Bulletin Autumn‧Winter 1981

together for academic tasks which the y jointly undertake and carry out in common through machinery which only the existence of the university offers, the association will not bear full fruit or enjoy the strength which should flow from the rich diversity of its parts. When they accept full responsibility for one another ， the members o f the colleges breathe life into the university; they largely provide its government and largely inspire its policies; by their association in joint tasks they look outwards as well as inwards, and they grow in strength and stature both as individual colleges and as partners in the university enterprise," "The special character of a collegiate university should confer on it important academic advantages. Living, learning and the social activities of the students should more easily be integrated in a college than in a much larger c ommun i t y . . .. In the second place, the partnership between colleges in a federal university offers the advantages of large scale organization . . .co-operation between colleges can make possible a range of academic subjects which none of the colleges by itself can hope to offer; and the central resources of the university can supplement in the most costly fields the efforts of the individual institutions." "The possibility of full exploitin g these advantages depends to a large extent on the geographical relations of the colleges to one another . . . Where there is a very wide geographical dispersal of the university the advantages of federal organization are reduced." "The university has invariably, i f history is a guide, to be empowered to act as adjudicator between the competing claims of the colleges to undertake new academic developments; and a university organized primarily to supervise matriculation, co-ordinate courses, conduct examinations and award qualifications is not the happiest instrument for such a purpose. In particular, it would have the serious disadvantage of laying an overstrong emphasis on the distinction between the university administrator on the one hand and the college teacher on the other." While influenced by these general reflections, members of the Commission recognized that circumstances in Hong Kong were sui generis and so the constitutional framework which emerged had no exact parallel elsewhere. In this connexion the one prediction on the working of that constitution which the Commission allowed itself is interesting to recall in the light of developments in intercollegiate teaching which have occurred since then. “We venture to suggest that the most searching test of the new University wil l be found to lie in the ability of the Colleges to throw themselves whole-heartedly into reciprocal arrangements for the teaching of their students. Inter-collegiate lectures — and inter-collegiate arrangements for supervision and for tutorials — will open t o all students the whole range of academic talent which the new University can attract; and in undertaking these responsibilities for one another the Colleges will bring the University into it s fullest life." I have often been asked whether the University as it is to-day matches the Commission's vision of it. That is not an easy question to answer because we are 20 years on and the Commission was primaril y concerned with the urgent task of getting the university started on a sound base. Moreover, we were at pains to avoid prescribing academic directions for future decades, not only because we were not given sufficient indications of manpower needs to justify such an attempt but also because that would have been trespassing on the rightful duties of an independent university. Nevertheless some obvious differences stand out. First, there is the site, the magnificence of which, as already mentioned, far surpasses that which the Commission was shown, and the splendid array of buildings which, in so far as they represent the generosity of private benefactors, far exceed the cautious hopes we held in 1962. Second, there are the constitutional adjustments resulting from the second Fulton Commission, made necessary by experience and changing circumstances. As an overall comment, we were no doubt excessively modest in our expectation thanks to our anxiety to be realistic — and I do not believe there is one of us who, seeing the University as it is to-day, would not be impressed by its achievements and proud to have been associated with its birth. Of course there are various new developments which add to the interest of a return visit — the establishment of a medical school whose involvement in the community wil l surely be a great strength to the University, the size o f the non-resident student body, the growth o f extra-curricular educational activities, and so on. But these are the product of changing times and the University's legitimate reassessment of contemporary and impending needs. There is, however, one immensely important opportunity which, it seems to me , now lies before the University which the Fulton Commission, operating in a different political era and in th e context of Hong Kong's own immediate education needs, could not have foreseen with any precision, namely the fostering of mutual understanding of , and co-operation with, higher education in China. Surely it is here that The Chinese University is uniquely placed to make a vital and distinctive contribition to the great benefit of East and West alike. 13