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its equipment for Far Bustern History studies and for the Economics of the Northorn Paific area.
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BUILDINGS. Most of the primary teaching buildings have been re constructed and re-equipped. Work hus started on a new building for Civil engineering and in this it is hoped to include provision for the teaching of Architecture. Homens llustel is now building and the cost will be met by Sir Robert Ho Tung who most generously has assigned One Million Dollars (£62,500) for the building and furnishing. Plans are prepared for the conversion of an excellently designed charity hospital into a supplementary teaching hospital long nooded, but now immediately necessary for reforms in the org nisution of clinical teaching and to accommodate the increased numbers of students. As an indication of the local interest in the development of the University I might say that tho, brochure giving prints of these new plans that was circulated with the last Council Agenda papers was prepared and printed by the Council of the Students Union on its own initiative and at its own expensc.
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BUILDINGE REQUIRED. Application has already be、n made through the Colonial Office for a grant towards the cost of the Architectural studios and library and for the conversion of the hospital mentioned above.
Aid is also sought for the building of a new hostel for men and for additional staff qu::: rters. The housing position in Hong Kong must approximate to the worse examples in Germany, though for different reasons. A town nearly näcquatc in 1935 for three quarters of a million people now houses one and three quarter millions. Thoroughly unsatisfactory students' lodgings, where six students may share, at a fantastic cost, a room about 16 foot by 10 feet may occasionally be found in the poorer quarters of the town where the unit of accommmodation is not the floor, not the room but the "bed-space" into which rooms are divided. Forty square foot is the space available not for a person but for a family. For this the rent may well be the cquivalent of about £2 a month. Houses for new members of the staff simply are unobtainable. Already it has proved impossible to recruit Chinese to the stuff oxcept on a promise of accommodation. For overscas staff the position is perhaps more difficult. The prospect of having to compel men to share houses nü even rooms, has created an unwillingness to fill vacancics, or the view hela is that it is better to wait than to justify gricvances. But the wait is going to be fur too long. It is certain that building for runt by contractors will do nothing to solve the University's problem in the next twenty years. The high profits are in tentment buildings for industrial workers and in palaccs for rich displaced Chinese.
TRAINING OF TEACHERS. The new recruitment policy outlined in th: Thite Paper, Coloni 1 197, imposes on the University the training of more teachers than heretofore and to a higher standard. Mor schools are to be opened and local people are to be trained to take places as they cre vacated by overseas mcn and somen. Hong Kong is one of the Colonies in which this can now be done without a serious loss of efficiency. The teaching of English, must however, be improved. English (or Americn) already is the Lingua Franca of China and will for lony be the first language of intern: tional communications. Shanghai may take lon,, to recover and therefore Hong Kong has become the international centre for the whole of China. good school or ducation equipped and staffed to give Specialist training in the teaching of English will serve the long-term int rests of the Colony and incidentally might materially assist whatever Government is cstablished in Ching to achieve what Chinese naministrators know to be a task of first
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