Sessional_Paper_1938 — Page 259

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(1) Political Economy was among the courses mentioned as the objects of

the guarantee fund of 1912, referred to in 53 (a) 4.

(2) In May, 1913, the late Mr. Cheung Pat Sze, and his partners, made an offer, which was accepted, to give $12,000 a year for five years to establish among other final courses, Economics, Business Organization and Accounting.

(3) There has been a chair of Economics in the University since 1913. (4) The Chamber of Commerce contribution was not made until after 1920, when the courses had been for several years an established element in the Faculty of Arts.

MEMORANDUM B.

Memorandum of the Faculty of Arts approved by the Senate at its meeting on March 10th, 1938, on University

(1937) Report, Paragraph 61.

(a) The Senate is of the opinion that courses in the Faculty of Arts, in so far as they are studied through the medium of English, must, on the whole, follow the lines and attain the standards of similar courses delivered in Universities in Great Britain, but that in certain subjects it is necessary to make adjustments especially in teaching methods to suit local needs, and that such adjustments are regularly made.

(b) The courses in the Department of Commerce are definitely and carefully aligned with the actual practice of Commerce in China, without thereby making them essentially different in academic character from corresponding courses in other Universities.

(c) The reference to joint-stock companies suggests a misunderstanding of the character of the courses given in the Department of Commerce. and to remove this misunderstanding the Senate points out, firstly, that in the courses of Accountancy, joint-stock companies are given the ordinary treatment which is normal in such courses, and other forms of business organization are fully dealt with; secondly, the study of Economics aims at providing an apparatus of thought which can be applied to economic questions of any kind or in any place, and that the course in this University depends in no way upon an assumption of the existence of joint-stock, or any other form of organization.

(d) Chinese conditions and practice determine, not so much the form of the apparatus referred to, as its application and use. No one could lecture in Chinese without adopting a mode of illustrative approach which gives Chinese problems pride of place, while endeavouring to apply to them the economic principles which have been largely the product of the western analytical mind.

(e) As the question of suitability of courses to clientele has led the Com- mittee to doubt whether the Department of Commerce can justify its exist- ence, the Senate wishes to point out that, since the present head of the department first took charge, the numbers of students reading for a degree in the Department of Commerce have risen from 15, in 1928, to 42 in September 1937.

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