Section A The Present Landscape of Higher Education in Hong Kong
Chapter 3 : Taught Postgraduate Courses and CPE

(cf Chapter 12 of "Higher Education in Hong Kong" (1996))

3.1	There are about 5,500 fte students engaged in taught postgraduate courses, of whom 1,400 are in business studies, including MBA and 1,200 in education. The next largest groups are engineering and social sciences. Numbers in science and the humanities are small. The cost of postgraduate courses is largely met by government, although there are a few self-financing course
3.2	The various HEIs choose differing ways to organise their taught postgraduate courses and differing nomenclature to describe them. At present, HKU's nine faculties offer about 50 taught postgraduate courses under specific titles such as Master of Science in Urban Planning or Advanced Diploma in Orthodontics. Most are 1 year full-time or 2 years part-time, although some are longer. CUHK has 38 graduate divisions which offer 16 MA, MSc or MSSc courses lasting one year full-time or two years part-time and 2 Diploma programmes. There are two-year full time (three-year part-time) courses for the degrees of MBA, M Div and MSW. HKUST has about 20 taught postgraduate courses, including some interdisciplinary ones, under fairly general titles. CityU's four faculties have some 44 courses with specific titles. PolyU's taught postgraduate courses, mostly part-time and on a credit accumulation basis, are offered by individual departments : there are about 19 in all, but many are based on a modular scheme incorporating common units. HKBU also has 10 TPg courses. In all there are about 160 taught postgraduate courses available, with a typical class size of 10 to 20 fte students.
3.3	As regards continuing and professional education (CPE), there are a number of specialist units within existing HEIs which offer courses. The School of Professional and Continuing Education at HKU is the direct successor to the former Extra Mural Department. It works mainly on a part-time basis and has about 69,000 students (headcount) of whom 21,000 are on higher level courses. The School of Continuing Studies at CUHK, also stemming from the former Extra Mural Department, has 27,500 students (headcount) of whom 2,800 are being taught through distance learning. The School of Continuing and Professional Education at CityU has 16,000 students (headcount), 1,700 of them on higher level courses. The Centre for Professional and Continuing Education and the Centre for Professional & Business English at PolyU have 21,000 and 7,200 students respectively and HKBU's School of Continuing Education 46,400. The HKIEd has about 4,700 students on professional updating cours
3.4	The largest provider at higher level might be regarded as the Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK) with 22,900 students (headcount) on degree courses: however, we have already included the OUHK's contribution in paragraph 1.6 on part-time undergraduate courses. Other agencies which are involved include the Caritas Adult and Higher Education Service, with 103,000 students, most of them on courses at primary and secondary level, and the Hong Kong Management Association with 52,000 students of management topics at various levels from elementary to executive development. The Hong Kong College of Technology through its Information Service Centre of Professional Studies (ISCOPS) provides information to those in employment about local and overseas professional qualifications. Additionally, of course, many private firms and government departments provide in-house continuing professional education either from their own resources or by employing external experts. The total activity is very difficult to measure because of problems of comparability of data and level and unawareness of in-house activity. There are today perhaps 370,000 students (headcount) engaged in forms of continuing and professional education which we think it appropriate to include within higher education. Their full-time equivalence may be 61,000.