EDUCATION
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year's finals papers. Degrees conferred by the university are usually considered by relevant professional institutions as equivalent to those obtained in a British university, for the purposes of professional examination and practice. Senior academic staff are recruited by international advertisement.
The university is in the middle of a substantial building programme. The Haking Wong Building, which houses the Faculty of Engineering, was officially opened in October 1983. Since then, two new buildings have come into use, one for the Faculty of Education, and the other for the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics, the Centre of Computer Studies and Applications, and the Centre for Media Resources. Nearing completion is a composite building for general student amenities purposes.
At present, accommodation is provided for about only 20 per cent of undergraduate students in residential halls. To help students with homes where facilities for study are poor or who wish to avoid lengthy travel, yet cannot be accommodated in a hall of resi- dence, the university has increased its emphasis on the provision of general amenities, which include study and rest rooms, games and music rooms, and restaurant facilities. To improve sports facilities, a new site is being developed - with a grandstand nearing completion – on reclaimed land at Sandy Bay on the western shore of Hong Kong Island. At the same time, the university's sports facilities have been augmented with the opening of the Flora Ho Sports Centre, a new indoor sports hall adjacent to the existing Lindsay Ride Sports Centre.
The Department of Extra-mural Studies offers, though not to a degree level, a wide variety of vocational and professional courses and courses of general or cultural interest. Evening classes held at the university, and day and evening courses at its town centre, are attended by nearly 25 000 students each year.
With the re-equipping of the university's laboratories under the present development programme, its Science and Engineering Departments contain the latest teaching equip- ment. It also has one of the best-equipped libraries in Southeast Asia. The main library accommodates more than 600 000 volumes including the Fung Ping Shan Chinese Library with its valuable collection of works in Chinese - while the Faculties of Medicine, Law, Dentistry, Education, and the Department of Music have their own specialist libraries. The Fung Ping Shan Museum of Chinese Art, which is open to the public, is also used as a teaching museum by the Department of Fine Arts. Research projects continue through the university's various departments, the Language Centre, the Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning, and the Centre of Asian Studies - which serves as a focal point for multi-disciplinary research on China, Hong Kong, East Asia and Southeast Asia.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
The Chinese University of Hong Kong was inaugurated in 1963 as a federal university composed of three constituent colleges-New Asia College (founded in 1949), Chung Chi College (founded in 1951) and United College (founded in 1956). It is a self-governing corporation which draws its income mainly from government grants. The campus occupies more than 110 hectares of land near Sha Tin.
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The university offers a wide range of undergraduate courses spanning 35 disciplines in five faculties. Chinese is the principal language of instruction in the university, but English is also stressed and widely used. Four of the faculties arts, business administration, science and social science - offer four-year programmes leading to Bachelor's degrees. The fifth faculty, the Faculty of Medicine, established in 1981, runs a five-year programme with two years of pre-clinical studies followed by three years of clinical work. Clinical teaching is conducted mainly in the university's teaching hospital - the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha