The Univer sity must formulate a policy.
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for the better education of apprentices which could reasonably be advocated for the Colony as it now is could ever bring even the more promising apprentices up to a standard at which they could, without neglecting their work, either pass the Uni- versity matriculation or even after having done so, go profitably through an engineering course leading to a University degree. We are even inclined to doubt whether if this were a practical goal, it would at the present juncture be a desir- able one. But we think it possible that if such a technical school system as we are envisaging progresses, a higher type of apprentice may emerge who could in time be profitably sent to the University. Meanwhile we would not wish to see the University's efforts to teach mechanical and electrical engineering of the highest standard either curtailed or prejudiced. We look to a future in which the most promising apprentices will pass on naturally to the University and with good technical ground work their numbers should increase in time. For the present we look to the Engineering Faculty to show to the Colony and to China what the University training of engineers involves and stands for and to co-operate in the more practical stages of technical training in the absence of which the Faculty cannot hope to satisfy the high hopes with which it was created.
49. It is not our business to suggest how the University should adapt the working of its Faculty of Engineering to the demands with which it now stands confronted. But the careful study which we have given to the history of the Faculty of Engineering and to the controversy as to the practical value of its graduates, which will we hope now be closed, reveals, at least one point on which both the Faculty and its critics are agreed-We refer to the universally accepted necessity for the practical training of mechanical and electrical engineers.
50. The present Dean of the Faculty of Enginering regards the proper function of the University in this respect to be the education of those who will, or could be sent to complete their training as apprentices in Britain. We admit unreservedly that the regular drafting into British works of engineering graduates from Hong Kong would be in every way a most desirable arrangement. But this arrangement is conditional on return fares at least being made available. Has the University any reasonable prospect of raising the necessary funds? Moreover, the majority of Chinese parents cannot afford to send their sons so far away and for so long an un- remunerative period.
51. The Dean suggests that the number of graduates who could be sent abroad is likely to continue to be small. This will of course be the case so long as the number of students taking either the mechanical or the electrical course stands annually at 2 or 3, as it does at present. We should, however, suggest that to conduct a mechanical and an electrical engineering course for 2 or 3 students can scarcely be regarded as an economical proposition.
52. We have quoted the Singapore Technical Education Committee as having stated (see para. 30 above) that a technical college cannot be regarded as an economic proposition unless in each of the classes in a four years' course there are approximately 30 students. We do not regard this statement as an unreasonable one and we can not help noticing that all the students in the final year of the Engineering course of the Hong Kong University do not at the moment exceed 16 and that 13 of these are taking civil engineering. We are bound to look forward to a time when the mechanical and electrical engineer will have better prospects. before them than he apparently has at present.
53. Be this all as it may, it does occur to us that the force of circumstances, to say nothing of its own admission, points to the urgency of the formulation by the University of a policy in the matter of its mechanical and electrical engineering
courses.
54. The impossibility, for the time being at any rate, of an apprentice who has had experience in a workshop being admitted to the Engineering Faculty being granted, the University can only look for recruits to that Faculty to the ordinary school-boys who have succeeded in passing the Matriculation Examination. To students such as these the University offers a special course either in mechanical or in electrical engineering, but in admitting a student to such a course the University.