CO129-558-10 Hong Kong University- engineering faculty 3-1-1936 - 11-2-1936 — Page 20

TELEPHONE

S

ABINGER 79.

N DORKING NORTH.

19 3

LITTLE PARKHURST,

ABINCER COMMON,

NA DORKING,

SURREY.

8th January, 1936.

Dear Mayhew,

Thank you for sending me Strickland's note. I am keenly

interested in everything that concerns the Hong Kong University

of whose Court I am a Life Member. He says that he gathered

his impressions from conversations with myself and Swire. 1

have no firsthand knowledge and was only quoting Swire, than

whom there could be no greater authority, since his Firm's

shipyards are the greatest non-Government engineering estab-

lishment in the Far East. He wrote to me as follows:-

"As for the University I am afraid it has not really fil-

filled your hopes and we have rather washed our hands of it

now, principally because we found the engineering chair quite

oblivious of the practical needs of engineering firms and un-

willing to do anything about it. They simply said that a uni-

versity did not do this, that or the other, and did not seem

to grasp that it might be advisable for a university in Hong

Kong to do them. I do not think really the average student

from China thinks the University is good enough for his pur-

poses. He wants the prestige of a Western degree and, if we

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