Bulletin Report of The Commission on The Chinese University of Hong Kong March 1976

begin their courses in the coming academic year will not reach the highest responsibilities of their lives for many years. The Chinese University, like its sister universities elsewhere in the world, by its work in the present is building the future: and it is no mere flight of rhetoric to insist that a university which is not at least twenty-five years ahead of its time has already fallen behind it. 19. The Working Party has provided us with an excellent map of the academic territory it has explored during the past two years. All the evidence we have received is a testimony to the liveliness and thoroughness of the discussions which its work provoked. It has postulated two primary conditions for progress in the future: (1) strengthened academic participation in the government of the University and (2) the integration of departments of study. It is no part of our duty to go over again the ground covered by the Working Party. But we think it will clarify the issues before us if we begin by endorsing both of those conditions laid down by the Working Party. 20. This issue raises important problems at different levels. There should be no difficulty in winning general agreement that in those areas involving straight and clear issues of academic professional judgment, qualified academic opinion should prevail. This is conceded in all universities where academic control is exercised through Faculty Boards, Boards of Studies and Examining Boards whose members are exclusively* members of the University's staff (teachers or researchers). And it is rare to find appointing bodies for academic teaching or research posts where academic influence is not either total or paramount. So far there is likely to be agreement and in recent years there has been a strong tide at work impelling acceptance in every part of the world of such forms of academic control. If these were the considerations in the mind of the Working Party its recommendation deserves our full support. 21. In this context we must consider the position of the governing bodies of the Colleges. In doing so, we note that the first Fulton Commission did not regard its terms of reference as imposing upon it the duty of considering constitutions for the Foundation Colleges (see Paragraph 99 of the Commission's Report). According to the evidence available to us during our visit, it appears that the constitution of Chung Chi College makes specific provision for only 2 members of the academic staff to be on the 40-strong Board of Governors — the President and the Vice-President ex officio. New Asia College's constitution makes specific provision for 3 academic staff — the President, Vice-President and Director of the Institute of Chinese Studies to be members of its Board of Governors, the strength of which is 33. The United College Board of Trustees includes 5 members of the academic staff (the President and 4 Deans) in a total complement of 39. This compares unfavourably with the proportion on the University Council which has 7 academic members out of a total of 27. (The figure of 7 does not include the 6 persons from the world community of universities who are members of the Council in their individual capacities.) 22. The situation we have described in respect of the three College Boards seems to us an anomaly in the light of our endorsement of the importance of academic participation in the governance of university institutions, since it appears that the Boards of Governors/Trustees of the Colleges are given by their constitutions supreme responsibility for the general direction of their (1) Strengthened academic participation in university government * The point is not invalidated by the common practice of adding an “external” examiner from a sister university to the internal Board of Examiners,