October 2006 Volume 9 Number 4

approx. 4000 to over 15000 in the decade from 1985/86 to 1995/96 (UGC, 1996). Further expansion is planned
to bring the total number to around 55000 (HKSAR, 2000, par. 66).
The HK Government is in the process of changing the educational structure from the current five-year junior
secondary, two-year senior secondary, and three-year university (‘5+2+3’ structure) to a ‘3+3+4’ structure
(HKSAR, 2004). This change in educational boundaries will replace the final year of secondary education with
an additional year in undergraduate tertiary programs, resulting in a further expansion of numbers with a large
influx of younger, less mature tertiary students.
Coinciding with this massification, the HK Government is seeking to limit public purse burden by reducing the
UGC recurrent grants to the tertiary sector. Between 1998 and 2004, the UGC realized a HKD 1.1 billion
reduction in funding (UGC, 2004).
Skill demands
Students entering tertiary undergraduate programs are almost exclusively a product of the local secondary
education system. This system is generally regarded as instilling a limiting teacher-directed, assessment-oriented
culture within the student population. It focuses heavily on the lower, convergent cognitive levels of Bloom’s
(1956) taxonomy of educational objectives (Bloom & Krathwohl, 1956), and fails to develop the higher,
divergent levels (analysis, synthesis, evaluation); “Hong Kong education has always been regarded as
examination-oriented and students were taught only to memorize and not to think.” (Fok, 2002, p.83).
The UGC-commissioned Preparation of Students for Tertiary Education Report (POSTE) in 1996, found that
“the aims of the Curriculum Development Council for inculcating creative thinking and rational and independent
decision making are unlikely to be realized.” (UGC, 1996, p.2). The HK Government has determined that this
represents a serious educational deficiency that needs to be addressed, and has accordingly attempted to
introduce resources and remedial initiatives (HKSAR, 2000). The development of a ‘liberal education’
promoting life-long learning and critical thinking presents a significant challenge to higher education
institutions, and their traditional ‘divorced lecture’ pedagogy.
English language proficiency also remains a concern for the HK Government, given its role as lingua franca in
both academic and commercial environments, and the recognition that adequate numbers of multilingual
graduates are of great importance to HK’s economy (UGC, 1996). The University of Hong Kong is officially an
English-language institution, and instruction remains significantly in this language.
The POSTE report (Cheng, Lai, Lam, Leung & Tsoi, 1996), concluded that “although English is the declared
medium of instruction in many secondary schools, few of them earnestly teach in English” and that “A-level
subjects are taught in Cantonese in the great majority of schools”. This language disjoint was amplified from the
commencement of the 1998 academic year when the majority (307) of government and government-aided
secondary schools in Hong Kong were officially converted to dominantly ‘mother-language’ teaching in
Cantonese, with only 114 ‘high-achievement’ schools being permitted to pursue English-medium instruction
(Lao & Krashen, 1999, p.1). The impact of this on general education levels remains a subject of debate, although
it is likely the average level of exposure to English has been significantly further reduced at secondary level.
Chen (2001, p.2), notes that ‘many students reach university unable to construct a single sentence correctly. It is
disastrous’. It is clear, even without examining internal institutional language use that at least the ‘input’ side of
the University language equation has changed dramatically. Cheng, Lai, Lam, Leung & Tsoi’s (1996) POSTE
Report provides a summation of this change in student profile:
The ‘cream’ which used to be admitted to local universities are [sic] now most likely attracted by overseas
institutions. In other words,
a) the students who are now in our universities are very different in nature from those who entered the
universities 15 years ago;
b) the universities are now facing a large number of eligible students whereas they used to face a small number
of elite.
The immediate cost of tertiary education on the individual student has greatly increased over the last decade.
Composition fees for a fully government-funded bachelor’s degree currently exceed $42,000 p.a. and are
scheduled to rise to $50,000 p.a. A result of this partial movement toward ‘user-pays’ education is a need for
many students to have regular term-time employment simultaneously with their studies, or alternatively to
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