Release of Higher Education Review Report

On 1 December 2010, the UGC submitted its report titled “Aspirations for the Higher Education System in Hong Kong” (available on the UGC website, /minisite/eng/ugc/report/report.htm) to the Government, which was published simultaneously. The report is not premised upon any identified need for a major system reform. However, the UGC considered it important for Hong Kong to strive for excellence through discerning the world trends and challenges facing the sector, and then refining our strategies. The government is now considering its response to the recommendations of the Report.

The world of higher education is moving very quickly and Hong Kong cannot afford to lag behind. We are fortunate to have an excellent base to build on, with a flourishing post-secondary education sector and significant advances by UGC-funded institutions, but the future of Hong Kong’s higher education depends on our strategies today. It is against this background that the UGC in 2009 embarked on a major review of higher education, which was also a follow-on to the “Higher Education in Hong Kong” published by the UGC in 2002. The current review aimed to reflect on a wide range of issues pertinent to the postsecondary education sector, and offer recommendations on appropriate strategies for developing Hong Kong’s post-secondary education.

The UGC established a Higher Education Review Group, which was convened by Sir Colin Lucas, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and an experienced UGC member. The Review Group studied the higher education systems in other parts of the world and the issues confronting them, thereby obtaining contextual and comparative material. The Group consulted widely in Hong Kong, including individual face-to-face discussions with the key stakeholders in the sector, invitation of written views (over 30 submissions from organisations and individuals were received), and two rounds of consultations with stakeholders in September 2009 and April 2010.

The three key themes of the report are:

Need for Improved System-level Structure
The sector’s expansion over a period of time has resulted in a complex and fragmented post-secondary education system, which is difficult for current and prospective students to navigate. The UGC is convinced that all elements of post-secondary educational provision should be treated as a single interlocking system with better transparency, coherence and mobility.

The improved structure should provide clearer progression pathways for students to articulate between different levels and across different parts of the system. This should be facilitated by a comprehensive Credit Accumulation and Transfer System, and a single quality assurance body to ensure better coherence in the quality of the system. The report also recommended the establishment of a new body to provide advice to the Education Bureau on the needs and development of the non-publicly funded part of the post-secondary education sector.

The Role of the UGC Sector
UGC-funded institutions are the direct beneficiaries of significant amounts of public funds. We therefore believe the UGC sector has unique roles to play. The report emphasised the need to press ahead with ensuring the UGC-funded institutions have excellent teaching, research and community engagement. This is being pursued through the recently started reforms within the UGC sector, e.g. the goal to encourage institutions to put greater attention to teaching and a focus on outputs and outcomes (rather than inputs) and a move to a more competitive research funding regime. 

The UGC also took the opportunity to review its fitness for purpose. During our consultations, the view was expressed that the UGC played a useful role as an intermediary between its funded institutions and the Government, but stakeholders also wished that the UGC would focus more on macro and strategic issues. In fact, the UGC has been moving in this direction recently (including the review and streamlining of the Notes on Procedures), and will continue to do so.

Internationalisation and Collaboration with Mainland China
The report emphasises the importance of internationalisation in the higher education sector, with a view to helping Hong Kong retain its uniqueness as an international city, and at the same time maintaining a close relationship with the Mainland system. We believe this is one of the features which gives Hong Kong its niche to remain competitive in a highly globalised world. It is also what distinguishes Hong Kong from other Chinese cities. More details on this important initiative can be found in the following section. 

We are pleased that the report has stimulated interest in and discussion on the purposes of higher education and appropriate strategies for the future development of Hong Kong’s higher education system. The Government is studying the recommendations in the report and consulting the public and stakeholders in the postsecondary education sector before coming to a view on implementation. We look forward to the Government’s positive response to the report ’s directions and recommendations.

Internationalisation

Internationalisation is one of the three key themes of the report “Aspirations for the Higher Education System in Hong Kong”. We see it as the key to Hong Kong’s future, and that it should be actively pursued by UGC-funded institutions. Internationalisation does not mean neglecting our traditional values and local needs. These are not mutually exclusive. Internationalisation means much more than the recruitment of non-local students, and should permeate the whole gamut of institutional activity, including the internationalisation of the faculty broadening the curriculum, providing local students with more opportunities in overseas exchange programmes, the integration between local and non-local students and other means.

The UGC-funded institutions can and are already using part of the funding raised from the Matching Grant Schemes for supporting student exchanges. They continued with numerous student exchange activities in 2010, and have established academic links with institutions from all round the world. Given the importance of enhancing the international exposure of local students and boarding their horizons as recommended in the “Aspirations” Report, the UGC decided to provide a further one-off $50 million to the eight-funded institutions on a matching basis primarily for enhancing the exchange opportunities for local students. Institutions can use the funds for up to three years' time. We hope institutions will make good use of the matching grants to open up more overseas exchange opportunities for local students and enhance students’ international outlook, so that they will be well equipped to face the challenges in the globalised economy.

Chart 1: Incoming and Outgoing Exchange Students by Institution and Source/Destination in 2009/10

In terms of non-local student recruitment, starting from 2008/09, the UGC-funded institutions are allowed to increase, in phases, the non-local student quota for publicly-funded programmes at the sub-degree, degree and taught postgraduate levels from 10% to 20% of the approved student number targets. The percentage of nonlocal students in institutions has been on the rise:

In 2010/11, the eight institutions recruited 1856 first-year-first-degree (FYFD) non-local students from the Mainland and other places, accounting for about 13% of the planned intake.

As mentioned, the successful implementation of internationalisation requires more than the recruitment of non-local students. The UGC is glad that the Education Bureau has been working hand in hand with institutions to step up exchange and promotion of education services in Hong Kong. Three delegations were organised by the Education Bureau in 2010 to visit Malaysia and Indonesia, Korea and Japan as well as India, and joined by a number of the UGC-funded institutions. These were important steps to enhancing the international visibility of our education services.

The UGC will continue to work closely with the Government and UGC-funded institutions to attract more quality non-local students and deepen internationalisation. Indeed the RGC continued to implement the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme in the year with the aim of attracting the best and brightest students from around the world to undertake RPg education in Hong Kong. More details can be found in the chapter “Research & Knowledge Transfer”.