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.