The General Education Initiative in Hong Kong:
Organized Contradictions and Emerging Tensions
David Jaffee
Professor of Sociology
University of North Florida
1 UNF Drive
Jacksonville, Florida
32224
904-620-2215
904-620-4415
Keywords:
General Education; Organizational Change; Hong Kong; Asia-Pacific
Do not quote or cite without permission of author.
Abstract:
In 2012 all Hong Kong universities will be extending the length of the undergraduate degree from three to four years and adding General Education as a degree requirement. This reform initiative represents a unique case of comprehensive organizational change of higher education on an unprecedented scale. This paper examines several of the most significant contradictions and tensions facing this initiative -- the current structure of higher education based on the British system and the prevailing culture of teaching and learning in Hong Kong. The nature of these pre-existing conditions, and their contradictory relationship to the substance and purpose of general and liberal education, are outlined. The contradictions and tensions generated by the general education initiative are situated within the larger organizational tension between theory and practice, and structure and action. The paper delineates some of the strategies developed to address the existing and emerging tensions.
The General Education Initiative in Hong Kong:
Organized Contradictions and Emerging Tensions
Introduction: The Hong Kong General Education Reform Initiative
In 2005 the University Grants Committee (UGC), the central body governing higher education in Hong Kong, mandated a change from a three to four year undergraduate curriculum for the eight universities under its jurisdiction. The additional year would allow for the development of a General Education (GE) curriculum. The four-year curriculum would be the required standard for all entering students beginning in Fall 2012. As part of the larger 3-3-4 educational reform, “senior secondary education” would be reduced to three years and students would be entering institutions of higher education a year earlier (and younger) in 2012 (see Figure 1).
Based on the various official reports of Hong Kong educational bodies published beginning in 2000, the formally expressed purpose of the reform was to address perceived weaknesses in the current curricular structure and system of pedagogy in the secondary and tertiary sectors. More specifically, it was noted that “learning is still examination-driven and scant attention is paid to ‘learning to learn’… students are not given comprehensive learning experiences with little room to think, explore and create. The pathways for lifelong learning are not as smooth as they should be. To make up for these weaknesses, we need to uproot outdated ideology and develop a new education system that is student-focussed”( Hong Kong Education Commission 2000, p.4). The report recommended that undergraduate education “strike the right balance between the breadth and the depth of such programmes. This would, in addition to helping students master the necessary knowledge and skills for specific professions/disciplines, give them exposure to other learning areas and help them develop a sense of integrity, positive attitude, a broad vision and important generic skills” (p.9). A later report echoed the same themes identifying the need for “generic and transferable skills”, to “strike a new balance between breadth and depth”, and to transcend specialization so that graduates can see “creative and unexpected connections” (University Grants Committee 2002). In the higher education sector, a consensus emerged over General Education as the curricular vehicle to address these issues.
This paper is devoted to a preliminary analysis of this significant and monumental change to the Hong Kong system of education generally, and higher education sector in particular. The analysis is based on my direct participation and involvement in the initiative during the academic year 2010-2011 as a General Education Fulbright scholar hosted at one of the Hong Kong universities implementing the reform. During that period, information was gathered from official reports and documents, conversations and interviews with university administrators and faculty involved in the original decision and subsequent implementation, and participant observation at meetings in my role as a Fulbright scholar devoted to assisting Hong Kong universities with the transition.
The present article will focus on two questions pertaining to the Hong Kong reform within the context of comprehensive organizational change. First, what existing and institutionalized conditions pose the greatest potential obstacles to the achievement of reform? Second, what emerging conditions, generic to all forms of organizational change and particular to the Hong Kong case, generate additional tensions? The basic assumption underlying the analysis is that organizational change in inevitably fraught with tensions, contradictions, and unintended consequences (Poole and Van de Ven 1989). These must be recognized and acknowledged in order to understand the challenges facing implementation, the pace and rhythm of organizational change, and the obstacles to the successful realization of intended purposes.
