Hong Kong enrols fewer professionals in doctoral programmes compared with other developed regions, recent studies have shown.
Professional doctorate programmes - those targeting mid-career or senior professionals and involving research in professional fields of study, such as nursing or business administration - have gained prominence in places such as Australia, Europe and the US. They are often conducted on a part-time basis allowing professional people to stay in their job while honing useful research skills.
About half of all doctoral students in Australia are enrolled in fields related to various professions, with the percentage of part-timers rising from zero in the early 1970s to 40 in 2000, according to Terry Evans, associate dean of the Faculty of Education at Deakin University, which has conducted research on doctoral programmes in the country and abroad.
The proportion of part-time doctoral students in the UK was 61 per cent while more than half of US doctoral graduates specialised in professional areas.
In Hong Kong, however, only 20 per cent - about 417 students - are in part-time programmes, out of a total of 2,131, almost half of whom are mainlanders.
'In the knowledge economy, the demand for research is much more broadly spread across industry, commerce and professions and it is likely to occur in most developed nations,' said Dr Evans, in town earlier for conferences at the Open University and the University of Hong Kong.
Part-time doctoral students were more goal-focused and time-efficient, and universities could gain wider access to the private sector through them, he added. But there were few incentives for doctoral training in Hong Kong, given the dearth of technology-driven and research-intensive industries here, academics say.