ENG-1988 — Page 148

EDUCATION

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academic year. Loans up to a maximum of $8,600 a year were available to final year students at Lingnan College and to students in the four-year course at Hong Kong Shue Yan College. Final-year students at Lingnan College will also be eligible to apply for grants from September 1989.

University of Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong, situated on the slopes above the Western District of Hong Kong Island, is the oldest tertiary education institution in Hong Kong. Established in 1911 and originally housed in just one building, the university has grown to its present size of 8 700 students, and now occupies an additional two sites: the Faculty of Medicine is situated in Pok Fu Lam, adjacent to its teaching hospital, Queen Mary Hospital, and the Faculty of Dentistry is housed in the Prince Philip Dental Hospital at Sai Ying Pun.

The structure of the degrees and the governance of the university are based mainly on the British system. The university has nine faculties: Arts, Architecture, Dentistry, Education, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Science and Social Sciences. Each faculty teaches both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.

Most undergraduate courses are of three years' duration. Exceptions are the curricula for the Bachelor of Architecture, Bachelor of Dental Surgery, and Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees, which last for five years, and the Bachelor of Science in Quantity Surveying (four years). All courses, apart from some in the Department of Chinese, are taught and examined in English. In the university's 1988 admission exercise, 18 998 candidates competed for 1 993 first-year places.

The university offers three kinds of higher degree, two of which, the Master of Philosophy and the Doctor of Philosophy, are awarded on the basis of original research. Another Master's degree is obtainable by coursework. In 1988, higher degree enrolment constituted about 16 per cent of total student registration.

Research at the university is active and ongoing, with almost every member of the academic staff engaged in research of some form. Funds for the support of research are limited, but the main financial sources are the government, private benefactions and private companies. A special grant of $20.4 million was provided by the government during the 1985-8 triennium to foster 'strategic' research of particular relevance and value to Hong Kong. Research is considered a vital function of the university, and projects undertaken in co-operation with the commercial and industrial sectors of the community, and collabora- tive research and exchange at an international level, are encouraged and supported as far as possible. In July 1988, for example, the university signed a Letter of Agreement with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States for collaborative activities in space research.

The university has a number of specialist research centres: the Centre of Asian Studies, which serves as a focal point for multi-disciplinary research on China, Hong Kong, East Asia and Southeast Asia; the Centre of Urban Studies and Urban Planning, the Kadoorie Agricultural Research Centre, the Social Sciences Research Centre, and the Swire Marine Laboratory at Cape d'Aguilar, due to be opened formally in the autumn of 1989. Research institutes in other disciplines like molecular biology are also being planned.

Close links are maintained with universities abroad, through individuals and depart- ments, as well as through the Association of Commonwealth Universities and the Asso- ciation of Southeast Asian Institutes of Higher Learning. Academic staff are recruited by international advertisement.