rehabilitation is very much greater, accumulated reserves have been completely exhausted (in spite of an encouraging recovery of industry and the introduction of new taxation), and the financial position is now one of the utmost gravity.
It is thus all too clear that the financial obstacles to be overcome if the University is to be started quickly will be most formidable. The Carr-Saunders Com- mission estimate the recurrent costs of the University at three hundred thousand pounds per annum exclusive of a con- tribution towards the running costs of a teaching hospital and that the capital costs of establishing a University on the new site recommended would be in the region of three million pounds. The Commission were careful to point out. that these estimates could only be very approximate but they give an idea of the order of magnitude of finance which will be required. Nor are the se' figures the full story of the extra expenditure which will be needed if the Commission's scheme is to be put into effect. For the Commission explained that full Malay participation in the University and hence Malay support for the scheme, could only be assured with the help of a substantial expansion in school facilities in the predominantly Malay rural parts of the peninsula. Such an expansion may well be more expensive than the University itself.
It is true of course that however quickly a start is made on the University the total capital expenditure envisaged will not be incurred immediately nor will the University immediately work up to its full rate of recurrent expenditure. Moreover, the Commission pointed out that if their scheme for establishing the University on a new site at Johore Bahru is adopted there should be an offsetting receipt from the value of the property in Singapore at present occupied by Raffles College and by the College of Medicine. These offsetting receipts however will likewise not accrue immediately since for some time after work began on the new University site teaching would have to be continued in the existing institutions.
A very substantial measure of assistance will therefore certainly be required if the two Governments are to establish the University in the near future and the Governor of Singapore and the High Commissioner for the Federation have asked for a contribution of one million pounds. The Colonial University Grants Advisory Committee may be inclined to feel that the reasonable course would be to promise C. D. & W. contributions as and when required by the progress of capital expenditure on the new project. Eastern Department of the Colonial Office however would venture to suggest that there are powerful reasons for promising the full contribution of one million pounds asked for by the Governor and High Commissioner at once.
In the first place, the Governments concerned may well feel that without any promise of substantial support of that order of magnitude they could not conscientiously embark on the scheme at all at present. Indeed in the present state of the Federation's finances it is difficult to see how any other view could be taken by the Federation and it perhaps should be mentioned in this connection that plans involving expenditure by the Federation of the amount likely to be involved would require the concurrence not only of the Colonial Office but also of the British Treasury.
Eastern
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