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PART III
PROPOSED DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY
The proposals that follow are intended merely as outlining the beginnings of a new University which would have within itself a principle of growth. The scheme has been framed with an eye to the least that should at once bc spent on staff and equipment.
A.
(1) Faculty of Arts.
The Committee believes that the basis of a good University must lie in sound Departments in the Faculty of Arts, of English and Chinese: that provision must be made for comparative studies in Western and Eastern art, thought and history and that a gift · of signal value to China at this moment would be a Department for the study of social conceptions, institutions and organizations, staffed by men competent to present the best ideas of the West in their historical and philosophic setting and to bring them into relation with the traditions and speculations of Chinese thinkers, and to present intelligently to Chinese the lessons of Western experience in political and social organization. This implies a Faculty with sound, if small, Departments of English, Chinese, History, Philosophy, Economics, Social Science and Mathematics. The minimum additional staff that the Committee believes to be necessary is shown in a table below.
(2) Training of Teachers
The training of teachers, especially of teachers of English for the Colonial schools, and perhaps a still more useful task, for schools in China, is a function that such a University ought to perform. The Chinese Ministry of Education which now emphasises the importance of English in Chinese education surely would welcome a generous expansion of this post-graduate Department.
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B. (1) Faculty of science
A university so far from the academic centre is handicapped in the matter of original work in Science but it cannot be healthy unless it is training men competent to undertake independent original work. For this reason the Committee believes that honours schools should be developed in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, and that provision should be made for the training of research workers even if most of them, finally, have to proceed overseas to work in the more adequately provided laboratories in England. There is no indication that the development of local industry is likely to make early demands, other than for routine testing, on the University, but the University of Hong Kong should be able to send into China well trained workers of which that country has great need.
(2) In Marine Biology the Colony should be a field for new work of quality. This has already been recognized by the establishment out of Imperial funds of a Research Institute conducted jointly by the Colonial Government and the University. interrupted the building but a research staff was at work. When the University resumes work it hopes to share in the organizing of courses for workers from China end in making its contribution to the establishment of an important industry of deep-sea trawling hitherto a preserve of the Japanese.
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