TNAG-0177-FCO40-213-Proposed-Polytechnic-1969 — Page 84

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POLYTECHNIC PLANNING COMMITTEE

The Development of High Level Vocational Education in Hong Kong

The need in Hong Kong for high level vocational education has received much attention lately and not least from commerce, industry, the professions and the press. There is in particular general agreement on the need for a considerable expansion of those higher education facilities concerned with the needs of commerce and industry.

2.

Those who have studied the question have reluctantly concluded that it is not possible to quantify Hong Kong's future requirements in the field of higher vocational education. It would of course be possible to mount a survey to arrive at some idea of the present needs of industry and commerce: but the real requirement is for a forecast of future needs. Any decision in 1969 to provide more facilities for higher vocational education could not produce many trained graduates before about 1975, and survey, to be useful, would have to be related to the needs of industry and commerce from 1975 onwards. With an economy developing and changing as fast as Hong Kong's, it is in many cases out of the question for employers to forecast their requirements this far ahead.

3.

Nevertheless Hong Kong does suffer from a shortfall of high level manpower, and some idea of its extent may be obtained from the 1966 Interim Report of the Special Committee on Higher Education. This suggested, in line with experience in other developing countries, that by 1971 the proportion of high level manpower for the Colony as a whole might have risen to 15% of the total working population. It seemed to the Special Committee that it would be realistic to work on the basis that two-thirds of this high level manpower would in fact consist of persons having had no post-secondary education. This would mean that about 5% of the working population would require higher educational qualifications.

4.

Using this figure of 5% (which may be on the low side) the total number of educationally qualified high level manpower in 1971 would need to be about 88,000. In 1966 the actual number was estimated at about 48,000. Allowing for wastage, the total shortfall to be made up over the five year period 1966/71 would be in the region of 50,200. Over this same period Hong Kong's output of qualified high level manpower is estimated at about 20,000, leaving a net deficit for 1966-71 of 30,200, or about 6,000 per annum. The current output of

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