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The Univer sity must
formulate
8
policy.
14
for the better education of apprentices which could reasonably be advocated for the Colony as it now is could ever bring even the more promising apprentices up to a standard at which they could, without neglecting their work, either pass the Uni- versity matriculation or even after having done so, go profitably through an engineering course leading to a University degree. We are even inclined to doubt whether if this were a practical goal, it would at the present juncture be a desir- able one.
But we think it possible that if such a technical school system as we are envisaging progresses, a higher type of apprentice may emerge who could in time be profitably sent to the University. Meanwhile we would not wish to see the University's efforts to teach mechanical and electrical engineering of the highest standard either curtailed or prejudiced. We look to a future in which the most promising apprentices will pass on naturally to the University and with good technical ground work their numbers should increase in time. For the present we look to the Engineering Faculty to show to the Colony and to China what the University training of engineers involves and stands for and to co-operate in the more practical stages of technical training in the absence of which the Faculty cannot hope to satisfy the high hopes with which it was created.
49. It is not our business to suggest how the University should adapt the working of its Faculty of Engineering to the demands with which it now stands confronted. But the careful study which we have given to the history
of the Faculty of Engineering and to the controversy as to the practical value of its graduates, which will we hope now be closed, reveals at least one point on which both the Faculty and its critics are agreed-We refer to the universally accepted necessity for the practical training of mechanical and electrical engineers.
proper
50. The present Dean of the Faculty of Enginering regards the function of the University in this respect to be the education of those who will, or could be sent to complete their training as apprentices in Britain. We admit unreservedly that the regular drafting into British works of engineering graduates from Hong Kong would be in every way a most desirable arrangement. But this arrangement is conditional on return fares at least being made available. Has the University any reasonable prospect of raising the necessary funds? Moreover, the majority of Chinese parents cannot afford to send their sons so far away and for so long an un- remunerative period.
51. The Dean suggests that the number of graduates who could be sent abroad is likely to continue to be small. This will of course be the case so long as the number of students taking either the mechanical or the electrical course stands annually at 2 or 3, as it does at present. We should, however, suggest that to conduct a mechanical and an electrical engineering course for 2 or 3 students can scarcely be regarded as an economical proposition.
an
52. We have quoted the Singapore Technical Education Committee as having stated (see para. 30 above) that a technical college cannot be regarded as economic proposition unless in each of the classes in a four years' course there are approximately 30 students. We do not regard this statement as an unreasonable one and we can not help noticing that all the students in the final year of the Engineering course of the Hong Kong University do not at the moment exceed 16 and that 13 of these are taking civil engineering. We are bound to look forward to a time when the mechanical and electrical engineer will have better prospects before them than he apparently has at present.
53. Be this all as it may,
does occur to us that the force of circumstances,
to say nothing of its own admission, points to the urgency of the formulation by the University of a policy in the matter of its mechanical and electrical engineering
courses.
54. The impossibility, for the time being at any rate, of an apprentice who has had experience in a workshop being admitted to the Engineering Faculty being granted, the University can only look for recruits to that Faculty to the ordinary school-boys who have succeeded in passing the Matriculation Examination. To students such as these the University offers a special course either in mechanical or in electrical engineering, but in admitting a student to such a course the University
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is, unless it can arrange for the student to pass on to an apprenticeship in Britain, undertaking to give him a training at the end of which he will, on its own admission, be of no immediate use to an employer. The possible employer, moreover, will not be apparently either willing or in a position to take on such a graduate as an apprentice.
55. This is, we venture to think, an impossible position for the University to be placed in. It is not for us to suggest what the University should do. The difficulty affects our inquiry directly, in so far as it makes us apprehensive that, unless a solution be found, the mechanical and electrical courses of the University may have died long before there could be any hope of an apprentice from the technical school, which we are going to propose, making use of them. We should deplore this curtailment of the Colony's general facilities for higher technical educa- tion, but facts must be faced and economic considerations can not be ignored.
apprentice-
sandwich system.
56. There are, as it seems to us, only two possible ways out of this difficulty. Post- Either the University must provide scholarships so that the local engineering firms graduate may take on as apprentices, without expense. those mechanical and electrical ship in the engineering graduates who can not be sent to works in Britain, or the University must try and arrange with the local engineering firms some sort of "sandwich" system, by which those students might be admitted to the local engineering works for definite portions of the year. If the first alternative be adopted, the actual payment of the allowances should be in the hands of the firms. The latter alterna- tive could possibly be worked, without much interference with the present teaching terms, so as to admit of six months in the University and six months in the works. Even if the "sandwich" system alternative be not regarded as so satisfactory as the other, it should not, we think, be rejected without consideration. There are colleges in America in connection with which the "sandwich" system is believed to be working satisfactorily. And local needs and conditions cannot be ignored.
57. It has been suggested by local employers of engineering labour that the University's course in mechanical engineering might with advantage be made more practical. The Professor of Electrical Engineering from the stand-point of one who is advocating the drafting of graduates to British works is opposed to this suggestion. He thinks that the substitution of instruction in machine design and workshop to which we have referred in paragraph 14 above for mechanical design was a step in the wrong direction. He argues that the Hong Kong University engineering courses should be kept as far as possible on the same lines as those which are taught in British universities and suggests that workshop practice would be better taught in a workshop. From the point of view of those who are going to apprenticeships in British works there is something in what the Professor says, but if students are going to be admitted to the mechanical and electrical engineering courses who have no prospect of going on to British works, the problem must it seems to us be viewed from a different aspect, especially if such students can not look forward to post- graduate apprenticeships in local works. We submit that it might be possible slightly to differentiate the course as between a student who had a good prospect of passing on to an apprenticeship abroad and one for whom such an arrangement would appear to be difficult or impossible. We realize that such differentiation as also the fixing up of the "sandwich" system for such students as were intending to take either the mechanical engineering or the electrical engineering course," would involve the making of plans for a student early in his engineering course, whereas under existing conditions the usual practice is for a student to postpone until after he has completed successfully three years of the engineering curriculum, making up his mind whether he will take the civil, mechanical or electrical We do not, however, regard these difficulties as insuperable. We feel that a serious student of engineering should know his mind from the start and that this habit of drifting should be discouraged.
course.
58. We venture to make another suggestion. A workshop course is, as we have pointed out, compulsory for students of the Engineering Faculty who are in their first and second years but the work done by the students in the workshop is not subjected to any examination or other form of test. We think that the practical skill of the student in this respect should be tested by the Professor of Mechanical Engineering acting in collaboration with an external examiner who
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