What is universities' share?
I have been heartened by two recent letters on higher education in Hong Kong and budget issues.
'Making great universities' (November 27) tells us some home truths about what happens to university systems when funding is savaged and policy mangled. The picture David Hill paints of the Australian experience should make local policymakers sit up and take notice. The UK experience is similar in many respects.
Any disproportionate cut in tertiary education in Hong Kong will gut our tertiary system, which is, as Professor Hill attests, 'developing strongly to international levels'. By some informed estimates, the university sector will be 50 per cent worse off in the next triennium compared with the last and this will be impossible to bear without significant reductions in the quality and quantity of education provided. Anyone who argues otherwise is either deluded or suffering from an excess of misplaced 'loyalty' to the current administration.
We all accept that some proportionate cut to the sector as a whole is inevitable given the government's budget problems. But first, it is as well to get the facts and figures right to ensure that the system as a whole remains viable. Professor Gary Biddle's letter ('Not-so-high education budget', November 28) explodes the government statistics on education funding.
What is the future for higher education? It is time for the defensive rhetoric to stop and for the proper formulation and presentation of budgetary and policy decisions to be made for the good of education in Hong Kong. The government cannot afford another needless public disaster and the students (especially those now in the secondary system) and their parents need to know that a decent system will still be there for them. Most families do not have the option of 'exporting' the education problem, unlike many of our leaders who do little else in respect of their own children.
If Secretary for Education and Manpower Arthur Li Kwok-cheung intends slashing the budget to the tertiary sector by a disproportionate amount, it is vital he come clean at the earliest opportunity with exact figures and explain his choices. If he wishes to modify the structure of the system (eight funded institutions, each with its own part to play) then let him publish a draft document for public discussion. If he wishes to change the funding mechanism entirely, reducing significantly the percentage that government contributes, again let a workable and thought-through proposal be discussed.
At the moment we have innuendo, with the newer universities in particular wondering what is in store for them. There may be a case for a different structure or even for eventual privatisation. Let's hear the case and make a plan and plug the policy deficit - openly.
PROFESSOR BARRY ASKER, Head, Department of English, Lingnan University
