-9-
other parts of China and its graduates were at a disadvantage on language grounds in seeking employment in China. This disability will be greatly reduced by the recent decision of the Hong Kong Government to encourage in its schools the study of the national language that the Government of China is successfully disseminating.
ป
(iii) Moreover, like institutions of higher education in other Colonies, the University suffered from intellectual isolation. Its proverty prevented it frum adopting an adequate system of home leave or sabbatical leave for its staff; it could not afford, financially or in terms of staff, to facilitate frequent study leave in China, visiting lectureships, summer schools, and those other forms of intellectual intercourse which would have kept it continuously refreshed by vigorous contact with both British and Chinese academic developments. The proper financing of the University would remove many of these difficulties. Other developments also will contribute to their removal, such as the recommendations of the Asquith Commission for staff secondment, annual visits, improved conditions of service for staff, etc., which the Inter-University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies has been established t carry out. reorganization of the Universities Bureau of the British Empire will also assist in reducing this isolation and in facilitating inter-change of staff and ideas with the Empire universities.
(c) Competitiɔn
The impending
15.
When the University was founded in 1911, there were few universities in China. The past thirty years have seen the growth, some with American assistance, of numerous Chinesc universities, a few of which have achieved standarls which make them rank as equals with those of the United Kingdom. This development meant not only the diversiɔn of may students who might otherwise have proceeded to Hong Kong, but also that Hong Kong University was rapilly The Committee out distanced in equipment and resources. considered that far from preventing a reconstituted University from achieving its aim, this factor could in the
There is now a future greatly assist it in doing so. manifold and energetic academic life in China with which a British university can make contact. The opportunities for exchange, for mutual study, for cooperation in research, create now the conditons in which "the maintenance of gɔɔd understanding" on a university level is fruitfully possible. It is, however, an absolute requirement that the University of Hong Kong should in quality and standards in its own specialized sphere as a representative of British scholar- ship, be able to meet its sister universities in China at least as an equal.
POLICY GOVERNING THE UNIVERSITY'S RESUSCITATION.
16. The Committee decided therefore to recommend that a University should continue to exist in Hong Kong primarily as a centre for Sino-British contact in the sphere of learning, and for the maintenance of good understanding with the neighbouring
/country
122