Enquiry

Abstract:

Since the mid-1990s, the pressure of globalization and the pressing demands of a knowledge economy led to a series of educational reforms to match the demands. However, from the outset, the focus of these reform endeavors was on the promotion of quality education and massification of its higher education, rather than on the aspiration of becoming an exporter of higher education services. After being hit by the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administration Region (HKSAR) conducted a comprehensive education review, and the consequential Review of Education System Reform Proposal highlighted education as a key factor to the global competitiveness of Hong Kong in its future development. Thus in 2001, in order to improve both the quality and quantity of its higher education, a new Government policy initiatives were introduced. These included doubling by 2010 the targeted number of students enrolled in higher education. Throughout the past decade such reforms laid a foundation for the idea and an ongoing regional education hub discourse. Following, the global financial crisis in 2008 and taking note of other hub developments around the world, Hong Kong’s regional education hub aspirations gained in prominence. In 2010 - 2011 it became a top agenda item, the Government envisaging that with the establishment of an education industry (along with other new industries), Hong Kong’s economy can be jumpstarted, diversified and sustained over the long run. This presentation sets out against the context of education reforms taken place in Hong Kong to examine the challenges and possibilities for Hong Kong to achieve the strategic goal of positioning itself as a regional education hub in Asia, especially when the present government has shifted its policy emphasis to other areas like poverty alleviation and housing. 

Speaker:

Professor Joshua Mok is Chair Professor of Comparative Policy, concurrently Vice President (Research and Development) of The Hong Kong Institute of Education.

All welcome
 

For registration, please email Benjamin at hcso@ied.edu.hk .

** UNESCO Research Seminar Series is a HKIEd 20th Anniversary Celebratory Event, which is jointly organized by: the UNESCO Chair in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET)and Lifelong Learning, the UNESCO-UNEVOC Centre (HK), the UNESCO Arts-in-Education Observatory for Research in Local Cultures and Creativity in Education (RLCCE), Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development, and Centre for Governance and Citizenship.