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It has been over a month since the UGC submitted its report "Aspirations for the Higher Education System in Hong Kong" to the Government in end-2010. We are pleased that the report has started to stimulate in the community reflection on the purposes of higher education and constructive discussion on strategies for the future development of Hong Kong's higher education system. Sir Colin Lucas, Convenor of the Higher Education Review Group, and I introduced the report, including its three key themes set out below, to the Legislative Council's Panel on Education on the 10th of this month. Global Vision and Competitiveness Since the UGC sector is the direct beneficiary of significant amounts of public funds, the institutions should always take account of public need and the general interest, and ensure that they 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 focus on teaching and a focus on outputs and outcomes (rather than inputs), and a move to a more competitive research funding regime. Hong Kong is an international city, and at the same time maintains a close relationship with the Mainland system. This is one of the features which give Hong Kong its niche to remain competitive in a highly globalised world. It is also what distinguishes Hong Kong from other Chinese cities. At the individual level, students with this characteristic will see themselves in international terms without losing their specific Hong Kong identity. The higher education sector should help Hong Kong retain this uniqueness. The report emphasised the need to enhance the international character of faculty, students, and curricula. Not only do we need to nurture our local students' biliterate and trilingual abilities, and to provide them with more opportunities in overseas exchange programmes, we also need to nurture them to be competitive in the globalised world. Institutions should also consider developing more research and graduate programmes combining Asian and Western perspectives, while deepening collaboration with the Mainland, more particularly in the Pearl River Delta region. A Single Quality Assurance Body to Support A Credit Accumulation and Transfer System We believe that Hong Kong needs an improved system-level structure that provides clearer progression pathways for students. The Education Bureau (EDB), as the overarching oversight body of post-secondary education provision, should seek to integrate all elements of the system with a view to facilitating the progression of students at different times, between different levels and across the self-financed and publicly funded parts of the system. We also believe that an oversight body is necessary to ensure the proper and effective allocation of public resources devoted to the self-financed sector. A view frequently heard during our consultations with stakeholders is that the provision for articulation in the current system is insufficient and there is insufficient clarity in practice. We believe that there should be a "vertical" Credit Accumulation and Transfer System (CATS) in the progression framework in the Hong Kong's post-secondary education system. This will allow learners systematically to accumulate the credits of learning and training gained from various courses with a view to converting the accumulated credits into a recognised qualification. It is no easy task to develop this system and it requires other elements, of which a trusted and comparable quality assurance system is an important one. The report therefore recommended that there should be a single quality assurance body to facilitate the implementation of a CATS. The EDB has invited the public to submit written comments on the report before coming to a view for implementation. For the future of the Hong Kong post-secondary education system, we encourage the public and stakeholders in the sector to consider the report and its recommendations, and make their views known to the EDB. We look forward to the Government's positive response to the directions and recommendations of the report. Laura M Cha |
