CO129-594-1 Rehabilitation of Hong Kong University. For extracted photographs see CN 3-45- Advisory Committee report 29-3-1946 - 3-7-1946 — Page 123

3.

Colonial resources. We suggest that the basic professorships for Hong Kong would be in English, Chinese, Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Social Science or Social Economics and Physiology. An initial grant of £350,000 would be required to achieve this end.

The total of the non-recurring grant would then become a sum between £1,080,000 and £1,480,000 but of this sum between £600,000 and £1 million would be paid, in instalments between the fourth and tenth year after the University is restarted.

Recurring costs of staff on the Irvine Report scale and assuming that endowments of professorships mentioned in the previous paragraph are not forthcoming, are shown in the following table:

21 Professors £1590 a year.

£1100

..£31,500 .£4,400

4 Readers

•

45 Lecturers

£ 880

11

.

£39,600

18 Junior or

Part-time

Lecturers

£ 600

...£10,800

35 Tutors and

Demonstrators £200

Ħ

..

.£7,000

Registrar and

Librarian

Vice-

£1500

#1

........£ 3,000

NOTE I.

Chancellor £2500 #

Provident Fund for above

at 10% a year...

Clerical staff and servants with superannuation charges at 556...

£25,000

£98,800

•£9,880 £ 108,680

.....

£ 3,000 £ 111,680

If we accepted a further recommendation of the Irvine Committee that the professors of the Clinical subjects in medicine should be paid at the higher rate of £2000 a year the cost would be increased by £1500 and a provident fund contribution of £150 a year, i.e., by £1650 making the total under this head £113,330.

Departmental Maintenance Grants etc., (based on but not repeating the Irvine Committee's recommendations)

Grants to Departments...

#

"Library....

£2500

£2000

Scholarships and Maintenance Grants (Parnas. pt-II. Rovince)

of Students from China...

•••••£20000

Research Grant (excluding Fisher-

* This sun incluiso an

average annual charg

&£2000 for passages. This charge. will gebend

the standard

of passenyar fares in two

pol

war years.

ies) Research Institutes...

Other charges...

£7000

6000 £7000

3500 £38500

The University's present resources go only a little way to meetthese recurring costs. Before the war the fee income had risen to about £22,000. The Government of Hong Kong made a grant of H.K.dollars 350,000 to the general fund of the University, maintained a certain number of scholars and paid subsistance allowance and fees for students in training to become teachers in its schools. The total payment was about £23,500. Endowments were a diminishing source of income. Sums had been i invested in high interest-bearing mortgages in Shanghai and in Hong Kong. The University in 1938 and 1939 was able to get rid of a certain number of the latter, in order to invest the capital in British Government Securities, the remainder have to be written off as they have been repaid in serious depreciated Chinese dollars in Shanghai. The Hong Kong mortgages may recover their values but for the present it is impossible to expect any interest return on them. The University is thus left with some £350,000 in safe investments in the United Kingdom from which it receives an annual return of about £12,000. Of the capital sum £265,000 was a gift from the British Government out of its share of the Chinese Boxer Indemnity, and the interest on this is at free disposal for University purposes. A part of the

/remainder