1 He did, however, play rugby for his Oxford college.

2 New Zealand Herald, 27 Sept. 1988, quoted in R. Butterworth & N. Tarling, A Shakeup Anyway, Auckland, 1994, p.141.

3 New Zealand Herald, 1 May 1990, quoted in Butterworth & Tarling, p.218.

4 The programme of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, in brief, was to mould all tertiary qualifications, from senior school qualifications to industry training certificates to advanced university degrees, into a single ‘national qualifications framework’, and into a prescribed form of standards-based assessment. This was boldly going where no one had gone before, in extending an assessment model pioneered in Scotland for vocational training to academic education, in schools as well as universities. Academic commentators feared the ‘dumbing-down’ and commodification of education: a ‘smorgasbord’ of skills-based, bite-sized learning. By 1996 the universities and the Qualifications Authority had reached a new arrangement which recognised the distinctive nature of university as opposed to vocational education. But this is a whole other story.

5 News VUW, 4 Sept. 1995.

6 D. Hamer, dean of arts, A contribution by the faculty of arts to the preparation of the university's strategic plan, 28 Nov. 1988; D. Mackay, Restucturing the arts, languages and literature faculties, Jan. 1989, AF 21: box 34F.

7 News VUW, 3 Nov. 1993.

8 News VUW, 14 Feb. 1994. The law school's move downtown added weight to the most simple of the voluntary membership lobby's arguments (why should students pay for campus facilities if they were not there to use them?)

9 The foundation was modelled on a similar organisation at the University of New South Wales. The initiative came firstly from Douglas White, when university treasurer. Some 860 donations, corporate and individual, made up the $6 million – including $25,000 from Jack Ilott, one of Victoria's most loyal benefactors, towards the Hunter refurbishment. (Sixty years earlier, a member of the college Council had suggested that a trust board be established to deal with donations and bequests.)

10 Victorious superseded the Victoria University Graduate (1978– ) and the Victoria University Graduate and Review (1985– ).

11 P. Munz, ‘An open letter to Les Holborow’, Evening Post, 28 Mar. 1998, pp.4, 1; Holborow, ‘A response to Peter Munz’, VUW Weekly Staff Circular, 2 Apr. 1998.

12 News VUW, 2 Mar. 1993.

13 The number of doctoral students had almost doubled in a decade, the 1994 annual report recorded, while the number of other graduate students had increased threefold. (Annual report, 1994, p.92.)

14 Axford, in Victoria's submission to the universities review, quoted in News VUW, 12 July 1985.

15 There was some opposition to this because of the cost of translation.

16 Fifty-two degrees and diplomas were conferred on the marae in May 1992, 754 degrees and 91 diplomas downtown.

17 Other suggestions made by the Maori Language Commission were Wikitoria (as Victoria had long been known by its Maori students: it was the name of the Maori Club's newsletter), and Te Whare Wananga o Te Whanganui a Tara, giving the more specific geographical reference of Wellington harbour.

18 Council minutes, 1992, document 92/48.

19 Holborow had been president of its Queensland branch and maintained his involvement in New Zealand, becoming the national president in 1987–90.

20 News VUW, 15 July 1996.

21 J.E.P. Thomson, dean of languages and literature, to the vice-chancellor, 25 Aug. 1989, L&L 31: box 35G.

22 Review of the Faculty of Law, 1993, p.21.

23 1992 Review of Buildings and Sites Development, 7 Dec. 1992, pp.1, 6.

24 News VUW, 24 May 1993.

25 The proportion of Victoria's students living in halls of residence in the early 1990s was much the same as it had been in the 1960s: 8.5% in 1988, 7.9% in 1992.

26 News VUW, 14 Feb. 1994.

27 1992 Review of Buildings and Sites Development, p.5.

28 ‘Towards our century: strategic plan 1994–1999’, p.26.

29 McKinnon was a former university vice-chancellor – and later went back to being one.

30 News VUW, 15 July 1996.

31 ‘Refocussing Victoria’, No.11 (13 Feb. 1997).

32 Another was the university librarian, Vic Elliot, who resigned after 12 years from a position that had now been downgraded. (A Victoria graduate and specialist in early printed books, he had joined the university library from the Alexander Turnbull Library in 1976 and succeeded Sage in 1986.)

33 J.C Beaglehole, The University of New Zealand, Wellington, 1937, p.250.

34 J.R. Brown, ‘The place of the classics in modern education’, Addresses Delivered by the Professors on the Occasion of the Inauguration and Opening of the College in April, 1899, Wellington, 1899, p.7.