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MEMORANDUM A.
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Memorandum of the Faculty of Arts endorsed by the Senate at its meeting on March 10th, 1938, on University (1937) Report. Paragraph 53.
(a) WHEREAS the Committee has placed it on record that the Faculty of Arts 'seems to have attached itself like some half unwanted Stepbrother" to two scientific Faculties, the Senate would like to point out that the Arts Faculty from the beginning was an essential element without which the creation of a University was never envisaged, and that the public demand was then, and is now, fully as strong, for a Faculty of Arts as for either of the two other Faculties as shown by the following facts:---
(1) The recital of the Ordinance of the University, March 30, 1911, begins "Whereas it is desirable to establish a University within the Colony of Hong Kong for the promotion of Arts, Science and Learning.....
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(2) In a dispatch, quoted in the University Blue Book of 1912, the Viceroy of Canton made specific reference to the Arts Course in the proposed University of Hong Kong, in addressing the chief officials of his jurisdiction, whom he expected to support the proposal.
(3) At the third meeting of the University Council, on September 7, 1911. before any classes in any Faculty had commenced, the Council promised, in reply to a telegram of specific inquiry from the Secretary of State for the Colonies. that a Faculty of Arts should be started " at once if possible".
(4) As evidence that there was a streng public demand for the initiation of a Faculty of Arts, the minutes of the seventeenth meeting of the University Council. September 6, 1912, contain reference to a fund of ten thousand dollars per annum guaranteed by a number of prominent Chinese gentlemen, for the purpose of securing the permanent establish- ment of a Faculty of Arts.
(5) That this demand for the type of education offered in the Faculty of Arts has been well maintained. is shown by the fact that the numbers of ordinary graduates from the three Faculties to date are:-
Arts
B.A. 299
Medicine. M.B., B.S.
269
Engineering
B.Sc.
267
While the enrolment for September, 1937, when full courses were in operation in all Faculties were :—
Arts
(4 Yr. Course)
150
Vedicine
(6 Yr. Course) 160
Engineering (4 Yr. Course)
131
(b) The Senate would further point out that misunderstanding may arise from the statement "Later on the Chamber of Commerce was induced to con- tribute towards the support of a department where Economics and some- thing like Accountancy could be taught (this contribution has ceased, but the department goes on)", as this statement leaves the impression that Economics and Accountancy were courses which originated in, and were contingent upon, funds from the Chamber of Commerce, whereas the facts
are:-
(1) Political Economy was among the courses mentioned as the objects of
the guarantee fund of 1912. referred to in 53 (a) 4.
(2) In May. 1913. the late Mr. Cheung Pat Sze, and his partners, made an offer, which was accepted. to give $12,000 a year for five years to establish among other final courses, Economics, Business Organization and Accounting.
(3) There has been a chair of Economics in the University since 1913. (4) The Chamber of Commerce contribution was not made until after 1920, when the courses had been for several years an established element in the Faculty of Arts.
MEMORANDUM B.
Memorandum of the Faculty of Arts approved by the Senate at its meeting on March 10th, 1938, on University (1937) Report, Paragraph 61.
(a) The Senate is of the opinion that courses in the Faculty of Arts, in so far as they are studied through the medium of English, must. on the whole, follow the lines and attain the standards of similar courses delivered in Universities in Great Britain, but that in certain subjects it is necessary to make adjustments especially in teaching methods to suit local needs, and that such adjustments are regularly made.
(b) The courses in the Department of Commerce are definitely and carefully aligned with the actual practice of Commerce in China, without thereby making them essentially different in academic character from corresponding courses in other Universities.
(c) The reference to joint-stock companies suggests a misunderstanding of the character of the courses given in the Department of Commerce, and to remove this misunderstanding the Senate points out, firstly, that in the courses of Accountancy, joint-stock companies are given the ordinary treatment which is normal in such courses, and other forms of business organization are fully dealt with; secondly, the study of Economics aims at providing an apparatus of thought which can be applied to economic questions of any kind or in any place, and that the course in this University depends in no way upon an assumption of the existence of joint-stock, or any other form of organization.
(d) Chinese conditions and practice determine. not so much the form of the apparatus referred to, as its application and use. No one could lecture in Chinese without adopting a mode of illustrative approach which gives Chinese problems pride of place, while endeavouring to apply to them the economic principles which have been largely the product of the western analytical mind.
(e) As the question of suitability of courses to clientele has led the Com- mittee to doubt whether the Department of Commerce can justify its exist- ence, the Senate wishes to point out that, since the present head of the department first took charge, the numbers of students reading for a degree in the Department of Commerce have risen from 15, in 1928, to 42 in September 1937.
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