137
4
Chapter III.
The Nature of the Inquiry and
of the Recommendations.
1. A Committee inquired into the affairs of the University of Hong Kong in 1937 and its Report was published as Hong Kong Sessional Action has been taken on Paper No. 8 of 1937.
The pre- many of the recommendations therein. sent inquiry is based on that reorganization and at more points than conveniently can be enumerated has followed suggestions contained in it.
2. The 1937 Committee was charged to recom- mend the reorganization of the University, within its existing resources, as a true University serving the needs of the Chinese of the Colony and else- where, but could not, within its terms of reference, make proposals for developments that involved the In part as a expenditure of additional funds. result of the improvements the 1937 Committee was able to recommend, in part as a result of changed conditions in China, the conviction has grown that the University should not merely be maintained but should be more fully developed to be a common focal point of British and Chinese cultures.
3. We have interpreted our terms of reference as a commission to inquire into defects of the University as a teaching organisation and to outline a programme of development which would enable it to grow towards the ideal that inspired its founders, namely that it should be the source whence British ideas and standards most effectively might aid the Chinese renascence keeping always in mind how much assistance in this sort is reci- procal. We conceived that the broad functions that Hong Kong University fulfils or is designed to fulfil are three. It is first an institution aiming at providing a University education of British inspiration for Chinese students. Secondly it is an institution for the provision of technical teaching-in medicine, education, and engineering
-for the Colony of Hong Kong and lastly it is an institution which does undoubtedly meet to some extent a natural demand for higher education of a general character among the population of the
5
Colony and neighbouring places, including Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies.
non-
4. The steady growth in the number of students in recent years (from 321 in 1928 to 488 in 1938- see Appendix III) indicates that the University has not been entirely unsuccessful in its second and third functions. These figures also show clearly the enormous preponderance of students from Hong Kong and its immediate surroundings, since nearly all the Canton Chinese and Chinese students, are, we find, young men and women who have been educated in Hong Kong schools. No students are shown from the interior of China (except the Yunnan students who are assisted by special scholarships) and we could not escape the conclusion that there has been an almost complete failure, in fact, to fulfil the first function we have mentioned, that of providing a British University education for students from China.
5. Our first task therefore was to consider the causes of this failure and the connected failure to achieve any effective co-operation with Chinese Universities. The following reasons, the relative importance of which we do not attempt to measure seem to be of chief importance.
(i) The growth of nationalist sentiment and political self-consciousness in China since the Revolution.
(ii) Differences of spoken language and the high cost of living in Hong Kong. These have limited the access of Chinese students to this University.
(iii) Language difficulties, both for Chinese tea- chers lent by Chinese Universities and Bri- tish teachers lent by this University, and the widely different scales of pay current in Hong Kong and China. These are clearly obstacles in the way of free interchange of teachers.
(iv) The inadequacy of provision for teaching in this University. Neither in equipment nor in its scale of staffing has it ever been sufficiently superior to the Universities in China to attract students; nor does it make
138