Foreigners at CUHK say they were not told courses were unavailable in English Foreign students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong are angry after discovering that they cannot study their subjects of choice because the courses or course materials are not available in English. Some students say they only learned they were unable to study their selected courses after arriving in Hong Kong earlier this month. The students' complaints come after a report by the university's committee on bilingualism reaffirmed that CUHK should maintain its bilingual tradition. Jade Robinson, from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, listed 15 courses she wanted to take when she applied to study gender studies at CUHK. When she arrived and tried to register for the courses, Ms Robinson was told she could not study any of her nominated courses because they were not available in English or did not have English course materials. The second-year student is now enrolled in anthropology subjects, and has had to change her degree programme to anthropology at her home university. Ms Robinson, 19, said the university website had not distinguished between courses which were available in English and those that were only taught in Chinese. 'I presumed that they were all in English. It wasn't until I arrived that I found out,' she said. She had chosen to come to Hong Kong because she wanted to study women's issues in Asia to enhance her gender studies major at the University of Aberdeen, she said. 'I thought it would give me an advantage if I'd studied in Asia but now I'm just the same as any other British anthropology graduate,' she said. 'What I'm studying now is not why I came to Hong Kong.' Louise Gravgaard, a third-year anthropology student from the University of Copenhagen, had also planned to study gender studies at CUHK. 'When you look on the website it seems that gender studies has 20 or more courses but they only offer two and those are in Cantonese,' she said. Two weeks before leaving Denmark, Ms Gravgaard, 22, discovered the courses she wanted to take were conducted in Chinese or only had Chinese reading materials. Ms Gravgaard said the university told her to contact the gender studies department to ask if they could make an arrangement so that she could study her subjects of choice. 'They said 'we're really sorry, the only thing we can do is give you a list of selected readings',' she said. Ms Gravgaard said: 'I'm definitely going to write in my report when I go home that before applying they should e-mail the department and talk about whether the courses are offered in English.' A third student, who did not want to be named, said: 'The course list was 50 anthropology courses. Out of those, the ones that I could actually study was four.' CUHK vice-chancellor Lawrence Lau Juen-yee said it would be difficult to offer every subject in both English and Chinese. Brochures contained information about the language of instruction and a sufficient number of courses were available for exchange students to choose from, he said. A CUHK spokeswoman said the university would need time to look into the matter. 'The complaints came from our exchange students, we must investigate . . . the cases.' The University of Aberdeen and CUHK signed an exchange agreement last year. A spokeswoman for the University of Aberdeen said: 'Very minor settling-in issues, which are perfectly normal with this type of exchange, have been addressed.'
