In the name of efficiency, the HKSAR Govt is sending the local Higher Education System further down Mediocre Lane.
Check out Chairperson of the UGC, Dr Alice LAM’s press release.
What the HKSAR Govt is doing is, instead of encouraging an organic environment with healthy and open competition between the different institutes, they will be granting different monopoly rights to different institutes. Institutes which try to step out of line will be penalized. In the name of increased productivity, our Higher Education system is returning to a planned economy, where the omniscient (yeah, right!) officials will decide how to allocate resources and what to produce.
If one reads the press release carefully, it is not difficult to tell that the HKSAR Govt is trying to turn the Higher Education institutes from places of study, knowledge and research into vocation training boot camps, and they are so proud of it too.
All in all, it is going to be a mediocre system turning out crap. From now on to Jasper I’ll only speak English, and the Lady will only speak Putonghua. We’ll double Jasper’s education saving fund. Moving to Shanghai or Macau for good seem to be a very good idea.
Indeed there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel. It’s an approaching train.