Organized Contradictions: Antithetical Curricular Structures and Pedagogical Cultures
The GE reform in Hong Kong represents a unique case of mandated transformation of higher education on an unprecedented scale. The process of organizational change, initiated from within or mandated from without, is a heavily theorized and studied topic (Demers 2007; Hoag, Ritschard, and Cooper 2002; Schneider, Brief and Guzzo 1996; Porras and Silvers 1991; Weick and Quinn 1999; Van de Ven and Poole 1995; Tsoukas and Chia 2002) giving rise to inevitable prescriptions on how to institute and manage change successfully (Kotter 1996; Mowat 2002; Awbrey 2005; Ratcliff 2004). For the limited purposes of the present article, the introduction and implementation of a university GE curriculum program will be regarded as a form of “episodic” (Weick and Quinn1999) and “planned” organizational change (Jian 2007). The Hong Kong GE initiative can be characterized as strategic, mandated, and formal. It was officially announced and introduced by a central university system administration, and has a predetermined implementation date of Fall 2012. Framing the organizational change in this way does not imply that continuous change dynamics are unimportant or irrelevant for this case. Rather, the choice of the episodic/planned frame is based on its ability to highlight immediate pre-existing tensions that must be overcome to move the initiative forward and the contradictions between theory-practice and structure-action.
If Hong Kong was involved in nothing more than the reform of an existing GE program, there would be many lessons to learn from the experience of countless US institutions that have grappled with this notoriously thorny issue (see Awbrey 2005; Irvin 1990; Newton 2000; Gaff 1980; Schneider and Shoenberg 1999). But the Hong Kong initiative is not a matter of simply revising or modifying an existing GE program, but rather its inauguration as a new academic program requirement for all students and the extension of the length of the undergraduate degree an additional year. This represents an entirely new curricular structure and associated educational philosophy. When considered in this context, there are two pre-existing structural-cultural barriers that stand out as potential “organized contradictions” (Rau and Baker 1989) to the successful implementation of GE. These are the British model of education and the Hong Kong (or Chinese) culture of teaching and learning.
The British Model
The three year undergraduate program that will be supplanted is a direct legacy of the British colonial system that has impacted many aspects of Hong Kong institutions and culture. It is based on a philosophy of education that emphasizes disciplinary specialization from the moment the student arrives at the university (and even earlier in the secondary sector). This has impacted the perspective of both administrators and faculty who have viewed the primary purpose of university education as disciplinary specialization rather than intellectual broadening. Accompanying this perspective is an admissions and curricular structure that leaves little latitude for exploration, choice, or interdisciplinary discovery. While such discipline-centric tendencies certainly exist in the American academy, it is much more pervasive under a British higher educational system that has historically had the exclusive task of disciplinary training.
This formal educational structure and the pedagogical philosophical underpinning stand in sharp contrast with the effort to develop a GE curriculum that emphasizes “integrative learning”, connections across disciplinary boundaries, and generic skills. For many or most of the faculty teaching in Hong Kong, there is no direct experience with a general or liberal education in their roles as faculty or their experience as students; the concept is entirely alien. I heard several faculty members describe GE as “remedial education” and something that should be the responsibility of the primary and secondary sector. Given the educational experience of much of the faculty in Hong Kong, GE is less legitimate, widely accepted or valued educational undertaking and, therefore, that much more difficult to develop as an integral component of undergraduate education.
In conversations with several academic administrators, they reported that among many faculty there was a sentiment that a fourth year devoted to General Education might be “wasted” and “detract” from the important task of more specialized training. Some faculty argued that the current three year curriculum was already too crowded, and insufficiently expansive, to accommodate the necessary disciplinary-based content and training.
