Institutional Strategies for Internationalisation of Higher Education
David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies
Hong Kong Baptist University
25 - 27 November 1996

Abstract

The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented transformation of the Hong Kong economy. The Territory has evolved from a centre of export based domestic production into an Asian economic hub. During the same period the Hong Kong higher education sector has also undergone dramatic changes, including more than tripling access to full-time undergraduate courses, significant growth in postgraduate education and research programmes, and increased opportunity for older and non traditional students to partake of higher, as well as continuing and professional, education through extra-mural and open access distance education courses.

The next decade presents no less a prospect of change with the higher education sector in Hong Kong facing a number of major challenges arising both from international and local economic and socio-political developments and from internal pressures on quality and cost. Among these challenges, it is argued, is the need for our institutions to establish and maintain an international role and reputation for excellence.

After a brief introduction, the paper will present the views of the University Grants Committee (UGC) on the external dimension to higher education in Hong Kong as contained in the Committee's recently published report "Higher Education in Hong Kong" (October 1996). It will relate these views to the present state of international collaboration and overseas participation in Hong Kong's higher education system, and to the UGC's recommendations aimed at developing Hong Kong as a regional centre for higher education.

Background

The past decade has witnessed an unprecedented transformation of the Hong Kong economy. The Territory has evolved from a centre of export based domestic production into an Asian economic hub. Hong Kong companies control and service businesses and production facilities located in south China, throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and more widely.

Hong Kong today ranks as the eighth largest trading entity in the world. Ten years ago it ranked a mere thirteenth. In just one decade, the total value of exports and imports have increased almost 6-fold. More important than the growth, however, is the changing pattern and composition of the trade flows. A decade ago, domestic exports constituted 28% of total exports, but today they are only 8%, playing second fiddle to re exports. The value of trade between Hong Kong and China has risen from 26% of total trade to 35%, while that between Hong Kong and the other Asian economies has remained at 30%.

Today, more than 50,000 Hong Kong businesses have operations overseas. According to a recent survey, Hong Kong companies employ some 5 million workers in China alone. Many companies have grown greatly as their operations have expanded overseas; manufacturing is the prime example. This has stimulated the growth of other companies in the areas of banking, finance, insurance, real estate, business services, imports and exports, telecommunications, transportation, and legal and accounting services. Equally spectacular has been the emergence of numerous new companies that provide high value added services for specialized markets, many with fairly small operations.

These developments are likely to continue and grow in the future. They bring enormous opportunities as well as challenges. Foremost among these challenges is the task of educating and training a workforce with the requisite skills to operate and work in diverse environments. As Hong Kong develops into Asia's economic hub or "the Manhattan of East Asia" as the Chairman of the UGC recently described it, its workforce will stand a better chance of remaining competitive if it is endowed with these qualities.

During the last ten years the Hong Kong higher education sector has also undergone dramatic internal changes. These include: more than tripling access to full-time undergraduate courses; significant growth in postgraduate education and research programmes; the rapid development and expansion of new and existing institutions; and increased opportunity for older and non traditional students to partake of higher, as well as continuing and professional, education through extra-mural and open access distance education courses.

The next decade presents no less a prospect of change with the higher education sector in Hong Kong facing a number of major opportunities and challenges arising both from international and local economic and socio political developments and from internal pressures related to concerns about quality and cost, Hong Kong's higher education system need to establish and maintain an international role and reputation for excellence.

Against this background, this paper presents the views of the University Grants Committee (UGC) on the importance of the external dimension to higher education in Hong Kong as contained in the Committee's soon-to-be published report on its review of the development of higher education in Hong Kong up to and beyond the end of the century. It also relates these views to the present state of international collaboration and overseas participation in Hong Kong's higher education system, and to the UGC's recommendations aimed at developing Hong Kong as a regional centre for higher education.

Importance of external dimension for higher education in Hong Hong

Universities and other higher education institutions operate in an international context. The codification and transmission of some existing knowledge can be undertaken, not very satisfactorily, in a parochial manner, but adding to the stock and creating new knowledge is almost wholly dependent on an awareness of what is happening globally and on contact with colleagues in a variety of countries and disciplines. Hitherto, higher education institutions in Hong Kong have been protected from localisation and introspection by their rapid rate of expansion. It has simply not been possible to staff them by local recruitment because the number of potential academic staff produced in earlier years was too small. That situation is now changing. With stabilisation of numbers, the postgraduate output (the usual source of academic staff) will be adequate to provide for the future recruitment needs of the institutions.

