Transnational Education‐‐Competition or Complementarity: the Case of Hong Kong

This article provides a brief overview of the Hong Kong system of higher education and the roles of the government, the Education Commission, the University Grants Committee, and the Hong Kong Council for Academic Accreditation in relation to the planning, development, funding, and quality assurance of higher education in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). It then describes the extent to which transnational education (i.e., non‐local education delivered in Hong Kong) plays a role in meeting the demand for higher and continuing education in Hong Kong and recent measures taken by the HKSAR government aimed at assuring the quality of such offshore provision. It concludes with some comments as to how transnational education may be expected to contribute towards meeting the demand for higher and continuing education in Hong Kong in the future.     

香港高等教育发展新策略 --副学士学位课程计划

2001年香港特区政府提出在10年后使接受高等教育的适龄学生达到60％,并改革英国式教育系统的计划。引入由学生自资的副学士学位课程,即是这个计划的一个重要部分,成为香港高等教育大众化发展的一个新策略。它正在为香港创造一个繁荣的高等教育新市场。     

香港政府在高等教育改革中的作用

说明了在全球化深入发展的时代背景下,香港政府对香港现行高等教育体系进行改革的动机与目的。阐述了香港政府在此次教育改革过程中所起到的积极作用。明确了在全球化进程中,政府可以通过转变管理思想,改进管理方式,更加有效地促进高等教育系统以积极、活跃的方式参与区域社会经济的建设。     

Quality assurance and school monitoring in Hong Kong

This study reports on the Hong Kong education quality assurance and school monitoring system. Three research questions were addressed: (1) Who controls the quality of school education in Hong Kong? (2) What strategies are used in the Hong Kong school education quality assurance process? (3) Agenda for Future Research on quality assurance and school monitoring in Hong Kong. The analysis found that whilst quality assurance systems in Hong Kong are sophisticated, major reviews are necessary to rebuild trust between the government and practitioners.     

Equity,Elitism, Marketisation: Inclusive Education in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, the concept of equity and subsequently inclusive education began to gain ground in the 1970s. Inclusive education has been made the goal of special education since 1977 and was finally implemented in 1997. Meanwhile, Hong Kong has been struggling to maintain its competitiveness in a global and knowledge-based economy. Elitism and marketisation of education battle against the force of equity and will continue to form strong forces in determining educational policies and directions. Therefore, this article examines Hong Kong's inclusive education agenda, the roles of government bodies and higher education institutions, and the progress achieved. In addition, salient issues that have emerged and affected inclusive education in Hong Kong as a result of the struggle among equity, elitism and marketisation forces are discussed.     

21世纪香港高等教育发展战略

为了面向21世纪的高等教育需要，教育统筹委员会于1999年间开展香港教育全面检讨，并提出建构终身学习的教育体系，其中以高等教育和持续教育的发展为重点。本文讨论香港高等教育在新世纪发展的主要课题，从中亦勾划出评审课程的质素和高等教育的多元的重要性。     

Enhancing Quality of Higher Education for World-Class Status

Aspiring to become an international city in Asia, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) has been investing more in higher education. In order to enhance its global competitiveness, all public universities in Hong Kong have gone through different forms of quality assurance exercises, including teaching and learning processes reviews, research assessment exercises, management and governance reviews, as well as quality assurance council reviews. In the context of the significant emphasis placed by Hong Kong on the internationalization of higher education, this article examines the major approaches and strategies that the HKSAR has adopted in enhancing quality in teaching, learning, and research in higher education, and also discusses the major challenges for quality assurance confronted by the city-state.     

高校跨境合作办学机构运行现状探析——以ABC学院为例

ABC学院作为跨境教育合作办学机构开创了内地与香港高校实施机构合作办学的先河。它采用国际惯用的"校董会制度",秉承"全人"教育理念,有着全新的教学模式和国际化的师资队伍,学院执行港校的管理制度、要求和标准,课程设计也沿用香港模式,力求做到国际化和本土化的结合,有着鲜明的办学特色。但创办近10年来,由于合作办学政策的缺失、早期筹办程序的特殊以及所签协议考虑不周全等导致ABC在办学过程中地位尴尬,在资金筹措、场地使用、师资管理、自主招生等方面面临困境,长远发展受限。鉴于此,建议政府相关部门放权给部分省份,制定和完善地方政策法规,允许先行先试,扩大港校到内地办学的自主权,引进原汁原味的港校教育模式以促进内地高等教育体制改革与创新。     

试论香港高等教育管理模式

高等教育管理模式是涉及到政府与高校的关系以及高校内部管理的问题。本文从政府与高校的关系分析了高等教育管理的主要模式,论述了香港高教管理模式:1.政府通过法律管理院校;2.政府通过缓冲组织调控院校;3.政府通过校外学术监督机构控制院校。以期对中国大陆深化高教管理模式改革、建立现代大学制度有所借鉴。     

