- Thu
- Oct 3, 2013
- Updated: 1:02am
Hong Kong universities 'face bigger challenge from mainland campuses'
HKUST vice chancellor warns city could lose its place as first choice for the best students and should seek greater support from businesses
Hong Kong universities have been warned to prepare for stiffer challenges from elite mainland institutions that have more money and bigger pools of talent.
While attention has focused recently on how the city's position as China's primary financial centre may be under threat from Shanghai, a leading academic said it was also in danger of losing its standing as top choice for the nation's brightest students.
The vice chancellor of the University of Science and Technology, Tony Chan Fan-cheong, said the likes of Peking University and Tsinghua University were working hard to raise their standards.
"They have global ambition and great students. That's the long-term competition we're up against. We have to keep running to stay in place."
His warning comes ahead of the release tomorrow of a new global ranking of universities by Times Higher Education.
Chan said Hong Kong's universities cannot compete with the mainland on money or talent. "These I think they have in abundance. But how to use them efficiently and in a proper way so that you don't corrupt your core values? That is another question."
Chan, giving his first interview since renewing a contract that will run until 2019, said Hong Kong must play to its unique strengths: free flow of information and a robust rule of law.
"Here you can get any information. You can access Facebook, Google, Twitter or weibo. Everything is available," he said.
Hong Kong's universities constantly rank among the best in Asia and have become the preferred choice of the mainland's best students.
At the same time, they have been criticised for not working closely enough with the business and commercial sectors. A survey in August by Times Higher Education ranked the city's universities behind those in Korea, Singapore, China and even Turkey in terms of collaborating with business in research efforts.
Chan said local universities should strive for more support from business communities.
"I often envy our counterparts in Korea, because they have scholarships and labs sponsored by companies like Samsung and LG, and when their students graduate, they can get into these companies."
Chan noted that many mainland-based companies, such as Lenovo or Huawei, were setting up labs in Hong Kong.
He said the city must seize these opportunities.
"The government has a role to play in this," said Chan. "It needs to offer [more] initiatives and incentives. We have all the right ingredients. We just need a leader with a vision."
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11:43pm
7:21pm
But the level of fraud and quality in universities in China that whatever legitimately smart people may be there, the urge to stick the university's name on some state owned project in return for cash is simply too irresitable. Would look twice before seeing any value in a Chinese university research paper, recommendation or sponsored report
6:19pm
during your terrible life of suffering
self-inflicted nightmarish cold war delusion
overflowing with fears, envies and ignorance?
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Professors of top US u's told me very different things
after recent Sabbaticals in mainland u's
Go see if the women underneath Canal Road flyover may help you
before your nightmares become even more terrible
4:01pm
This is because they lack academic freedom, control acess to published works, limit topics for post graduate dissertations, (which means less international journals will want to publish the Party's line), restrict subjects taught and class discussions, restrict access to global sources such as the Internet, have very few non-mainland Chinese faculty, the schools are mostly administered by the Party, the top adminitrators are government ofdficials...the list goes on and on.
They can spend trillions and this will not help to establish Mainland Universities as anything other that Party teaching mills.
5:17pm
There is perhaps more reason to invest in mainland instead and LKS knows better as we can see of his latest investment in education in his hometown there. There is no shortage of time there.
2:01pm
Many western universities rush into China for a variety of reasons, since it is the flavor of the month, or century, hence Stanford in Beijing, according to you. Even western secondary schools form sister school connections with China. So what?
So HK universities should heed your advice? Liberal arts, science and cultural programmes are the least favored by undergraduates (and employers) probably the world over, and many departments in these disciplines have been severely cut because of lack of student enrolment. Perhaps you should advise undergraduates of their obligations to develop 'a robust creative class to benefit the city and its people'. I am sure they have less altruistic and more personal ambitions.
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