It will therefore be possible, and even tempting, to staff the institutions very largely with academics who have no experience outside Hong Kong. It is a temptation which must be resisted. Higher education in Hong Kong, like commerce and industry, depends for its vigour on having inputs from many cultures. If our higher education institutions are to attain and remain in world class positions, if they are to pursue excellence, it is vital that they include members of staff who are as familiar with libraries and laboratories in Beijing, Canberra, both Cambridges and Tokyo as they are with those in Hong Kong itself.

What is true of the staff is also true of the students. Undergraduate education gains immeasurably from contact with fellow students from different countries and cultures, and postgraduate work needs a global flow of ideas. There is, of course, a substantial subsidy from the Hong Kong taxpayer towards the education of extraterritorial students in our higher education institutions, and it is for this reason that their numbers are limited, but the contribution which they make is not confined to their time on campus. Students from other countries tend to develop an affinity with their place of higher education which can express itself in commercial or diplomatic benefits later in their lives. Some other higher education systems have a policy of taking much larger proportions of extraterritorial students than does Hong Kong. Singapore, for example, acts as a regional centre for higher education. Hong Kong should also become one.

Although all international contacts are of value, the most important external linkage which our higher education institutions will have in the future will undoubtedly be with the economy and education system of China. Both were, until a decade or so ago, much influenced by Soviet models of a monolithic kind, but recent decentralisation has given much wider and more flexible opportunities for collaboration. There are already joint research work, joint teaching arrangements and visiting scholar schemes between higher education institutions in Hong Kong and China, some supported by government funds specifically allocated for those purposes, but the scale is so far fairly modest. Another small development is research carried out by Hong Kong higher education institutions in relation to enchancing products made in China by Hong Kong firms - the manufacturers apparently finding it difficult to get market-orientated research carried out in China itself. An area of great potential for our institutions is in industrial consultancy and services for Chinese enterprises, including governmental agencies concerned with health care and the social services. They have expertise here which is largely lacking in China's own universities. They may also act as "middlemen" for firms in the west and the Pacific rim who wish to engage in technology transfer to China, but prefer to do it via Hong Kong because they understand and trust the infrastructure better than that in China itself. As the Hong Kong border with China becomes increasingly permeable, however, the consideration in the context of China which is likely to have the largest impact on higher education planning in Hong Kong will be the provision and employment of graduate manpower.

The opportunity for a young person in China to enter higher education is at present less than one-tenth of the opportunity in Hong Kong. The Chinese tertiary system is thus highly competitive and elitist compared with the situation in Hong Kong, where almost anyone able and wishing to benefit from higher education can now do so. It follows that Chinese graduates are likely to be, on average, of better intellectual quality in some respects than local ones, although their opportunities to develop their talents may have been inhibited by lack of material provision. Since graduates from China will not demand higher pay than those from Hong Kong, and may even be satisfied with less, we need to consider what circumstance might incline an employer to prefer the Hong Kong product.

The most obvious reason for an employer to take on a Hong Kong graduate rather than one from China is the unavailability of the latter. At present there is a limitation on the direct importation of graduate labour from China (a trial scheme allowing 1,000 into Hong Kong began in April 1994), but PRC professionals who have worked outside China for at least two years may enter employment in Hong Kong outside the quota. There are also few restrictions on entrants with "official" passports, and there are probably around 60,000 PRC cadres working in mainland companies in Hong Kong : they are not, however, available to the open labour market. Nearly all of these graduates from China will be on temporary contracts. Permanent immigration is much more severely limited. North of the border, Hong Kong employers do use Chinese graduates in the enterprises which they have established in Guangdong, Shanghai and elsewhere, but the labour market is not entirely flexible, and supply may not match demand. A recent Institution of Mechanical Engineers study of China found western "factory phobia" creeping in - with good students opting for the financial sector rather than engineering.

Apart from questions of availability, we need to consider what other advantages products from the Hong Kong higher education system may have over their counterparts from China when competing for employment. One factor is multilingualisim. Hong Kong is a multilingual society and English is supposedly used as the medium of instruction in much of tertiary and some of secondary education. There are, however, doubts about the communicative skills of Hong Kong graduates and it should not be taken for granted that they will out-perform those from China. Certainly some graduates from the better Chinese universities have very good command of both English and Putonghua. This is an area where there should be no complacency. If Hong Kong is to give its graduates a competitive edge through their language and communication skills, a great deal of hard work is required of both students and teachers.

