with the neighbouring country of China." In September, 1941, the University included Faculties of Arts, Science, Medicine and Engineering, and had a student enrolment of approximately 600,* of whom about 120 were women.
9. At the outbreak of the Pacific war a small number of the students, were granted war-time degrees, and the others were given certification of their completed studies. Nearly two-thirds of them succeeded eventually in reaching Free China, and of these most were enabled to continue their studies in Chinese Universities and colleges, partly as a result of arrange- ments made by a member of the University staff who escaped internment to organise the work. The buildings were severely but not irreparably damaged. Almost all equipment and fittings were destroyed or looted, but the contents of the libraries have survived nearly intact. Through deaths, retirement or other causes, only 17 out of the pre-war total of 41 senior posts on the staff are occupied: and of 25 posts previously held by Europeans only 7 now are occupied.
NEED FOR A BASIC DECISION.
10. By our terms of reference we were invited to make a recommenda- tion as to whether or not the University as such should continue to exist." We have had before us urgent requests for the early re-opening of the University from the Commander-in-Chief, Hong Kong, from the Chief Officer of the Civil Affairs Administration, from Sir Mark Young shortly before his departure from the United Kingdom to take up his duties as Governor, from leading Chinese residents in the Colony, and from associations of old students. It is evident that a decision to close the University would cause bitter disappointment, and we ourselves have naturally been reluctant to contemplate such a drastic course. Nevertheless we realise that an occasion such as the present, when a fundamental decision can be taken to determine the nature and existence of the University, is unlikely to recur. We have further realized that we can recommend continuation only if the University could serve purposes fully sufficient to justify the expense and great effort involved. We have also recognized that a recommendation to reopen the University would mean its permanent, or at least indefinite, continuation, since a temporary extension of its existence for a limited period is not a prac- tical possibility.
COLONY'S REQUIREMENTS INSUFFICIENT TO JUSTIFY A UNIVERSITY. II. We have considered whether the higher educational needs of Hong Kong itself would justify the reopening of the University. On the criterion of the appropriate area to be served by a university, suggested by the Asquith Commission (Cmd. 6647, page 13), namely capacity to supply an adequate flow of students able to profit from higher education, we judge that, at present, and in any predictable future, the conditions of Hong Kong by themselves do not justify a university. On the basis of the quantitative test of the local needs for, or capacity to absorb the products of, a university, we also judge that the Colony itself does not require the restoration of the University. The Colony's needs of teachers, doctors and other professional specialists could be met by less expensive means-by a college of medicine, training colleges, and technical institutions, combined with a scheme of scholarships to universities overseas for a number of selected students.
* This figure is larger than would normally have been the case owing to the influx of refugees from Japanese-occupied China. It has been estimated that the figure would have been about 540.
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NEEDS OF OVERSEAS CHINESE ALSO INSUFFICIENT.
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12. An analysis of student registrations in the period 1928-38 showed that about 40 per cent. of the Chinese students came from South East Asia and the Dominions, chiefly from Malaya. We have considered therefore whether it would be justifiable to restore the University to continue to serve the needs of these overseas Chinese. The evidence before us suggests that although the Chinese family organization exercises a strong influence in favour of the forma- tive years being spent in China (or at least in a Chinese environment), the majority of these students came to Hong Kong because of the absence or limitation of facilities for higher education in their places of origin, because the University provided the opportunity of obtaining a degree instead of a local diploma (as for example in the case of the College of Medicine, Singapore), or because their lack of Mandarin made it difficult for them to attend the univer- sities in China. We have reached the conclusion that if easily accessible alterna- tive facilities of university education become available the numbers of these overseas students will decline. We have been given to understand that the recommendations of the McLean Commission, endorsed by the Asquith Com- mission, that there should be a University College, and ultimately a full University in Malaya will almost certainly be implemented. We have come to the conclusion that it would be uneconomical and shortsighted to restore the University of Hong Kong in order to meet a probably temporary demand from Malaya, with the risk of prejudicing the development of the Malayan Univer- sity in the interim period and confronting the University of Hong Kong later with the crisis of discovering a new justification for its further existence. The provision of a college of medicine and of technical institutes of less than university status in Hong Kong would, in our opinion, be adequate to meet the needs of these students in the period before university facilities are developed in Malaya.
THE QUESTION OF PRESTIGE.
13. We appreciate that the dissolution of the University would be a shock to the Colony and to sections of opinion in China and the Far East. We have therefore considered whether the claims of sentiment and prestige the prac- tical value of the continuity of tradition, and the need to avoid the embarrase ing political implications involved in a decision to close the University were sufficient to justify the restoration of the University merely on its former scale. The information at our disposal leads us to believe that the University had not been unsuccessful in the attempt to maintain British standards in its under- graduate training and examinations, but that unversity standards in research had in general been quite beyond its powers. A University in Hong Kong will in future have to stand far more severe tests of comparison than before the Japanese occupation, in the face of the rapidly rising standards of the Chinese universities. If revived on its inadequate pre-war basis, the University would relatively to them be in an increasingly inferior position. It could not fairly claim to be a university unless its staff possessed the quality and facilities enabling them to make significant contributions to knowledge by research. Even in its undergraduate work, it would, in the new competitive conditions, run the risk that its degrees might come to be held in so little esteem that in other British, or in Chinese and American universities, its graduates would be required to pursue further courses of undergraduate studies before they could be admitted to postgraduate courses. Such a position would be discreditable, indeed intolerable. We judge that the pretentiousness of maintaining an institution of less than University quality with the title and superficial attri- butes of a university would, over a period of years, do more damage to British prestige than the frank and intelligible decision to replace the university now by a group of professional schools of first-class standards.
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