newsbytes@clarinet.com (01/18/90)
KOWLOON TONG, KONGKONG, 1990 JAN 15 (NB) -- The director of Hongkong's new City Polytechnic predicts that the institution will become this British colony's "silicon tong" within the next ten years. Professor Cheng Yiu-chung said before the college's official opening on Monday that there is a proposal for a commercial science park next to it. In recent years, after a slow start, Hongkong's tertiary education institutions have started moving into modern technology in a big way. The Hongkong Polytechnic, which was founded in the late seventies, began life with a computer science department which has served a great part of the local need for trained information technology personnel. The Baptist College's Department of Communications has recently moved into a new wing incorporating a complete publishing house equipped with the latest technology for producing publications in English and Chinese. The University of Hongkong also has its computer science department, but the new City Polytechnic offers the most advanced facilities of all. The central network already encompasses 1,500 computers, enabling the college to offer students the online learning facilities common at many US universities. Blackboards and chalk have been completely pre-empted by audio-visual devices and a unique central laboratory to be shared by all departments will facilitate exchange of ideas and scientific co- operation, according to Professor Alan Jeary. The City Polytechnic also boasts a simultaneous translation unit which its director, Keith Houghton, claims is better than the one at the United Nations, upon which it is modelled. It is hoped that graduates from the new college will help ease Hongkong's chronic shortage of information technology personnel, which is exacerbated by the increasing brain drain of young professionals emigrating as the 1997 handover to China approaches. (Norman Wingrove/19900117/Press Contact: Norman Wingrove + 852 574 3515)