Less readily measured than competence in professional knowledge or communication is the cultural advantage possessed by Hong Kong graduates. They have been brought up in an open society used to accepting ideas and modes of behaviour from a great variety of world-wide sources, both East and West. The mixture can be indigestible, and some of the influences may contain harmful as well as beneficial components, but young people in Hong Kong do learn to filter, to compare, to visualise, and to make choices in ways which may be harder to acquire in more restricted environments. These skills are important in making judgments in the commercial and industrial worlds and, when allied to the day-to-day experience in Hong Kong of a society geared to the market, and their own self-confidence and drive, they provide our graduates with a strong and relevant background when entering employment.

The rapid growth of the economies of both southern China and other areas close to the Pacific rim suggests that there will be plenty of opportunities for employment of the products of higher education, although there can be arguments as to whether the major demand will be at sub-degree or graduate level. Hong Kong's higher education institutions will no doubt continue, as their primary task, to satisfy manpower needs in Hong Kong itself and in Hong Kong enterprises in Guangdong, but the UGC expects Hong Kong graduates increasingly to take advantage of the wider employment opportunities in China (where there will certainly be shortages of skilled personnel in some disciplines) and the region. Conversely, graduates from China and elsewhere will fill more jobs in Hong Kong. The UGC believes that, provided Hong Kong's higher education institutions can achieve and maintain a reputation for quality of output, this greater flexibility will be to Hong Kong's advantage.

Within the Hong Kong higher education institutions, there is a dilemma with regard to students from China. For the reasons given earlier, it would be possible to improve the matriculant quality at entry by taking students from China in place of many of those recruited locally. This would not, however, satisfy the entirely legitimate expectations of the Hong Kong taxpayers and their children, and there has to be an imposed limit. At the undergraduate and taught postgraduate level this is currently set at 2%, being the proportion of non-Hong Kong students who may be enrolled in addition to the target numbers for local students. The UGC believes that there would be benefit to Hong Kong's regional role if this were increased. For research postgraduates the considerations are rather different, partly because external inputs are very important in world-class research work and partly because it is difficult to attract good local research students. The permitted proportion of non-Hong Kong students here is currently 20%, this time within overall targets. At present 17% of Hong Kong's research students come from the PRC, but the UGC has repeated its recommendation in its Interim Report on the Review that this proportion should be allowed to grow to one-third. There is not a great deal of traffic in the reverse direction, Hong Kong students seeking higher education or research experience outside the territory tending to go to countries other than China, but it has been suggested that universities in Guangdong might in future offer more degree opportunities for full-cost students from Hong Kong to the detriment of higher diploma courses here.

As mentioned earlier, there is already some collaborative work between Hong Kong higher education institutions and universities and other institutions in China, and this may be expected to grow as bureaucratic impediments diminish. The motivating factor is usually a particular expertise on one side or both: management courses in Hong Kong for Chinese cadres; language courses in Beijing for Hong Kong students. Joint research projects often depend on the availability of material in China. The Hong Kong members of the team commonly contribute, as well as their expertise, better library or laboratory facilities, better international access and, often, the majority of the funding. The UGC would expect and encourage such collaborative research to increase in the coming years as Hong Kong academics exploit the new relationship with China.

The UGC concludes, however, that the growing connections between Hong Kong and China in every aspect of higher education should not become exclusive or introspective. Probably Hong Kong's greatest value to China is as its best window on the world, and this applies in higher education as much as in other spheres. As well as looking towards China, Hong Kong higher education institutions must maintain their long established links with institutions in North America and Europe and must strengthen those with non Chinese Asia and Australasia. It is not just a question of looking North. Profitable internationalism requires our higher education institutions to look East, West and South as well. An important group within their gaze should be the Chinese diaspora.

Academic Links with Overseas Institutions

The establishment of academic links with overseas institutions is not a new phenomenon in Hong Kong's higher education institutions. The University of Hong Kong was, after all, a founder member of the body now known as the Association of Commonwealth Universities when it was formed in 1912. However contacts with foreign universities and research institutions have now become part of the everyday life of our local tertiary institutions. These contacts include bilateral and multi-lateral cooperation agreements, collaborative research projects, staff attachments and student exchange programmes, as well as visiting staff/students from overseas institutions. In 1995-96, for example, the UGC-funded institutions participated in no less than 125 different student exchange programmes with overseas tertiary institutions.

In the same year, the UGC-funded sector enrolled over 1,200 students at various levels of study from places outside Hong Kong. While a high percentage (some 60%) of these non-local students came from the PRC, a good number of them also came from the UK, the USA and other English speaking countries and other parts of Asia. Likewise, out of a total of 5,300 academic staff in the UGC-funded institutions, over 1,200 were recruited from overseas, including nearly 400 each from the USA and the UK, over 150 from Canada, some 100 from Australia.

