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is, unless it can arrange for the student to pass on to an apprenticeship in Britain, undertaking to give him a training at the end of which he will, on its own admission, be of no immediate use to an employer. The possible employer, moreover, will not be apparently either willing or in a position to take on such a graduate as an apprentice.

55. This is, we venture to think, an impossible position for the University to be placed in. It is not for us to suggest what the University should do. The difficulty affects our inquiry directly, in so far as it makes us apprehensive that, unless a solution be found, the mechanical and electrical courses of the University may have died long before there could be any hope of an apprentice from the technical school, which we are going to propose, making use of them. We should deplore this curtailment of the Colony's general facilities for higher technical educa- tion, but facts must be faced and economic considerations can not be ignored.

sandwich

56. There are, as it seems to us, only two possible ways out of this difficulty. Post-

graduate Either the University must provide scholarships so that the local engineering firms apprentice- may take on as apprentices, without expense, those mechanical and electrical ship in the engineering graduates who can not be sent to works in Britain, or the University system. must try and arrange with the local engineering firms some sort of "sandwich" system, by which those students might be admitted to the local engineering works for definite portions of the year. If the first alternative be adopted, the actual payment of the allowances should be in the hands of the firms. The latter alterna- tive could possibly be worked, without much interference with the present teaching terms, so as to admit of six months in the University and six months in the works. Even if the "sandwich" system alternative be not regarded as so satisfactory as the other, it should not, we think, be rejected without consideration. There are colleges in America in connection with which the "sandwich" system is believed to be working satisfactorily. And local needs and conditions cannot be ignored.

57. It has been suggested by local employers of engineering labour that the University's course in mechanical engineering might with advantage be made more practical. The Professor of Electrical Engineering from the stand-point of one who is advocating the drafting of graduates to British works is opposed to this suggestion. He thinks that the substitution of instruction in machine design and workshop to which we have referred in paragraph 14 above for mechanical design was a step in the wrong direction. He argues that the Hong Kong University engineering courses should be kept as far as possible on the same lines as those which are taught in British universities and suggests that workshop practice would be better taught in a workshop. From the point of view of those who are going to apprenticeships in British works there is something in what the Professor says, but if students are going to be admitted to the mechanical and electrical engineering courses who have no prospect of going on to British works, the problem must it seems to us be viewed from a different aspect, especially if such students can not look forward to post- graduate apprenticeships in local works. We submit that it might be possible slightly to differentiate the course as between a student who had a good prospect of passing on to an apprenticeship abroad and one for whom such an arrangement would appear to be difficult or impossible. We realize that such differentiation as also the fixing up of the "sandwich" system for such students as were intending to take either the mechanical engineering or the electrical engineering course, would involve the making of plans for a student early in his engineering course, whereas under existing conditions the usual practice is for a student to postpone until after he has completed successfully three years of the engineering curriculum, making up his mind whether he will take the civil, mechanical or electrical course. We do not, however, regard these difficulties as insuperable. We feel that a serious student of engineering should know his mind from the start and that this habit of drifting should be discouraged.

58. We venture to make another suggestion. A workshop course is, as we have pointed out, compulsory for students of the Engineering Faculty who are in their first and second years but the work done by the students in the workshop is not subjected to any examination or other form of test. We think that the practical skill of the student in this respect should be tested by the Professor of Mechanical Engineering acting in collaboration with an external examiner who