened as a residence for men in 1943. In late 1944 another good property, located on Heriot Row, came on the market. Carrington bought it on spec, having heard a rumour that the government was planning to provide money for teachers’ college student accommodation. Fortunately this proved correct, and after some delay the Otago Education Board funded the building, leaving its management in the hands of the council (now named the Stuart Residence Halls Council). Like Stuart House and Arana, Carrington was open to both university and teachers’ college students.

Building a float for the 1946 capping procession, in front of the first house purchased for Carrington. The man with saw in hand is Murray Menzies, who became a surgeon. Image from Pat Menzies, courtesy of Carrington College.

Students moved into the new Carrington Hall in 1945 – women into the former Halstead property and men into one of the two neighbouring houses the council had purchased. The generous grounds of the old houses provided room for yet more accommodation and in 1947 a brand new wing named Stuart House opened, along with more temporary buildings made from army huts. In that year Carrington provided a home for 105 students, being 53 men and 52 women. The original Stuart House in Cumberland Street became flats in 1947; the council sold the building in 1952.

Even the laundry was once segregated! A photo taken by 1953-4 resident Lex Familton after a raid on the women’s drying room. Image courtesy of Carrington College.

So, the radical experiment in accommodating women and men in the same residential college happened rather by accident, but since it proved a success it was allowed to continue. Of course the liberals of the 1940s weren’t quite as liberal as those of later generations, and there were strict rules about the mixing of men and women at Carrington. They could socialise freely in the communal spaces, but for the first few decades they had segregated bedroom wings/houses. Until 1976 all of the wardens were clergymen, some more conservative than others. Legend has it that one warden and his wife would listen in at the men’s doors to ensure any women had left before 7p.m. In 1973 the integration of buildings commenced, though men and women still had separate floors for many years.

Turner wrote in the 1950s about the advantages of mixed residences, where the sexes could socialise in a ‘natural and happy’ way and form ‘decent and sensible friendships’. Pranks and raids were less extreme than in some of the men’s colleges and, overall, it made ‘the men less crude, and the girls less giggly’. Co-residence could be ‘too distracting for some students’, though, suggested Turner, and some argued that it was ‘good for men to spend some years in a thoroughly masculine environment; presumably the parallel position is true of women’.

Though some university authorities got pretty het up about mixed flatting in the 1960s, they saw the advantages of mixed residential colleges, especially as the number of women students grew and eventually overtook the number of men. University College (Unicol) opened in 1969 as another mixed residence, albeit with men and women living in separate towers for many years. During the 1970s Studholme, Salmond, Arana and Aquinas all went co-ed, St Margaret’s joined the trend in 1981, and in 1983 the oldest colleges – Selwyn and Knox – finally and controversially lost their positions as bastions of masculinity (some would say chauvinism!).

Gymnastics at Carrington, from the album of Robin Cook, a resident of the late 1940s. Image courtesy of Bill Dawson.

Meanwhile, the trailblazer Carrington continued on its happy way as a residence open to all. As neighbouring properties came on the market they were absorbed into the college, which now provides accommodation for around 240 students in an attractively landscaped collection of 11 buildings, some of them refurbished large old homes and some of them purpose-built. The Stuart Residence Halls Council eventually sold both Carrington and Arana to the university, which now directly manages these colleges. With the funds obtained, the council then made very generous gifts back to the university, endowing the Stuart Chair in Science Communication and the Stuart Chair in Scottish Studies.

Do you have any memories to share of the early decades of Carrington? Can you identify anybody in the photographs? If so, I’d love to hear from you!