مرا
Telephone: KENsington 5121. Ext. 412.
UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
TEMPORARY OFFICE AT LONDON
*
93
COMMAND SCHOOL OF EDUCATION,
ROOM 12,
Confidential.
178 QUEEN'S GATE,
KENSINGTON, S.W.7.
23rd. September, 1946.
Miss Ruston,
The following is an extract from the Report of members of the Inter-Universities Board who visited Makere recently.
The paragraph is relevent, I think, to the circumstances of a Malayan University, which has to concern itself with the interest of Malays in possible competition with Chinese and Indians.
11
Indians have applied for admission, but no Indian student has ever been accepted. They have been told that they would have to reside along with the Africans and that at its present stage of development, the College cannot offer them training for the type of recognized qualification, such as a degree, which they want and can obtain at universities in India. The se and other arguments seem to have had the result that no a pli- cation has been pressed. The explanation of this deliberate discouragement of Indians is said to be that, given equal opportunities for entrance, the Indians would outnumber the Africans in the College and therefore probably in the pro- fessions out of all proportion to their numbers in the general population. There is weight in this argument; which, indeed could be extended; for if English boys and girls applied from the excellent white schools in Kenya it is likely that they would do better in the entrance test than Indians, and that would have an indefensible result an East African College populated by white students. We do however, urge that the question of admitting Indians be given very careful consideration. It would be most improper indefinitely to maintain a purly paper allegiance to the principle of equality of opportunity for all races, and in fact to exclude
P.T.0.