Mission to provide opportunity, not maximise profits

In your March 29 edition you carried two references to the Hong Kong University School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPACE), one in a letter from G. Hui and one in Linda Yeung's piece in the Wednesday Focus on lifelong learning.

Ms Yeung refers to our establishment of a Community College in September and comments on the 'high fees'. What should be realised is that HKU-SPACE is a self-funding unit and so any comparison should be to private, fee-paying schools. Many of these have fees considerably in excess of those set for the Community College. She also asserts that the University CE schools in general are 'ever more highly profitable as enrolments continue to rise'.

Let me state categorically that HKU-SPACE is a not-for-profit entity. Our mission is to provide quality lifelong-learning opportunities for the community, not to make profits. Our programmes are designed to offer access to a ladder of educational opportunity and at the same time we maintain a variety of general interest and short courses to improve quality of life. Certainly some programmes generate surpluses - this helps us to sustain areas that do not generate surpluses, but which are nevertheless socially relevant.

Mr or Ms Hui asks us to 'complete the story' by explaining what we have been doing in external markets rather than being only a recipient of global penetration from elsewhere. Firstly, we need to understand that the availability of so many overseas programmes in Hong Kong is the result of huge demand which cannot be met by the existing tertiary institutions and the fact of Hong Kong as a free market with no barriers to access - this is not true elsewhere. Our activities in partnering overseas universities has been to ensure that good quality programmes are available that also have relevant local input. Regrettably this cannot be said of all overseas programmes on offer. In parallel we have developed our own awards and our university's degree programmes for the part-time students in the community.

These compete with overseas programmes. We have a number of joint ventures with institutions in China and by September this year will have programmes in Shenzhen and Shanghai. Students are encouraged to take overseas study through the HKU worldwide scheme. The university also has research and academic collaborations with over 300 universities and academic or research institutes across the globe.

PROFESSOR E.C.M. YOUNG Director School of Professional and Continuing Education University of Hong Kong