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country of China.
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The Committee has the following six
comments or recommendations to add on the further general aspects of the policy which should govern the resuscitation of the University on these lines. Detailed and technical points are dealt with in Section III.
(a) Permanency
Even
17. In the first place, the plans for the University's revival must envisage it as 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 measures 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 wishes 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
18. 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 on the mainland, 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 selected students through the provision of hostels so that they gain 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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