Bulletin Summer 1988

CUHK earnestly appeals for a lengthening of the two-month consultation period to at least four months following the recent practice for important public documents, in order that the Report may receive extensive and exhaustive study without which a proper evaluation cannot be undertaken. Selection of students and setting of curriculum are two universally recognized and respected rights of all major universities in the world. Both rights are being safeguarded by the University Grants Committee in the United Kingdom; in Hong Kong they are embodied in the University's charter, and have been openly acknowledged by the University and Polytechnic Grants Committee, both in its ‘Notes on Procedures' and through its chairman on important public occasions. If the recommendations were adopted by the Government as POLICY without examination in detail of their implementation practicability, the University would have to interpret this as a violation of university autonomy by means of administrative fiat. Under such circumstances, the University will not be able to co-operate in the implementation of the proposals and will, in fact, do everything possible to make the University's case. The first statement was followed by another longer Senate statement giving fuller details of the University's position. This statement, issued on 17th June, 1988, contains the following text: Over the past 25 years, The Chinese University of Hong Kong has striven to provide quality education to the young people of Hong Kong, with an emphasis on achieving synthesis of Western and Chinese cultures. With each successive year, CUHKhas refined its four-year undergraduate programme that has long traditional ties with the education system in China, and is widely practised in major countries overseas including not only USA, Canada, France and Japan, but also such other Commonwealth countries as Australia and New Zealand which offer a four-year honours degree programme. In this rapidly changing age, CUHK is coping well with the need to improve the quality of education and is proud of its achievements and heritage. In the cosmopolitan and dynamic community of Hong Kong, diversity and freedom have been the key to its success in many important areas including education. A policy of minimum intervention by the Government is the only effective means to enable the universities to evolve sound and relevant academic programmes for Hong Kong and to make useful contributions to scholarship at the international level. Sir Adrian Cadbury commented at the Thirteenth Commonwealth Universities Congress in 1983 as follows: 'The role of the universities is to provide their students not only with the necessary knowledge to advance society's frontiers in a practical way, but also to inspire them to make the most of their individual abilities and to have the faith and tenacity to change the world for the better.' In faithfully playing the role of the University as described, CUHK has never flagged in its efforts to improve the quality of its four-year education. With due respect to the wisdom and efforts of the Education Commission, the University cannot subscribe to the claim of the Commission that a scheme requiring all senior secondary school students to complete uniformly a two-year sixth form education before exit to enter local tertiary institutions is an optimum solution to the educational reform of Hong Kong. The Commission's recommendation that Secondary 7 be the single exit point has at least the following defects: (i) CUHK must abandon its carefully nurtured education scheme combining a broad-based education with competency in a specialized field, and start anew to build a scheme which has less flexibility. The cross-cultural heritage with which by history and design the University is richly endowed, will be eroded. (ii) Students wishing to go abroad to follow a four-year degree course in USA, parts of Australia, Canada, UK(Scotland), Japan and China, will waste a year of time and money. It should be noted that the figures quoted in the Commission's report show that nearly 50 per cent of Hong Kong's sixth form students are entering four-year tertiary institutions, and that for these students there is no general, automatic recognition given by overseas universities for their A-level achievements. Furthermore, entry to US universities depends very much on such test results as SAT and TOEFL which can readily be taken after Form V. (iii) Students ready for university education after Secondary 6 are forced to stay on for a less fruitful and perhaps demoralizing year. (iv) The design of the two-year sixth form to prepare students for entry to all tertiary institutions in Hong Kong for degree or non-degree courses, and also to prepare students to enter society, gives rise naturally 3