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Difficulties
to be
surmounted
for an early reopening of the University.
BuildingS 15.
On the short term reference the Committee recognise the necessity of speed in restarting such of the activities of the University as have immediate importance in the re-occupied Colony. The University Buildings are seriously damaged, the Laboratories are without apparatus and furniture. Floor boarding, ceiling and roof timbers have been carried away. However, there appears to be no doubt that with the vigorous co-operation of the Civil Administration, a sufficient number of class rooms, lecture rooms and living quarters for students could be made serviceable within six months, provided building materials arrive in the Colony and the University is given a high preference in their allocation. The libraries are undamaged and intact.
Laboratories
16. The re-equipping of laboratories at first threatened very long delay, but negotiations
have shown that apparatus and appliances for elementary teaching in the basic sciences may be made available in England for dispatch in time to reach Hong Kong at some time in September. Until a long term policy has been approved, that is, until it is know what kind of University is to be established and what its scope, re-equipment must be limited to the minimum requirements for elementary Chemistry, Physics, Botany, Zoology. There is little hope of securing in Hong Kong before the early months of 1947 the necessary equipment for the Departments of Physiology, Anatomy, Bio-chemistry and Pathology.
3taff
17. The ravest difficulty however, arises in the recruit- ment of staff. Seventeen senior teachers of the University have retired or have died. A great number of the Chinese members of the Staff worked in China during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and they wish to continue there. Limiting the survey to senior staff only, the University has a Registrar, a Librarian, a Professor and Lecturer in English, a Professor of Economics, a Lecturer in Physics, a Professor of Physiology, a Professor of Gynaeology, a Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering. Ten out of twenty seven senior posts are filled; and even if all were filled pre-war experience shows that several Departments would still be dangerously understaffed even to keep the University going on the unsatisfactory pre-war scale. Recruitment of University teachers for posts in the United Kingdom has probably never been so difficult as it is at present. difficulty of recruitment to Colonial posts will be very much greater. Further, it is impossible to hope to get good men to take the risk of accepting appointments to a place so far from the centre as Hong Kong unless they can be assured of work that will interest them.
The
Until the Committee has made its recomendations on University development and those recommendations have been accepted by the Secretary of State it is impossible to promise work of sound academic quality. This applies leact, perhaps, in Medicine where the local desire for an institution able to award a degree of a diploma accepted by the General Medical Council as qualification for registration in the United Kingdom might be sufficient guarantee that the institution would be of comparable status with a Medical School in the United Kingdom.
/18.
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