Bulletin Number One 1987

academic activities outside the formal curriculum. Some 77% of them are interested in sports and games, while 80.5% take an interest in activities related to arts and crafts, and some 47% in Student Union activities. As regards the employment sectors the freshmen preferred to join upon graduation, 32.2% indicated that commerce and industry would be their top pri ority, 30.8% indicated civil service, 18.3% education and 12.2% social service. When asked to assess their own abilities and skills, the students surveyed sug gested that they were adaptable, analytical, self- confident and good at Chinese. On the other hand, they indicated deficiency in English, in leadership abilities, in social skills and in creativity. Freshmen o f the Part-time Degree Pro­ grammes Freshmen of the Part-time Degree Programmes are different from their full-time counterparts in a variety of ways. They are older, with an age range of twenty-three to forty-three years, while the average is 27.7 years. Women and men are about equally represented. Some 51% of the students surveyed are male, and 49% are female. The male to female ratios among the new students of the Business Adminis tration Programme and the Chinese-English Pro gramme are 1:0.24 and 1:2.5 respectively. Unlike their full-time counterparts, a much larger proportion of these part-time students are married (30.4%). Of these 61.1% have one or more children. After graduation from secondary school, some 39% of the new students report that they have, at one time or another, attended post-secondary institu tions, while 26.1% indicated that they have already graduated from Colleges of Education. About 16% showed that they have taken courses organized by various institutions, such as the extramural courses offered by the two universities. It appears that a group of highly active and self-motivated learners has been enrolled. The new part-time students come from four major occupational sectors. 33% of them work in various government units, 27.8% come from the educational sector, 21.8% from commerce and industry, and 10.4% served in various social service organizations. Most of these students have chosen to enrol in a subject that relates closely to their work. 34.3% of those enrolled in the Chinese-English Pro gramme, and 80% of those in the Music Programme are from the teaching profession. In the Social Work Programme, half of the students are in-service social workers. Finally, 74.9% of the students in the Busi ness Administration Programme come from various fields in commerce and industry. Over half of the students surveyed (52.1%) have had fewer than five years of working experience, while 21.7% of them have worked over ten years. Some 28% of the new students have monthly salaries below $6,000 while 22.6% earn over $9,000 per month. The average monthly salary is $7,115. As for the financing of university education, over 88% of the respondents reported that the major source is their own personal income, followed by savings (7%). When the students were asked the reasons for pursuing a university education, the most popular one given was the wish to acquire auniversity qualification (53%). Two other popular reasons were the desire to study a subject of interest (50.4%), and to acquire professional knowledge during spare time (40%). Most of the new part-time students assess them selves favourably, believing that they are adaptable, self-confident, analytical, good at Chinese and able to organize. According to the students themselves, their chief shortcomings are lack of creativity and inad equacy in social skills. What students expected a university education to,provide *To help to develop one's sense o f social responsibility and to fin d a life goal; to help to improve o n e 's analytical th in k ing and to develop independence. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 19