延续与变迁:21世纪初的香港高等教育发展与改革

本文在概述香港高等教育发展历程的基础上,分析了世纪之初香港高等教育所面临的主要问题、重要改革举措和政策变革。香港高等教育在21世纪初的主要发展和改革表现在：素质评鉴机制的制度化,大学管治体制和教职员薪酬制度的改革,大学角色的再定位,社区学院和私立大学的发展,以及大学教育的国际化等方面。这些改革对香港高校与政府的关系、高校的角色定位等都带来重要影响。香港高等教育的国际化发展,将使香港高校在中国内地高等教育体系中扮演越来越重要的角色,推动香港与中国内地高等教育的互动和发展。为此,香港与内地之间需要加强在高等教育政策上的协调与合作。     

香港教科书的编辑：提升质量的建议

教科书是教育系统中重要的环节,它是教学的重要内容、知识的系统性组织、课程与教学间的连结。然而,香港对教科书的探讨仍然不足,而且教科书的质量仍有待提升。在制度层面分析香港教科书编审情况的基础上;从教科书研究、政府审书尺度、政府审书取向、教科书内容质素等四方面,阐述提升教科书效能的建议。作者认为,香港特区政府仍负有最重要的责任。能否加强教科书研究？能否强化审书机制？能否扮演更积极的审书角色？这些都是特区政府能否提升教科书质量所必须面对和解决的重要问题。     

Empowerment or impediment? School governance in the school-based management era in Hong Kong

Following the international trend in education towards democracy and decentralization, the Hong Kong government introduced a school-based management (SBM) system about two decades ago. It is widely recognized in the literature that decentralization, empowering school level management and marginalizing the influence of the intermediate level of governance, can result in better deployment of school resources and better meet the demands of various stakeholders. However, in the unique historical and cultural context of Hong Kong, the advantages of decentralization claimed in the literature have yet to be fully realized. This paper discusses the contextual factors affecting the implementation of SBM in Hong Kong, and examines their impact on four major stakeholders, namely the government, the principals, the teachers, and the parents in the wake of reform.     

Community College Policy in Hong Kong: Intention,Practices, and Consequence

In order to increase the competitiveness of the workforce at low cost, the Hong Kong government brought in the idea of community colleges and the associate degree while keeping the same annual set quota of first-year, first-degree places at publicly-funded universities. At first glance, in doing so, the government could avoid expanding the sector of university education, which could eventually lead to credential inflation usually found in the West. However, the policy, perhaps unintentionally, boosts up students’ educational aspiration: while a greater number of students obtain an associate degree, they do not take an associate degree as a final degree but demand a bachelor degree. This rising demand, then, leads to the emergence and subsequent expansion of the self-financing sector of university education. This Hong Kong experience demonstrates that it is perhaps a mission impossible, to let more people have a higher education while keeping the sector of higher education intact.     

Pioneering the community college movement in Hong Kong

As part of the reform of the overall education system in Hong Kong, the government set a target in October 2000 of raising the percentage of senior secondary school graduates who could receive higher education from the current 30% to 60% within a period of ten years. Prior to this announcement, however, the School of Professional and Continuing Education of The University of Hong Kong (or HKU SPACE for short) had already taken the lead by establishing the first Community College in March 2000. The Associate Degree programme of the College offered an alternative route to higher education to many aspiring young people. The broad-based curriculum with its equal emphasis on science and humanities (as well as solid generic skills) is a new attempt to produce people that can meet the challenges of the knowledge society. The first intake of 740 students in 2000 was followed by a second intake of more than a thousand in 2001. This paper examines the experience gained during the first two years of this new development, and explores the role of community colleges in general in the education reform movement and human resources development strategy of Hong Kong     

Lessons to be learned? Parallels between Australia and Hong Kong in the development of distance education

Developments in the provision of distance education in Australia and Hong Kong are analysed in terms of eight phases, characterised by Government policies and institutional practices. Hong Kong appears to be progressing through the same developmental phases as Australia, but at later points in time. Both countries decided against forming a single national open university in favour of dispersed provision but neither followed recommendations to form a body to co‐ordinate course provision nationally. Both have experienced a period of uncontrolled and unco-ordinated expansion of distance education courses and Hong Kong is still in this phase, whereas Australia is now in the midst of belated attempts by its federal government to rationalise distance education at the national level along with higher education as a whole. We argue that much of the confusion surrounding these events could have been prevented by early planning and setting of clear policy guidelines, together with a recognition that implementation of higher education policy is by no means a straightforward matter. Hopefully there are lessons to be learned from this analysis: in the case of Hong Kong, that its current trend towards unco‐ordinated expansion may well lead to enforced contraction and rationalisation should economic growth trends be reversed, and, in the case of Australia, a clearer understanding of issues related to policy and implementation.     

