I FEEL THE urge to get one off my chest on education again. Here is Jake's Golden Rule on universities - the longer you spend in academia, the more unfit you render yourself for commerce.
The occasion this time is a letter to the editor published in yesterday's issue of this newspaper under the headline 'Hong Kong's misplaced goal of 'world class' universities'. It was written by a certain Name and Address Supplied, who revealed that he was a professor and whom I shall refer to as Dr Naas.
Dr Naas is dismayed at the talk of impending big funding cuts to be inflicted on universities and also says we are going the wrong way in aiming at 'world class' educational institutions. It would make more sense, he argues, to do as the United States does, and have a large number of average universities to cater to our need for skilled technicians.
I agree in part. It would be very pleasing to us all if Hong Kong had a few Nobel prize winners but pouring billions into these 'D' and 'E' grade universities we have is not the way to go about it. That route will never get us there.
The far better path, if this is our goal, is the one Japan took several years ago of establishing a full-time lobby operation in Stockholm as a means of securing a targeted 30 Japanese Nobel prizes in the first half of the 21st century.
Some members of the Nobel Foundation have taken issue with the 'ethical problems' introduced by this method but it is my guess that others have taken the money. Academics are not generally overpaid, senior ones in Hong Kong excepted that is.
It certainly has to be the cheap way of getting a reputation for 'world class' educational institutions, costing a minute fraction of what direct funding of universities costs. I heartily recommend it to our chief executive. We have mammoth reserves and his administration has little reservations about spending them on purposes that he holds dear. Value for money and Nobels for bribes, very cost effective.