ABSTRACT
Since 1965 particularly well-qualified teachers' college students have been able to attend university full-time before beginning their professional training or after their first year at a teachers' college or at the end of their three-year college course. The 1948 Apprentices Act, for example, made it compulsory for apprentices to undertake technical classes, point and direction to which were given by the creation of the Trades Certification Board and national trades examinations. In 1945 internal university enrolments totalled 8,000 and there were 640 graduates of the University of New Zealand at the first degree level and 125 at the post graduate level. In 1970 the number of internal students had quadrupled and the six autonomous universities graduated 3,451 students at the first degree level and 846 at the post-graduate. The universities managed, during a decade of unprecedented increases in the number of qualified school leavers, to avoid the practice quite common abroad of offering a fixed number of places.
