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EDUCATION

setting up of a university which will be a grouping of professional schools emphasising science, technology, engineering, management and business studies; which will provide degree places for 7 000 full time and equivalent part time students by 1999-2000, with room for further development up to about 10 000; and which will have its first intake no later than the 1994–7 triennium.

The committee which had also the task of recommending for appointment the first Vice-Chancellor and other senior staff of the university has, following a very comprehen- sive recruitment exercise and with the agreement of the Governor, selected Dr Chia-wei Woo as the first Vice-Chancellor,

The committee has from the outset interpreted its terms of reference to mean that it should move as quickly as possible towards first student intakes and has been encouraged in this view by tremendous enthusiasm and support for the project from the government and the public. As a result, planning has progressed smoothly and speedily enabling the committee to set a target date for first student intakes of October 1991.

To date, a name, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has been chosen for the new university after a public competition; a 42 hectare site in the eastern New Territories has been chosen and allocated, and the necessary enabling legislation to incorporate the new university as an autonomous degree awarding institution has been enacted.

The Planning Committee has been further encouraged by a donation of HK$1.5 billion from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club to cover the cost of the campus construction and an undertaking by the government to meet any amount by which the capital cost may exceed the donation. An architectural competition was conducted during the year to obtain the best design for the campus. The annually recurrent costs of the university will be met by government grants, fees and other revenue.

On the academic side, the committee will in due course recommend a modular system, and has drawn up a preliminary model of the academic profile of the new university indicating degree courses to be offered at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, reflecting the areas of emphasis in its terms of reference and seeking to meet the economic requirements of Hong Kong in addition to providing for the social demand.

Provisional Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation

Since the introduction of degree courses at Hong Kong's non-university institutions of higher education in 1983-4, the Council for National Academic Awards in the United Kingdom has been responsible for validating the proposed courses to ensure that the awards are comparable in standard to those of British universities. In May 1986, however, the government decided that there should, in principle, be a Hong Kong Council for Academic Awards. There being an average of 11 degree courses a year to validate in the foreseeable future, it was considered viable for Hong Kong to arrange and manage its own external validations of non-university degrees, and thereby develop a greater self-sufficiency in Hong Kong's higher education.

A Planning Committee on Academic Awards was set up in October 1986 to consider in detail how full local validation of degrees awarded by the non-university educational institutions in Hong Kong might best be arranged and managed. Following the Report of the Planning Committee in May 1987, a Provisional Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation was set up in November to prepare for the creation of a Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation as an independent statutory body. The Provisional Council meets in Hong Kong twice a year and comprises five eminent overseas academics, five

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