For many educationalists and professors, it was very discouraging to read the headline of a recent commentary in this paper, 'The last thing Hong Kong needs is more education'.
Why is more education a bad thing? There seem to be two sceptical views: first, education costs money and academics and teachers only keep on saying, 'Gimme more money'; second, education does not help the real world.
While money does not work miracles (as the saying goes, any problem that money can solve is not a problem), it is a necessary ingredient of many solutions to our problems. Without money, many poor countries and rural communities simply cannot provide basic education to improve literacy and promote life skills, never mind consider the quality of education. Unesco, the UN cultural organisation, calls on all governments to invest in education, to provide 'education for all'.
Having said that, education should not be seen as just an investment business in the sense that we look for money indicators to measure performance - for example, if we invest so much in a law degree student, how much will he or she earn upon graduation - as if justice can be measured by earnings.
Yet, time and time again, universities in Hong Kong are coerced into informing the media (and parents and employers) how much their graduates are earning, as though this reflects the quality of the teaching and the value of education.
Our schools have for too long been driven by an examination culture. If the whole purpose of our school system is to prepare a percentage of the students for entry to higher studies, then its value would be defined by the number of A-grades its students get in examinations or how many of them enter universities, the value of which are in turn defined by league tables and so-called world rankings.
I am not suggesting such indicators are irrelevant, but that we should look beyond them.