Starting from 1999, Cantonese and English were no longer the only languages heard in the
main campus, we were so happy to hear mandarin, regarding their voices as an innovative
point of view. Under nearly ten year’s development, the percentage of non-local students
has already grown to 16%, which mainly consists of mainland students.
For the first sight, the diversified composition of students in HKU is a good thing in
academic aspect. By having more mainland elites, the quality of students in the University
of Hong Kong is enhanced, encouraging high level of academic interaction. The initial aim
of setting up a university is of course for the aspirations of knowledge. Therefore, it is
desirable to see such a phenomenon. Moreover, directly upgrading the level of academic
outcomes, higher standard students help HKU to gain better place in world University
ranking, promoting the academic image of Hong Kong community.
Apart from the situation in the University of Hong Kong, the increasing number of non-
local students creates a more vigorous competition for local students to gain a place in the
tertiary education. Undeniably, the quality of University students in Hong Kong is
improved, raising the value of a University Graduated Certificate, increasing the job
opportunity for the fresh graduated. Employers could also be benefited as tertiary
education would really be an ‘elite education’ with such explosive competition.
However, the major concern in the local society is ‘fairness’. Competitions in university
are good for both local and non-local students in the sense of learning outcomes. However,
there are no direct competitions between the two different groups of students before they
get into the university. Hence, there are no guarantees that the non-local students are of
better quality than the local students who cannot enter the university, enforcing the local
students to sacrifice for the exposure of the non-local students who can actually take a
degree in their own countries.
On the other hand, it would be a kind of resources waste if the product of the education
industry cannot benefit Hong Kong itself. Even the mainland graduated would choose to
come back to China or even oversea to start their career, not to mention those non-local
students from different countries. However, government actually subsidizes the education
industry, especially the tertiary industry in a large extends every year, spending a
considerable sum of the tax income. It will be such a irony that Hong Kong taxpayers are
actually paying for the ones who are not willing to take part in the future development of
Hong Kong.
After all, there are still many adjustments needed to be made in order to shape a better
education system with the input of non-local students. For example, there must be deeper
investigations on the allocation methods of different non-local students into different
disciplines, avoiding the situation of talents shortage in some careers to occur in future
Hong Kong. With both directional and executional obstacles to be solved, it is suggested
that the University of Hong Kong should go through deeper consideration and consultation
before making any decisions on the non-local students’intake policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment