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Zhang Longxi

Having taught at Peking University, Harvard and the University of California, I always thought that a college education was a four-year period of progression.

When I came to Hong Kong,  I was baffled to find a three-year system and a very different kind  of higher education.

I am sure Hong Kong students are just as intelligent and willing to learn as those elsewhere,  but they are being short-changed. I am told they get an  extra year in secondary school, which is supposed to be the equivalent of the first  college year,  but the reality is that new university students  are simply not on the same level as second-year students on the mainland or in the United States.

Even compared with first-year students, their Hong Kong counterparts often have less general knowledge and are less articulate.  Their seventh year in secondary school only prolongs their high-school experience, but it cannot offer them a new experience.

From my own experience, and those of  many of my colleagues,  whatever Hong Kong students are doing in their final  year in secondary school, they are not getting the equivalent of a first-year university  education. The co-ordination of secondary and tertiary education is not working well in Hong Kong.

A three-year system gives Hong Kong students too little time to acquire a wide range of knowledge and to fully experience life in a university environment, which are so valuable for the cultivation of the mind and the formation of citizens in a modern society.

Instead, students rush to their specialised areas ill prepared, while professors often need to teach basics that would  have been covered in the first  year of a four-year  system. The shorter period  deprives Hong Kong's students of the opportunity to satisfy their intellectual curiosity by exploring subjects beyond their main area of study,  and even for their degree subject,  it is difficult for them to study it in real depth.

For professors, the system does not allow enough time to design good programmes that offer students an all-round education with breadth and depth, professional skills and a general knowledge of culture and society that will be  valuable in the future.

I often feel that Hong Kong is seriously lopsided, because in many aspects we have the first-rate infrastructure of a modern society, but we lag behind many comparable cities in  public and private investment in education and in the percentage of  secondary school students going to university.

When most  Hong Kong people do not have college-level education, this lopsidedness  is  a problem, which will become  more serious as social and economic development increasingly depends on knowledge-based creativity and productivity.

Two years ago, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa and other government officials assured us that investment in education and the task of nurturing talents were top priorities.  They spoke with confidence about the progressive increase in post-secondary education and set the target of giving 60 per cent of secondary-school students  access to post-secondary education by 2010-11.

A large number of associate degrees was planned as an important means to achieve that goal, and  Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun, then the secretary for education and manpower, told us in a policy address: 'No one will be deprived of the opportunity to receive education or continuing education for lack of financial means.'

Recently, however, the government has all but abandoned the plan, mainly because of budget considerations. The sudden change in education policy has created a great deal of anxiety in universities that had answered the call to offer associate degree  programmes. Education is a long-term investment, probably the most important  in a modern society; sudden changes like this  will have disastrous consequences.

The latest news that the government will speed up its plan to change  to a four-year university education is encouraging. This  will go a long way towards improving education, particularly higher education, in Hong Kong.

Education reform has been on the government's agenda for years, and I hope that the proposed change  is the result of long and serious consideration, and that the government will back it up with resources and determination that will not crumble easily under budgetary or political pressures.  Zhang Longxi is chair professor of comparative literature and translation at the City University of Hong Kong



Students need four years