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engineering teachers for their scientific help; on the other side the University's teachers should ever be appraising their theories of engineering training by testing them against those practical conditions to which their experience as employers of labour have forced the Directors.
43. Regarding as we do the co-ordination between the University and the other agencies in the technical education field as essential we have given careful consideration to the part which the Faculty of Engineering should play in the general scheme for technical education which we are attempting to envisage. The Professor of Electrical Engineering, who is also the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, has written us an interesting letter which deals with this aspect of our problem.
of the
44. The Professor preludes his remarks by stating that though there is no The views difficulty with the civil engineering graduates of the University who can secure Professor salaries on graduation sufficient to attract students to the Faculty, "no university in of Electrical the world can turn out mechanical or electrical graduates who are of immediate Engineering. use to their employers". He goes on to explain that this is why there has been evolved in Britain for these graduates an apprenticeship course of 2 or 3 years duration which is generally recognized as an essential supplement to their university course. He then makes the point that, whereas in highly industrialized countries there is a demand for specialists in branches of electrical and mechanical work, in a country such as China is likely to be for some time the most useful man will be the man with wide general knowledge both of electrical and of mechanical work. He explains that to meet this demand the Hong Kong University course requires that the electrical students should take two electrical and one mechanical subject and that the mechanical students should take two mechanical subjects and one electrical; that the èlectrical and mechanical courses of the Engineering Faculty are therefore inter- dependent.
45. The Professor does not think that any of the local engineering workshops can provide an apprenticeship course for the University graduate which is in any way comparable to the apprenticeship courses in England--courses which are at- tended by graduates from all over the Empire and from South America. He thinks therefore that every effort should be made to send the University Engineering Graduates to apprenticeships with engineering firms in England and Scotland. He adds that, as apprentices, they could earn a living wage during their courses and that the fares to England and back are the only things to be considered.
He sug- gests that free or reduced passages might be provided by shipping firms and that the University might provide scholarships. As the number of students is likely to be small for some years this need not, in his opinion, be regarded as a very serious consideration.
46. Turning to the question whether the Engineering Faculty, so far at least as its mechanical and electrical courses are concerned, could be recruited from the ranks of apprentices of exceptional promise, the Professor remarks that the case of the trade apprentices in Hong Kong as at present employed in local engineering works has been examined in great detail and that it seems to him to have been demonstrated beyond dispute that the standard of education of the apprentice is so low that it is impossible to impart engineering knowledge to him during his appren- ticeship. In other words he regards the gap between the apprentice and the University as too wide to bridge. The Professor's letter is attached to this Report as Appendix Å.
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Dock.
47. The Manager of the Taikoo Dockyard has recorded the view that engineer- The views ing training in a university is desirable for those engineers only who are to fill the Manager of highest posts and then only if such training is kept in its proper perspective. the Taikoo For an industry such as that carried on in the Taikoo Dockyard which consists largely of ship-repairing the Manager regards a University training in engineering as undesirable, except for a limited number and they would have to possess a standard of general education to which the apprentice can in the majority of cases not attain..
mittee's
48. We admit the gap which now separates the apprentice from the Univer- The Com- sity, but we do not regard it as essentially and permanently one which no bridge conclusion: can ever span. We agree that it would be unreasonable to expect that any system