CO129-594-2 Rehabilitation of Hong Kong University. For extracted photographs see CN 3-45- Advisory Committee report 1-7-1946 - 19-8-1946 — Page 133

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Country of China." We The Committee has the following six

comments or recommendations to add on to further general aspects of the policy which should govern the resuscitation of the University on these lines. dealt with in Section III.

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(a) Permaneney

Detailed and technical points are

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824 In the first place, the plzn the Universit, revival must snvisage it go a permanent institution.

if in the immediate emergency of shortages, temporary arrangements have to be adopted for buildings, for equipment, even for staffing, these must be regarded merely as first- aid mensures and must not be allowed to pre judice, or serve as an excuse for postponing, permanent plans. Quite apart from the fact that the cheap and the temporary always prove a false economy in university development, a university in Hong Kong could not recruit staff or in other ways attain the standards necessary to represent British scholarship and could not become a centre of learning unless it had the self-confidence provided by the intention and assurance of permanence. The Chief purpose it is designed to serve, namely the maintenance of good understanding, is a permanent one, whatever changes may occur in the ephemeral political scene. It should be constructed and planned to survive any change that might take place in the status of Hong Kong; even if a radical change occurred, the University's functions would become more, not less important as a living source of British influence and as an established centre of Sino-British contact. Two practical consequences, follow from this principle of permanence to which the Committee wish to draw attention. The University should have a long-term building plan for the most efficient use of its site or sites, in order to ensure that each stage of its physical reconstruction or expansion contributes towards this final pattern. The University could best achieve permanence if it could be given financial support in the form of endowment, particularly endowment of certain chairs and of some of its special activities such as its scholarship scheme and its library.

(b) Adequate Finance

Secondly, the plans for the University must ensure that it has adequate funds. In no sense is the University called upon to compete in size and scope with the great universities en Chenland, which have received and will receive generous financial support from America.

It must, however, within its carefully chosen field of activity be financially strong and stable enough to achieve the highest quality in terms of attracting a distinguished staff, of providing the staff with adequate time and facilities for re search and with study leave for keeping contact with their Chinese and British colleagues, of subsidizing pslcetea students through the providio hostels so that again the full benefit of university life. The history of Hong Kong University in the past thirty years is proof of the wasteful extravagance of under-financing.

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