Bulletin Number One 1986

Profile of 1985 Freshmen The University admitted 1,405 undergraduates in September 1985. Surveys on the freshmen,including students of the Part-time Degree Programmes, were conducted by the Office of Student Affairs, and the response rates of the full-time and part-time undergraduates were 98.9% and 99% respectively. Freshmen of the Full-time Programmes The overall male to female ratio among the freshmen is 0.8:1 ， as compared to 1.7:1 of last year. The percentage of female students has increased from some 37% of last year to about 55%. However, male students still form the majority in the Faculty of Science (70%). The average age of the students is 18.4 years, which is lower than that of the previous year (19.1) while the male and female averages are 18.7 and 18.3 respectively. Some 73% of the students surveyed profess no religious belief. Those who do are mainly Protestants (20.8%) and Catholics (5.1%). In general, the students had an active non- academic life before entering the University, with 98.8% of them having participated in extracurricular activities at school, and 74.7% had travelled outside Hong Kong. About 55% of the freshmen had had some forms of paid employment before entering the University. The majority of the 1985 freshmen indicated that they had confidence in adapting to university life. The areas in which they anticipated the greatest difficulties were: adaptation to the University's teaching method (34.4%), coping with tutorials (26.3%) and understanding readingmaterials in English (22.7%). Some 78% of the freshmen indicated that they were troubled, to various extents, by emotional problems during the three months before entering the University. The problems were considered serious by another 13% of the respondents. The level of educational attainment of the parents is significantly higher than that of the previous year: about 13% of the fathers and 6.5% of the mothers received education at tertiary level. 27.2% of the fathers and 20% of the mothers were educated to the secondary standard. Less than half of the parents had only primary school education. As for parents' occupation, 20.8% of the fathers are semiskilled workers, 12.4% of them are store-owners and 9.7% are service workers, while 7.9% are professionals or in a managerial position. A majority of the mothers (62.4%) are housewives, while 16.4% of them are employed as semi-skilled workers. The survey revealed that nearly 20% of the freshmen came from families with a monthly household income of $9,001 or above, while the average was $6,578. The average monthly household income per capita was $1,197.3, an increase by some 12% over the previous year's figure ($1,067.9). There were 29.5% of the students surveyed whose monthly household income was in the $3,001 to $5,000 range. Close to 90% of the freshmen had to rely in varying degrees on their families for financial support. About 53% of the students indicated that they had a need for Government grants and loans and 40% planned to take up summer or part-time work to help provide for their education expenses. The majority of the freshmen (52.3%) live in Kowloon. About 25% of them live in the New Territories and 22% on Hong Kong Island. 46.6% of them live in public housing estates, slightly less than the previous year (49.5%). Although the overall average living area per person is 6.7 square metres, which is slightly higher than that of the previous year, there is still 31.6% of them living and studying in rather congested condition, with a living area of 2.6 to 5 square metres per person. The average family size is 5.6 persons. Nearly 70% of the freshmen expressed a strong need for campus accommodation. Reasons given by most of them included unfavourable living condition at home and the remoteness of home RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 13