My Take | Hong Kong’s higher education has been a main casualty of 2019 unrest
- Record dropouts and declining academic standards can be directly attributed to the anti-government protests and riots
During the political unrest in 2019, a family friend’s daughter majoring in engineering at Chinese University couldn’t study or rest in her campus dormitory because intense pressure was put on everyone to join the anti-government protests by their peers.
Being apolitical, like she is, was considered at best ignorant and at worst something sinful and shameful. It was considered that everyone had a moral duty to protest. She ended up being so terrified she didn’t dare go back to the Sha Tin campus for months.
Luckily, she stuck with her studies while some of her friends quit university and the research projects of her professors were delayed or at least affected. So, she wasn’t surprised by the record dropouts at the city’s public universities, which are also being downgraded in a global league table that ranks the quality of education they offer in major subjects.
According to the league table compiled by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), eight of the nine publicly funded tertiary institutions saw some of their academic programmes downgraded from the year before, with the University of Hong Kong experiencing the most subjects in decline.
Of the 171 programmes ranked, 66 – or nearly 40 per cent – declined, while 64 remained the same as last year. Only 29 disciplines – or about 17 per cent – saw improvement, while 12 subjects were ranked for the first time.
