7.
17
Civil Engineering Department have been largely overlooked. There is a danger that this may be repeated.
If, as seems probable, students
of Mechanical and Electrical engineering are to be given the privilege of spending two years at a home university at (more or less) the University's expense it is only fair that some privilege of a similar nature should be offered to Civil Engineers.
best students will not take Civil Engineering.
Otherwise many of the
It would help to equalise matters if a limited number of C. E. students
say 4 or 5 a year were given the opportunity of proceeding to the
in
U. K. (for the same terms as the others) for two years of Post-Graduate
$
study or specialised training.
They could, for instance, spend two years at the Imperial College of Science which provides special Diploma courses in Railway Engineering, Bridge Engineering and Public Works, or at the University of Liverpool studying Dock and Harbour Engineering and so on.
Alternatively, if it can be arranged, they could spend their time at some larger Water-works studying the problems of town water supply, or at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton, specialising in some branch of Advanced Surveying, or merely studying the organisation of a large Survey Department.
Men trained on these line have far more chance of obtaining Government employment in China and of getting to the top where we want them. Although the selection or students for Post-Graduate training should normally be based on the results of the Final Examinations, preference should be given, when possible, to students who come from China itself. Courses in Heat Engines and Electricity for Civil Engineers: past, Civil Engineers have been required, in their third year, to attend classes in these two subjects and so long as the Institution of Civil Engineers regards them as compulsory subjects it will be advisable to continue this practise.
In the
In the event of the E. and E. Departments being abolished, the problem of providing instruction in these two subjects will have to be
reconsidered.
Fortunately the standard of knowledge required is not
high and I do not foresee any great difficulty in providing adoquato courses in these subjects.