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PART I.
MAIN RECOMMENDATION.
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We are unanimous in recommending that the University of Kong should be reestablished as soon as possible on a firm financial basis, with staff and facilities adequate to make it fully Poppensat tive-oï British academic standards and to make it an effective centre for Sino-British contact in the sphere of learning.
We are of opinion that the restoration of the University on its inadequate pre-war basis would be detrimental to British prestige in the Far East and that, if it is not be restored on a worthy standard, it should not be revived at all,in spite of any immediate effect on prestige and the loss to British cultural relations with China which such a decision would entail.
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laken 9% of the unique opportunities presented for cooperation between British
and Chinese learning at the point of junction between the two civilizations. We do not regard the present higher education needs of the Colony itself as justifying the creation of a University. audiovar We therefore recommend that the capital and recurrent expenditure
involved, which we tenatively estimate at approximately £1 million and £100,000 per annum, should be met from Imperial sources, except for a contribution from the Colony on the scale of its pre-war support. We express the hope that His Majesty's Government may consider inviting some of the Dominion Governments to participate in providing the necessary funds for this British centre of learning in the Far East.
3. We consider that the University should be reconstructed as an autonomous institution and on a permanent basis, so far as buildings, endowment and other arrangements are concerned, because we envisage a lasting scope for its special functions and its representative) charactere, r cuiva of political changes which the future may hold,
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we cannot emphasize too strongly our conviction that the standards of the University must be such that it can
comparison with toffother British universities and of its sister Chinese
mainland. In contrast to its position when first founded, as the only university institution on the Chinese continent, its relative position had radically changed in the period before the war with the development of Chinese universities of first-class standard. It is certain that ttt tid a Chinese institutions, partly with substantial American and other foreign assistance, will regain and surpass their former distinction and atandards. For the British Commonwealth to be represented by an impoverished institution, with an overworkedy na unuerequipped staff, and denied the conditions of making contributions to knowledge by
research, and yet presuming to call itself a university, would be discreditable. The continuing damage to our prestige involved would be for greater than that entailed by a frank confession now that we are not able or willing to restore Hong Kong University, with the allhough Implication that we are uncertain of the future feef British interests in the Far East regard the commerce of ideas as a matter of deciowcondary concern.
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5.
The development of higher education facilities in British colonial areas in the Far East, particularly the establishment of a University of Malaya, will reduce the proportion of students coming from overseas to Hong Kong. Our conception of the central purpose and justification of the University, however, implies that it should revert to the function envisaged for it in its earliest days by Lord Lugard, and that it should especially attract both undergraduate
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