The growing numbers of visiting scholars and students from abroad and increases in the number of international agreements are clear proof of growing international integration of the local higher education sector. Such a trend is also evidenced in the area of research. Currently, six of the UGC-funded institutions have joint research projects with overseas institutions. Some 200 such collaborative research projects were being undertaken during the past year, covering a wide range of fields, including arts, languages, education, medical science, physical sciences, engineering and technology.

Since its establishment in 1991, the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (RGC) has sought to encourage such international collaborations. In 1991, a UK/HK Joint Research Scheme was launched by the RGC in collaboration with the British Council. So far more than 100 projects involving links between colleagues in Hong Kong and the UK have been supported. More recently, a similar pilot Germany/HK Joint Research Scheme was launched by the RGC in conjunction with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to encourage collaborative research between colleagues in the two places.

In parallel with these developments, there has been increased specific funding support (currently $5.5m) provided by the Government through the UGC for academic exchanges between Hong Kong higher education institutions and those in the PRC. Moreover, within the first three years of operation of a Chinese Visitorships scheme, which was introduced in 1992 by the Croucher Foundation (a major and generous private provider of research grants in Hong Kong), about 100 scientists from the PRC took up attachments in the six universities in Hong Kong, giving seminars to teachers and postgraduate students and undertaking collaborative research.

In addition to the above initiatives, UGC-funded institutions have set up a variety of international / regional study centres, ranging from the Centre of Asian Studies of HKU, which was established in 1967, to CUHK's Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, CityU's Asia-Pacific Financial and Forecasting Research Centre and, of course, today's venue here at HKBU, the David C Lam Institute for East-West Studies - to name but a few. The focus of many of these initiatives has, understandably, been the Asia-Pacific region and China, but we are also now seeing the development of new centres and institutes focussing on European studies - HKBU is in the van here.

UGC-funded institutions play an active part in the international academic community by participating in activities organised by international bodies like APEC, PECC, UMAP and in a wide range of international conferences. Just to get a feel of how involved local institutions are in international associations/networks, one need only look at one faculty, in this case the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. The Faculty has links with international organisations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, the World Health Organisation, and the United Nations Children's Fund. It has also played a key role in a number of international and regional networks including the World Organisation of Early Childhood Education, the World Council of Comparative Education Societies, the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration, the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement in the Hague and the Asian Society of Comparative Education International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. The Faculty also maintains strong links with China and has had a Liaison Committee for Academic Exchanges with China since 1986. In addition, the Faculty has a number of fellowships available to support academic exchange and research.

Hong Kong as a Regional Education Centre

Building on existing initiatives, there are now even greater opportunities for Hong Kong institutions to develop international linkages and for the Territory, the future Special Administrative Region of the PRC, to act as a regional centre for both initial and continuing higher education, not just for China but also for other neighbouring countries. Today Hong Kong has higher education institutions that compare well with their counterparts in the region. Many of our academic staff are internationally respected. We have more resources to support research and a research culture is emerging in Hong Kong. If we can attract the better talents from the rest of the world, particularly from our neighbouring regions, Hong Kong's talent pool will be enriched. The availability of new technology brought about by the telecommunications revolution also presents greater opportunities for the provision of distance learning by local institutions to our neighbouring countries.

Some other higher education systems have a policy of taking much larger proportions of overseas students than does Hong Kong. The UGC feels that Hong Kong's tertiary institutions should be encouraged to take on more non local students in future.

Accordingly the UGC has recommended, in its report on the review of the development of higher education in Hong Kong, that the institutions should be permitted to recruit up to 4% of their undergraduate and taught postgraduate numbers as non-Hong Kong students paying standard fees, 2% within target and 2% outside. These percentages would translate into some 2,000 non-local students at these levels, quite apart from other non-local students that might also be recruited on courses operated on a full cost recovery basis.

In addition, as mentioned earlier, the UGC has repeated its recommendation that the institutions should be permitted to to recruit up to one-third of research postgraduates, within targets, or some 1,200 students as non-Hong Kong students paying standard fees. To facilitate these developments, and for other reasons, the UGC has recommended that more accommodation for students, including non-local students, should be provided at all the institutions.

The health and vigour of Hong Kong's higher education institutions depend on strong international linkages and inputs. By developing more international character and atmosphere in our institutions, Hong Kong can strive to become a regional centre for higher education.

UGC Secretariat
November 1996