CO129-543-9 (2) Hong Kong University- technical education 28-2-1933 - 7-11-1933 — Page 24

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University.

From then until now the University has been

doing, on the whole efficiently and well, precisely tha

for which it was established.

In 1929 Messrs. Swire announced that they were dis-

appointed in our engineering graduates, who were not

(they said) proving useful to them, and they proclaimed (apparently as a discovery) that University-trained

engineers are of very limited value in industry unless

and until they have also had workshop experience under

commercial conditions (G.R. Para. 59). This is the merest

truism, and has been well understood for the best part

of a century by all the "academic" engineers in the world.

It seems a pity that from the very beginning in 1912,

facilities of the right kind were not available for under-

graduate and/or postgraduate training, in the Taikoo or

other workshops.

The most progressive engineering firms

in Europe and America have long ago realised that work-

shop experience which may be suitable for boys fresh from school, or fresh from

the streets, is inappropriate, inefficient and wasteful

of time, in the case of men who have already taken a

University or Technical College Course in Engineering

Science.

It is a common complaint (though most often heard

from persons whose impartiality is not above suspicion)

that our graduates are unwilling to "go through the mill,"

and that they object to practical work as being hard,

dirty, and disagreeable.

There is unfortunately a certain

measure of truth in this, but while it is by no means the

whole truth, it is the only portion of truth that receives

regular publicity.

Any man who has gone successfully through a degree

course, in this or any other British University, is already