A related factor, cited by one academic administrator, that might further discourage the acceptance of GE at some of the Hong Kong universities, is the institutional dominance of the science and engineering faculties and their curricular values. At several institutions where these colleges and programs exist, there was a perception that the humanities and social sciences were underappreciated and devalued as significant disciplines that could contribute positively to student intellectual development. As a consequence, much of the general education curriculum was viewed as superfluous or “fluff”. It was in this context that one former administrator suggested “the people who need to be educated on General Education are not the students but the professors.”
In spite of these institutionalized tendencies, one of the major officially stated purposes of the 3-3-4 reform is to overcome the narrow specialization and concentration of the educational system. For this reason, all GE programs at Hong Kong universities make some reference to the objective of “broadening” or “interdisciplinarity” and GE course proposals are expected to demonstrate multiple disciplinary perspectives.
The current secondary educational system in Hong Kong, a component of the larger British system, has also contributed directly to the narrowing and concentration of student academic subject study (see Leung 2002). Under this system, students proceed through a “3+2+2” structure that involved two compulsory years (thus, a nine year compulsory education system) after which students could either exit or continue and choose an arts or science track (see Figure 1). After two years in that track, students would take the first of two high stakes exams. Based on the results of that exam, students would either move out (and pursue alternative forms of post-secondary education) or move on to the final two years – 6 and 7 -- known as “matriculation”. A final secondary exam, at the completion of the two years, would determine the prospects for university entry. Students would sit for exams at both points in the “arts” or in the “sciences”. Students must choose their intended prioritized major preferences before taking the university entrance examination. Thus, at a very early point, in comparison to the US, students are tracked into disciplinary areas (see Suárez-Orozco 2007 for a critical analysis of this system).
Disciplinary specialization is further reinforced through the university admissions and student scholarship system. In Hong Kong university scholarships are financed by the University Grants Committee (UGC). Each institution is allocated a certain number of financed slots allocated to academic programs. Students apply to (or “bid”) for these academic program slots. They can apply to up to 25 academic programs and the decision on which to apply for, and in what priority, is based on anticipated competitiveness. The success of an application and a bid depends heavily upon the results of high-stakes testing completed in the final term of the senior year of secondary school. The bottom-line desire is to avoid being shut out from receiving a financed position in the higher education system. Therefore, students will apply to programs that they may find less attractive and desirable, or even for which they have no interest, if it enhances their prospects for acceptance (some programs have more stringent admission criteria than others).
Under the current system, the students enter the university as a member of an academic program cohort and follow the prescribed curriculum lockstep as fulltime students. There is essentially only one path to graduation. Because the state financed positions are scarce and cover the full tuition, students are discouraged from leaving or trying to move into another area of study. There is virtually no option for switching academic majors. The net result is that many students graduate with degrees they do not want. Institutions hope that students will “want what they get” since they cannot always “get what they want”.
This system produces two important outcomes. On the positive side, few students leave and almost all graduate in three years. On the negative side, a significant proportion of students complete degrees in areas of study they have no interest in or commitment to, but to which they applied either on the basis of limited knowledge or for the prospects of being admitted to a university. When asked, many students indicate they would have chosen, and prefer, a different program of study.
This existing system obviously works against the broad purposes of GE involving exposure to a wide range of perspectives, integrative and interdisciplinary thinking, and the cultivation of generic skills untethered to specialized disciplinary content knowledge. How will things change under the new GE initiative?
In 2012 greater student choice will be introduced. First, students will be selecting courses that satisfy GE requirements. Second, at some institutions, students will have some restricted choices over major areas of study. These are significant changes given that the current system is based largely if not totally on an absence of student choice. But, again, the changes will be limited and introduced incrementally. There is an understandable reluctance, coupled with considerable opposition and resistance, to the most radical policy, routine in most US institutions, of allowing students the choice of academic major after they arrive at the institution or even after the first year. Instead, rather than university-wide admission and unrestricted student choice, intermediate and less draconian measures have been proposed such as, at one institution, admitting students to a college (e.g. the college of business rather than an academic program) with the opportunity to select a major at the end of the first year from those offered by the college.