Employability and mobility in the valorisation of higher education qualifications: the experiences and reflections of Chinese students and graduates

ABSTRACT

In the last two decades, we have witnessed a rapid expansion of higher education in Mainland China and Taiwan, recording a significant increase in higher education enrolments in these two Chinese societies. The massification of higher education in China and Taiwan has inevitably resulted in an oversupply of university graduates, with growing social concerns for skills mismatches being found in the labour market, stagnant graduate employment and social mobility. This article critically examines how university students and graduates in these two Chinese societies reflect upon their employment experiences. Human capital theory predicts that other things being equal, raising participation in higher education will initially increase inequality as rates of return rise, and then it will reduce inequality as expansion reaches mass levels and rates of return decline. If the output of graduates outpaces the demand for their skills, which appears to be the current case in many countries, then supply and demand pressures reduce the pay premium for degrees and lower income inequalities. However, this study clearly demonstrates that the massification and the universalisation of higher education in Mainland China and Taiwan, respectively, have actually intensified inequality.     

Educational Reforms and Coping Strategies under the Tidal Wave of Marketisation: A comparative study of Hong Kong and the mainland

It has been a global trend, since the 1980s, that the process of marketisation has been influential in the decision making of social policies around the world, and that this tidal wave is now crossing over to the Asia-Pacific region as well. Education policy, as one of the important social policies for many developing countries, has been influential in the forefront of national development in terms of manpower training, as well as in other arenas of economic and social developments. In this way, these countries are trying to improve the quality of their educational services so that they can be more competitive in order to cater for the demands in the international markets. One of the outcomes of this global trend is the international quality assurance movement in streamlining the educational institutions as well as in using different coping strategies to promote quality education for all concerned. For the Chinese mainland, it seems that the central government is adopting a policy of decentralisation in getting local governments to use multiple channels of resources and other methods to provide for their own educational services. Hong Kong as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, however, has adopted quite a different approach by employing the principle of managerialism in order to enhance its competitiveness in providing quality education to meet the increasing market demands. Hence, the present study is to compare and contrast the educational reforms and coping strategies that have been adopted by the socialist mainland, on the one hand, and the capitalist Hong Kong SAR, on the other hand, in order to face this new challenge of marketisation.     

Globalisation and Higher Education Restructuring in Hong Kong,Taiwan and Mainland China

Globalisation and the evolution of the knowledge-based economy have caused dramatic changes in the character and functions of higher education in most countries around the world. However, the impacts of globalisation on universities are not uniform even though similar business-like practices have been adopted to cope with competition in the global marketplace. The pressure for restructuring and reforming higher education is mainly derived from growing expectations and demands of different stakeholders in society. In the last decade, government bureaucracy, public service institutions and higher education institutions and universities have been significantly affected by the tidal wave of the public sector reform around the world. Apart from improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services, universities are confronted with a situation in which the principles of financial accountability and responsiveness to stakeholders prevail amidst the massification stage under the condition of global economic retrenchment. In response to such pressing demands for change, policies and strategies of decentralisation, privatisation and marketisation are becoming increasingly popular measures in university governance. Reform strategies and measures like quality assurance, performance evaluation, financial audit, corporate management and market competition are adopted to reform and improve the performance of the higher education sector. This article examines the most recent higher education reforms and restructuring in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China, with particular reference to the issues related to globalisation of decentralisation and marketisation in higher education.     

Riding over socialism and global capitalism: changing education governance and social policy paradigms in post‐Mao China

In coping with the challenges of globalization, various reform measures, in the field of social policy, have been initiated in post‐Mao China. Strategies such as privatization, marketization, commodification and societalization have been adopted to redefine the relationship between the state, the market and other non‐state sectors involved in social policy provision and financing. In particular, the restructuring of state‐owned enterprises and the de‐monopolization of the state in social policy provision has inevitably led to significant changes in the post‐Mao welfare regime. This article has chosen a theme ‘riding over socialism and global capitalism’ to examine how the Chinese government reinvents its social policy delivery by adopting new governance strategies to cope with the growing impacts of globalization. With particular reference to higher education, this article focuses on how the three major aspects of higher education governance, namely, provision, financing and regulation, have changed since the economic reform started in the late 1970s. This article concludes by asking whether the introduction of new governance strategies and new reform strategies in education have weakened the state capacity.     

Promoting national identity through higher education and graduate employment: reality in the responses and implementation of government policy in China

ABSTRACT

In the last decade, the Chinese government has called for deep collaboration between Hong Kong, Macau (the two special administrative regions of China) and cities in Southern part of the country to foster economic and social development across the region. More recently, the Chinese government initiated a strategic project to develop the Pan-Pearl River Delta region into a Greater Bay Area like successful bay economies in Tokyo and Florida. This article sets out against the wider policy context to critically examine the reality in the responses and implementation of government policy in China when serious attempts have been made to encourage students originally from Hong Kong and Macau to study in Chinese universities in the Mainland and look for career development upon their graduation. This article has found that the promotion of national identity through higher education and graduate employment has not been successful because of failure of policy coordination, policy interpretations and implementation.     

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.     

Education and the market place in Hong Kong and Mainland China

This paper attempts to examine how market forces have affected educational development in Hong Kong and Mainland China. In both places, there has been a trend to the decentralisation and marketisation of education in recent years, particularly in the realm of higher education. Based upon recent research conducted in Hong Kong and China, the author argues that higher education in these two places has been significantly affected by emerging market forces. The core of the paper is confined to the discussion of two major issues: user charges and the introduction of competition and cost recovery in education. The main focus of this paper is on what strategies educational institutions in Hong Kong and China have employed in response to the strong tide of marketisation. Particular attention will be given to discussing how markets and competition have affected the governance and delivery of educational services in Hong Kong and China. This comparative study has demonstrated that even though the recent developments in higher education in these two places have been experiencing a similar global trend, the global tide of universal trend in which private charges, market competition, non-state provision, corporate governance, system-wide performance management should not be treated as a simplistic notion of undifferentiated universal trend. Instead, different places may take different configurations in cases of marketization which remain national-specific as well as global.     

Multilevel analysis of primary students' perception and deployment of self‐learning strategies

This study focuses on primary students' self‐learning strategies, using a sample of 1253 students from 20 Year 3 and 20 Year 5 classes from 10 primary schools in Hong Kong. Students were asked to name sources from which they could learn. They were then asked to rate 10 self‐learning strategies on perceived usefulness and personal deployment. Students named an average of 2.5 learning sources, with print exposure (reading) being the most commonly nominated source. Multilevel analysis revealed substantial differences (27% of attributable variance) between classes on student ability to name learning sources. In general, the students indicated that all 10 suggested learning strategies were useful. The two most commonly deployed strategies were help‐seeking and locating a quiet study environment. Gender differences were not found on naming learning resources, but girls indicated relatively higher levels of strategy awareness and deployment.     

‘My family’s goals are also my goals’: the relationship between collectivism,distal utility value,and learning and career goals of international university students in Germany

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance - The utility value of an academic task can affect university students’ learning behavior and career choices. For...