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KEMONOMENA HONG KONG UNIVERSITY aaaaaaaa
When the establishment of the University was under consideration, the Viceroy of Canton wrote that the teaching of applied science, including civil, mechanical and electrical engineering and surveying would meet the most urgent needs of China. One of the earliest resolutions of the University's Court was that the University should provide a higher education more especially in subjects of practical utility, such as applied science. To help the engineering faculty to make a start several British firms gave the University valuable pieces of machinery. The Asiatic Petroleum Company (South China) Ltd., have ever since 1918 been giving the University free supplies of fuel oil for use in the engineering shops and power station. This gift represents, over the last ten years, a sum of over £1,100.
A well known engineer, Sir Maurice Fitz-Maurice, when he came to Hong Kong in 1922 said that never in his world-wide travels had he visited a place where there were within so short a distance of each other so many different examples of the work of the engineer.
But many things have happened which the Viceroy of Canton could not foresee. China became a republic on the 12th February, 1912, and then came the Great War. Ever since the Armistice China has been devastated by civil war and all its attendant horrors. The engineer has not yet had much chance in China. Civil engineering graduates have found openings as architects, on railways and in municipal employ especially in Malaya. But difficulties have obstructed the training of mechanical and electrical engineers. difficulty has been the absence of openings. It is frequently said that the Chinese The greatest do not like dirtying their hands. There was probably a good deal in that when the Engineering Faculty started; there is much less in it now. But in 1927 the University was told that instead of taking Chinese of the upper and middle classes and trying to turn them into practical mechanical engineers the faculty should aim at attracting selected dockyard apprentices and educating them to be efficient engineers. The University modified its matriculation test in favour of these lads, but no apprentice has ever been forthcoming. Between the dock. yard apprentice as he now is and the University there is
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A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Cassius old
Where armies whole have sunk."
A University is not a technical school and any attempt to make it do the work of one is to be deplored. But admittedly a university course in mechanical or electrical engineering should be followed by a course of practical training in a commercial workshop. A course of practical training in a University, even if supplemented by a system which enables students to go to local commercial workshops during vacations can never be a substitute for a properly organized system of postgraduate apprenticeship.
But it has never been found possible to organize locally an apprentice system for the University's engineering graduates. This involves, among other things, providing the apprentice with a living wage.
SIR WILLIAM HORNELL, c.1.E. Vice-Chancellor,
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