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 152

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equipment have been accommodating to a degree beyond earlier anticipation. It is expected that equipment for the elementary sciences and for medicine, will be installed and ready for use by October of this year, and that equipment for engineering Taboratorios will follow two or three months later.

(a) Admission Examination; To ensure a satisfactory standard of entrance, it has been arranged that the London, University Matriculation Board should hold its General Schools Examinations in Hong Kong in June and July of this year. The Matriculation Board has been most generous of help in allowing adjustments in its syllabuses to fit the special conditions in Hong Kong and in giving the Hong Kong University the benefit of its vast experience and of its admirable machinery of examinations.

(e) Staff: Already in Hong Kong are the Professor of Gynaecology with whom, for the carrying through of certain refresher courses for students who took their final medical examinations in China, are associated officiating professors of medicine and surgery, mombers of the Civil, Mcdical· Department of the Colony; a senior lecturor in Physics. who is to be released from Civil Administration duties as soon as the University can use his services, and some Chinese assistants. The Professors of English and Economics have sailed for Hong Kong to reopen the University office and to make provision for certain parts of the toaching. The professorships of Chinese, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Pathology Surgery, Medicine, Civil Engincoring and Education arc vacant. The filling of these posts is left to the action of the University Council whon it is reconstituted. Inquiries for suitable candidates are continuing in the United Kinetom.

LEN

topts are being made to fill, at an early date, the vacant Lectureships in Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology, History, and English, either in London or in China. The appointments will in the first case be for three years, the minimum time for which it is thought that men could be recruited. Long term appointments are left for the consideration of the appropriate University body when it is reconstitutod."

We approve the action that has been taken by the Provisional Powers Committee as appropriate either to the restoration of the University or to its replacement by a series of professional schools. With the arrangements it has made and with the staff both existing and under recruitment, it will be possible in the last months of 1946 for a minimum of higher education to be offered to meet the insistent demands of the officials and public of the Colony. We are convinced that no further action can be taken until a decision is reached on our main recommendatión concerning the future of the University. While thero is uncertainty whether the University is to be restored or not, it is not possible to make additional arrangements for higher education in the Colony cither in the sense of further restoration of the University or in the sense of preparing substitutos for the University such as professional schools, We would give as an example of the present dilemma the impossibility of recruiting senior staff for the University. Posts, both teaching and administrative, are now vacant. It is impossible to recruit for these posts on long-term appointments until

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