CO129-561-7 Hong Kong University 4-1-1937 - 22-9-1937 — Page 111

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workshops.

Skill of a high order may be attained in

the former, but there cannot be the discipline and the

constant economic precautions against wastage that the

workshop provides.

32. And it is just here that, in our view, the

University fails. The graduates who have profited by

local practical training are found to be almost entirely

non-Chinese; and even the Chinese graduates if they go to

Europe readily accommodate themselves to the environment

of dock or factory. What the University's founders

could not be expected to foresee was that the Chinese

undergraduate during vacation or the Chinese graduate

after finishing his course will not take orders in Hong

Kong from an uneducated foreman; and that that foreman

will not give orders to that student, whether in the two

large Docks or in the Railway shops or anywhere else. It is seldom safe to generalise in this way, but this conclusion is forced upon us from the unanimous evidence

of those who know.

33. The other factor which the founders of the

University could not foretell was the growth in recent

years of capable rival institutions in China proper which not only provide an adequate, if not perhaps an equivalent,

, training at about one-fifth of the cost, but moreover

have in many cases the advantage of benevolent support from elsewhere, particularly from the United States.

34. As has already been indicated, those engineering students who after graduation have profited by the

generosity and far-sighted policy of certain firms and

institutions, and have undergone an apprentice ship in the

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