Social foundations of public–private partnerships in education: the historical cases of post-war Singapore and Hong Kong

This paper compares public–private partnerships (PPPs) in education in post-war Singapore and Hong Kong. After the Second World War the Singapore government shied away from PPPs, while the state in Hong Kong collaborated extensively with the non-state sector in education. Singapore was a small city-state flanked by two Muslim nations, and its post-war regime faced challenges from the Malayan Communist Party. These pressures curbed the state’s involvement with missionary and Chinese bodies in education. Hong Kong, however, was a mono-racial society without any anti-Chinese neighbours, and its authorities were seldom challenged by a militant antagonist. Thus, its government was freer to involve non-state agents in education. This study reveals that PPPs are viable only when suitable non-state partners exist and when the state does not believe that such undertakings would expose the school system to an antagonist. It also urges scholars in future to explore the socio-political preconditions for PPPs.     

The Accommodation and Resistance to the Decolonisation,Neocolonisation and Recolonisation of Higher Education in Hong Kong

On 1 July 1997, sovereignty over Hong Kong was returned from the UK to the People's Republic of China (PRC). This article identifies the impact of such a political transition on the Hong Kong higher education system during the transitional period between 1982 and 1997. The struggles among the departing and incoming sovereign powers and local groups are also examined. The article argues that, during this period, three related colonial transition processes-decolonisation, neocolonisation and recolonisation-co-existed in Hong Kong higher education within the framework of 'one country, two systems'. These processes can be seen as resistance to each other: for example, neocolonisation as resistance to decolonisation and recolonisation as resistance to neocolonisation. They are further complicated by the spectra of their accommodation and resistance by the three major actors. On different occasions, the local government and groups played different or even contradictory roles as decolonising, neocolonising or recolonising agents. They selectively participated in the three processes so as to create facilitating conditions for and obstacles to the control of higher education by the incoming ruling power in the post-1997 era.     

Student loans for higher education

In recent years, economic circumstances have forced a wide range of governments to examine ways of spreading the cost of education. Introduction of loan schemes for higher education has been a particularly popular suggestion. Although schemes work well in some countries, however, in others they have worked poorly and have suffered from high default rates. The Hong Kong system, which was launched in 1969, operates efficiently. Many factors contributing to this are specific to the local situation, but other governments might find it instructive to examine the Hong Kong experience. In turn, others may also be able to teach Hong Kong some useful lessons.     

Myth of the Inferior Status of Vocational Education: The Case of Hong Kong

Abstract

In this article, factors contributing to the poor perceptions and inferior status of vocational education in Hong Kong are discussed. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is employed as the methodology in examining the discursive construction of vocational education in the policy context. A total of five policy documents published between 1970 and 2015 are included. Our findings show that the socioeconomic transformation of Hong Kong in recent decades, massification of higher education, and cultural factors such as parental expectations are pertinent to the stigmatization observed in vocational education. This article discusses the implications from the findings and concludes with possible solutions for the future development of vocational education in Hong Kong under the novel vocational and professional education and training (VPET) initiative launched by the government.     

Choosing teaching in Hong Kong: a strategy to survive the financial crisis?

Background:?Hong Kong is currently a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. It has autonomy over many policy areas, including finance and education. It is a community of seven million people, which has changed its focus and identity significantly over the last 25 years, from predominantly manufacturing to a service and knowledge economy with particular strengths in financial services.

Purpose:?This paper will consider the market for teacher education places and the market for teachers, and explore the career intention and commitment implications of high numbers of well qualified applicants applying for teaching in the context of reduced work opportunities elsewhere, an increasing higher education focus on intake scores and the challenge, for the teaching profession and the education system, of teaching becoming less secure work.

Sources of evidence:?Governmental and institutional publications and data, along with research and survey findings, together with comparative literature underpin the reactions to past, present and possible future effects on teacher education in Hong Kong.

Main argument:?Given its financial focus, Hong Kong would be expected to suffer significantly during the recent financial crisis and that this would impact across all its sectors including Education and Teacher Education. In addition to the financial crisis, other changes have affected teacher education in Hong Kong, including major reforms in curriculum and school and higher education structure and a significantly diminished birth rate reducing posts in teaching, and raising concerns about job security.

Conclusions:?Hong Kong is a very prudently managed economy with substantial reserves and a commitment to ‘small government’ and the impact has been different from many other systems. Places on teacher education programmes remained unchanged. Applications for teacher education programmes however increased significantly during the crisis.