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workshops.
Skill of a high order may be attained in
the former, but there cannot be the discipline and the constant economic precautions against wastage that the
workshop provides.
32. And it is just here that, in our view, the University fails. The graduates who have profited by local practical training are found to be almost entirely non-Chinese; and even the Chinese graduates if they go to
Europe readily accommodate themselves to the environment
of dock or factory. What the University's founders
could not be expected to foresee was that the Chinese
undergraduate during vacation or the Chinese graduate
after finishing his course will not take orders in Hong Kong from an uneducated foreman; and that that foreman will not give orders to that student, whether in the two large Docks or in the Railway shops or anywhere else. It
is seldom safe to generalise in this way, but this
conclusion is forced upon us from the unanimous evidence
of those who know.
33. The other factor which the founders of the
University could not foretell was the growth in recent
years of capable rival institutions in China proper which not only provide an adequate, if not perhaps an equivalent, training at about one-fifth of the cost, but moreover have in many cases the advantage of benevolent support from elsewhere, particularly from the United States.
34. As has already been indicated, those engineering students who after graduation have profited by the generosity and far-sighted policy of certain firms and institutions, and have undergone an apprentice ship in the
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