22
SUMMARY OF STAFF REQUIREMENTS.
62. The total staff in the four faculties proposed (excluding provision for extra-mural teaching) is as follows:-
Arts
Science
Medicine
Civil Engineering,
Architecture and
Town Planning.
Professors Readers Lecturers
Junior and Part-time
7472
Ilwa
5
8 7inin
18
15
Lecturers
1∞NO
Tutors and ☛
Demon- strators
17
9 or II
8 or 9
4
(
23
RESTORATION OF EXISTING BUILDINGS.
65. Estimates of the cost of repairs immediately necessary to the existing buildings can be little more than guesses based on the cost of typhoon-damage repairs before the war. No information has been available to us on the current costs of building in Hong Kong or on the prices of building materials, which, with the exception of bricks and cement, will have to be imported. We have received the following estimate of the cost of repairs: --
Arts, Administration and Students' Union
Science
Medical
Engineering
Library Buildings
Hostels and Staff Houses
£
15,000
5,000
8,000
5,000
3,000
10,000
£46,000
20
7
45
19
38 or 41
For comparison the pre-war staff consisted of:
16
2
23
17
28
Part IV.-Finance.
63. In this section of its report, we make an attempt to estimate the costs of establishing and maintaining a University in Hong Kong of the scope and standards described in Parts II and III. Two general comments must be made on these financial estimates. Firstly, the figures are highly speculative, because there is no reliable information on which to base estimates of such major items as building costs at present or during the next decade. Secondly, the whole of the capital and the full rate of the recurrent expenditure will not be required at the start. The totals refer to the amounts involved in the completed scheme of buildings, staff and departmental maintenance; the build- ing programme will necessarily be spread over a period of years and it will not be possible to recruit all the staff needed for some years. We consider that it would be useless to attempt to make a timetable for the expenditure, since this would depend on indeterminates such as building potential and availability of teaching staff.
SITE,
64. A University Committee of 1939 included in its recommendations the removal of the University to a site outside the very crowded municipal limits of Hong Kong. The present site, of remarkable natural beauty on a hill sloping sharply to the harbour, had become for Hong Kong what the College gardens are for Cambridge and Oxford, but it was never planned as a whole and hence has been used very uneconomically. A consideration that favoured the transfer of the University to a new site was that it was impeding the natural growth of the city of Victoria. A Committee in 1940 reconsidered the whole matter with great care and produced plans and drawings to show that properly used the site could easily accommodate a university twice as large as Hong Kong University then was. Provision to meet municipal claims was made by a proposal to surrender part of the site for town extension and for road construction. Compensation was to be found by extensions on to unoccupied Government land north and west of the University, and by the acquisition of a small site in the New Territories for a survey camp. The plan showed that, by levelling and filling, the existing inadequate space for games could be greatly increased. On the basis of the information at our disposal, we favour the acceptance of the proposals of the 1940 Site Committee and assume in the following estimates that the University will be developed on the present site.
NEW BUILDINGS.
66. The plans of the 1940 Committee provided for the rebuilding of the greater part of the existing University. On the basis of these plans, taking into account the availability of new accommodation (such as that for research work in Marine Zoology already provided in the plans for the new Fisheries Research Institute), and assuming that full use would be made of existing structures (for example, that the Science building completed in 1941 would be used for Chemistry if a new building was constructed to house Physics and Biology) we attempt to estimate a general sum needed for new buildings for a University of the scope we propose. We have taken as a starting point the pre- war cost of the 1941 science building and made provision for an average increase of 75 per cent. over pre-war costs in the period during which the building programme might be expected to be carried out (namely, between the third and tenth year after the reopening of the University). We have taken into account the needs for additional Science laboratories, new Medical buildings, further Students' Hostels, etc., and the special problems raised by the nature of the site. We conclude that, for a plan that would ultimately provide fully twice the pre-war teaching and residential accommodation, a sum of £600,000 would probably be needed. This sum could be regarded as a pool to be drawn on over a period of about 7 years to meet firm estimates as they became available.
EQUIPMENT OF LABORATORIES AND LIBRARIES.
6
67. 'We base our estimates of the cost of providing equipment for the labora- tories on the U.N.E.S.C.O. inventories for the re-equipment of laboratories in devastated areas. On this basis we believe that the following capital expendi- ture would be required:-
Chemistry, Physics, Botany and Zoology Medicine
Engineering
£
35,000
25,000
10,000
£70,000
The libraries escaped the hands of the looters, and it did not seem that there was need to make provision of a capital sum for replacement or special expansion.
ENDOWMENT OF CHAIRS.
68. Chairs in Medicine, Surgery and Gynaecology at the University are already partially endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation. We have noted that
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.