With the four-year university education system just round the corner, the University Grants Committee's proposed funding scheme - to be introduced in 2012 - appears to be flawed.
The scheme has two parts. Under the first one, 7.5 per cent of funding to local universities is to be taken away and put into a central pool. Universities can get the funds back (and perhaps more) if their newly proposed academic programmes win the hearts and minds of UGC bureaucrats. The downside is that universities will only propose popular courses - such as tourism and cultural-facility management - that ensure an intake of students. Universities won't consider programmes that provide medium- and long-term benefits to Hong Kong.
In short, the new academic programmes will be very market-oriented. What about philosophy and literature courses? Well, I am not too optimistic that they will be approved.
Some citizens and bureaucrats may ask what is wrong with having more market-oriented courses like business management and derivatives trading. But educators should be more far-sighted. They should consider what will be good for Hong Kong in 10 to 20 years' time, to help it maintain its viability.
The second part of the funding scheme shows UGC's sloppiness in pushing a 'one policy for all' approach. Funding will be divided into two parts: 77 per cent for teaching and 23 per cent for research. Departments that do not produce adequate research papers will, in the worst-case scenario, lose 23 per cent of their funding. The result could be one-quarter of a teaching staff being laid off.
No academic or teaching staff would argue openly that they don't need to do research, as research improves their teaching quality and benefits students. But this across-the-board approach appears to have forgotten the history and different roles of local universities. The University of Hong Kong, Chinese University and the University of Science and Technology are regarded as research universities. Polytechnic University and City University focus on more practical subjects (as they formerly were polytechnics) while Lingnan University and Hong Kong Baptist University emphasise liberal arts education and whole-person development. The Institute of Education, which is not a university yet, trains people to become teachers.