CO129-610-3 Rehabilitation of Hong Kong University 15-2-1949 - 7-2-1950 — Page 63

NOTES FOR LETTER TO RIDE (VICE-CHANCELLOR, HONG KONG UNIVERSITY)

FROM MR. SLOSS.

5TH DECEMBER, 1949.

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1. Treasury Grant.

(a)

Treasury inclined to dislike use of grant by annual drawings of capital and interest. Our proposal only likely to be accepted as result of strong pressure from the Colonial office.

(b) Proposals to use grant for capital expenditure would be acceptable and perhaps, in some part, for recurrent expenditure (How any part to be earmarked for recurrent expenditure should be funded was not discussed. The value to the University would not immediately be great as the interest on the capital of £4m. would only be about £8750 = $130,000

$130,000 - about the cost of 4 senior teaching posts (inclusive of Provident Fund contributions and passages - not a very startling development programme) There are papers in file in which this is fully discussed.

If Treasury objection is sustained an entirely new plan for the next few years will have to be made. As a consequence the University will have to accept narrower scope and an even more acute under-financing than that under which it suffered before 1940. I think certain developments in Medicine (Prof. of Social Medicine, extension of teaching beds, provision of anything more than spasmodic and occasional post graduate teaching, will have to go). Architecture, extension in History, Geography and even in Training of Teachers will have to be scrutinized. This is of course only a personal view.

(၁)

(a)

1.

2.

30

11.

(a)

In Treasury objection there is probably fear of our using grant in 15 years and then facing deficit. You should find discussion of this in papers.

Circumstances compel me to think rather of the present than of the future.

In uncertainty of all money values, the value of goods and services may well turn out greater than that of carefully conserved funds.

A good University will get more support hereafter than would a cripple.

C.D. & W. Aid,

The whole issue of the use of the Treasury grant is intertwined with (a) the use of the Hong Kong Government's grant of 4`millions and (b) the prospect of C.D. & W. aid.

Hong Kong Government grant. As has already been suggested this may be a way out of the difficulty of the use of the Treasury grant. The whole is earmarked or used for capital expenditure. I am confident that the Hong Kong Government could be got to agree to set these heads of expenditure against the Treasury grant and to free the Hong Kong money to be used as we have proposed to use the Treasury money. Sir Man-Kam, Arthur Morse and Landale could be relied on to press for agreement on this in the Finance Committee of the Legislative Council.

(b) C.D. & W. aid.

Here are the greater difficulties:

(i)/