TNAG-1072-FCO40-1322-Policy-of-the-Government-of-Hong-Kong-on-education-1981 — Page 20

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In regard to (i), it is our view that Baptist College could get all the courses we have considered to date up to degree standard within five years. In most cases, comparability with the Polytechnic, where it has not already been achieved, would be possible in two or three years.

Our report shows clearly the areas in which resources need to be provided, but not the extent of those resources. We feel that the most we can do at this stage in regard to (i) is to point out that the scale of the resources could be very significantly affected by the course aims. Thus, if it is satisfactory to the Department of Education that the College continues, (e.g in Civil Engineering where the report comments on this dilemma in detail), to offer courses which are pure and academic, the resource needs, while substantial, are minimal for work at that level; that is one reason why Baptist has moved in that direction and it is a situation in which more of the present staff could be seen as pulling their weight in the staff teams which need to be created, even though substantial added expertise is needed in some cases. But if the vocational needs of Hong Kong are to be given a higher place, then the courses would generally need a higher level of laboratory provision, and it would be necessary to assemble staff teams which had greater collective professional experience. Such staff are harder to get; it takes longer to build the team; and some at least of the new appointees would tend to be at the higher points on the salary scales. Yet the very salary scales which need to be introduced to attract and retain the best staff may also have the effect of retaining the weaker ones who have less to offer to the vocational/ professional type of degree. Until such staff are eased out, it might be necessary to build in what is needed yet at the same time support the weak who really ought to go, and that is necessarily more expensive.

To point all this up, we suspect that vocational courses - good ones at least which we could fully endorse would take longer and cost more, and our timescale is five years, (but not ten). More analytical courses would be cheaper and take three to five years, while Business Studies which has the right ideas and less problems in the matter of laboratories could take nearer three, except in Acounting where they have to make up more ground.

Before CNAA can really help you with clearer answers to question (i), we have to stress that at the least the first set of decisions about intention and scale have to be taken by the Department of Education. This must include a machinery for agreeing at least in broad terms the focus of the courses which are to result from the significant or even substantial government expenditure which you seem to envisage. In some respects, we have stressed (main report section 4.1, and 5.9) the need for some machinery to agree broad aims and thus resolve the very pure/highly applied questions for courses for which government will be carrying a major part of the cost. UPGC has a way of dealing with this, and even though we would see merit in something more sophisticated in their case their current procedure goes a long way towards preventing wholly eclectic choices on the part of the staff.

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