Message from the Master

"Morningside College was created with high ambitions. In my view, a college is a community of people learning together; and not just learning but growing more able, and indeed creating new skills, new writing, new ideas. Morningside College is quite small, but big enough that we have much to learn each from the others. When grown to full size, this year, it will have three hundred students and over twenty fellows, along with junior fellows, visitors and senior affiliates. Students live in the College throughout their degree course, when not on exchange at other universities and colleges around the world. They dine together in the dining hall. The Fellows and I dine there too from time to time, talking and listening to the students. There is formal teaching, especially for students in their first year, and service learning in later years. Our students and Fellows are international: many from Hong Kong, but many from the P.R.C., and many from other countries. They stimulate one another, and open the way to independent ideas and creativity. All of our students have that potential. We mean to release it."

James Mirrlees

Master

Professor Sir James A. Mirrlees

Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, Professor Sir James A. Mirrlees was appointed as Master of Morningside College in August 2009.
A pioneer in optimal taxation theory, Professor Sir James Mirrlees was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1996 in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the economic theory of incentives under asymmetric information. He was knighted in 1997. After graduating from the University of Edinburgh in 1957, Professor Mirrlees was admitted to Trinity College at Cambridge University and received his PhD in Economics in 1963. From 1968 to 1995 he was Edgeworth Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Nuffield College. From 1995 to 2003, he has served as Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge. He has been Distinguished Professor-at-Large at CUHK since 2002. Professor Mirrlees has also held visiting professorships at MIT, UC Berkeley, Yale and Melbourne.
Professor Mirrlees identifies himself with the educational ideals of Morningside College, with emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge and service to the community. He believes that “a good college should within itself generate discoveries, creations and new understanding. The new college should be a community of independent thinkers and a place where students can think for themselves, argue with anyone and explore knowledge.” The Fellows of the college must help the students to be questioners by example. They can stimulate the students and also bring people with new ideas and special experience to meet students at the college. Prof. Mirrlees also hopes to enable the students to be helpers, using their vacations helping the needy.