Session 1A: Education 2.0: Paradigm shift

Presenter: Prof Cheng Kai Ming, Faculty of Education, HKU

Venue: RM206, Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong.

Date: 1 June 2015 (09:00am - 09:30am)

Thinking differently

  • Young children learn many subjects in Buddhist schools
  • The curriculum is individual-based and they learn very well
  • China promotes examinations a source for upward social mobility
  • UK public school, not in public sector, elites worry about their next generation and then set up schools to develop knowledge and skills
  • Narrow emphasis on exam scores, no more after school activities
  • Human-beings human resources

Industrial society

  • Mass production
  • E.g., Maxim restaurant in HK, now 600 Maxim restaurants in HK but with different names
  • Whole idea of economy of scale
  • Same restaurants, same hand bags, same names

Nowadays, we demand more tailor made choices.

  • Hospitals have case manager, one case one manager
  • Career: What are young people facing? Jobs? Good jobs? Travel? What is wrong if one does not work?

Paradigm shift 1

  • Economic discourse  earning discourse

Paradigm shift 2

  • Deficit model (not good enough, catch up, appraisal)  advancement model (have a dream, dream model)

Paradigm shift 3

  • Plantation model (engineering model, industrial, expected outcome) To Nomadic Model

Paradigm shift 4

  • Manufacturing model (universities are factories, students are raw materials)  professional model (cannot dictate a doctor in hospital)

Session 1B: University Governance, Management and Administration

Presenter: Henry Wai, HKU

Venue: RM206, Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong.

Date: 1 June 2015 (09:30am – 11:00am)

Three levels: 1) Governance, 2) Management, and 3) Administration

  • Governance: policy making, oversee resources
  • Management: oversee operations, vice-chancellor (UK style)  president and vice-chancellor, deputy, provost, deans
  • Administrators: executing decision of governing bodies and management, day to day operation. 2 models of admin:
  • 1. Traditional (UK) model (group leadership, committees);
  • 2. Contemporary model, (centralized and strong)
  • E.g., PhD degree conferment, different systems

Which model is your university using? Not easy to answer. Paper written, real practice different

Which model is better? One cannot say.

The case of HKU: 3 levels of governance

  • Court: advisory, no real power. Is it useful? Should it be removed?
  • Council: real power, main governing body, 24 members
  • Senate: academic
  • Reform: reduced members

Management

  • President and Vice Chancellor
  • Provost and Deputy Vice-chancellor
  • Executive Vice-president
  • Vice-presidents & pro-vice-chancellors (5 posts)
  • Teaching and learning

Research

  • Institutional advancement: oversees donations
  • Global: A new post
  • Academic resources and staffing
  • Deans: past part-time  now full-time, heavy duties

Challenges & questions

  • Hard to define the three levels of governance, management, and administration
  • Laymen members more in number than university members
  • Funding priorities in research, Academic freedom?
  • No total institutional autonomy, accountability to public

Responding to expectations and pressure

  • University news is the 2ndmost attractive news to media in HK
  • Internal consensus for external communication and statement making
  • Pro-active media, in response to rankings with perception surveys

Major challenges

  • Cannot change academic directions due to rankings

Questions & Answers

Question. Professors as media-stars. Contemporary Model? Give some examples. What are some ICT crucial in use?

  • We have leaders that value the traditional model and some that value the contemporary model. For example, HKU academic and non-academic staff salaries are linked with the government system. Some colleagues think it should be performance based. However, most academic staff disagrees with this as it is difficult to measure the performance of research and teaching and learning.
  • ICT system: Oracle Finance and Oracle students systems

Question: How to measure teaching and learning? What are the processes in changing curriculum? Are there any books that describe the governance of the university?

  • Answer: It is not possible to have one book containing all information on governance. You can search the website and find the policy there. Students also have a handbook. In the past, the change of curriculum required the approval of Senate. The power is delegated to the Faculty. A number of steps are done to get curriculum reform. The process usually takes about 6 months.

Question: How to you implement expectations and core values? It is difficult to have detailed policy on academic freedom. How about the appeal system of HKU?

  • We should have our core values in the curriculum. When we have new terms, all students have ethic course and a handbook for plagiarism. Policy paper of good research practice. Educate new staff and new students to make sure everyone understands.
  • Only the discipline committee can punish the students. Students can appeal to the council. However, this is only to make sure the calculation of mark is correct. There is no re-marking of papers.

Question: How often VC communicates with students?

  • Current and previous vice-chancellor’shave an open door policy. They reply by email to students. The Vice-chancellor has regular meetings with faculty staff and students. He will also attend student activities if he has time.

Question: What shall we do in designing the system and getting the government involved?

  • Depends on environment.
  • Funding issues: making sure that you do not spend too much.
  • Look at the policy and work out it.

Conclusion

  • HKU as a rational case
  • No university is perfect in all aspects
  • World-class universities receive the most complaints

Session 2: Building Research Capacity

Presenter: Prof. Paul Tam, Provost and Deputy Vice-Chancellor, HKU

Topic: HKU Grand Tour and Research

Venue: RM206, Runme Shaw Building, The University of Hong Kong.

Date: 1 June 2015 (11:00am - 12:30pm)

The Presentation

HKU has been successful in transformation (of developing research) – because of the very talented group of prominent academic staff.

A brief introduction of HKU

  • A hundred years ago started with 3 faculties to form the university, by having different discipline co-existing.
  • Students look at the campus for their choice of admission. The campus provides physical environment + atmosphere for learning and knowledge.
  • HKU’s significant transformation from a mostly teaching university, which produced leaders for society, to building up reputation for research in the modern world.
  • HKU is a comprehensive university. The Dean’s alignment with the university goal is essential to move the university as a whole.
  • HKU has ~15,560 undergraduate students (medium size). Among postgraduate students, ~2,000 are research postgraduates. The taught postgraduate is also a large pie.
  • Research staff is the majority staff group in HKU.

A World Class University

  • The role of managers is to facilitate the development all these aspects:
  • Research excellence
  • Strong student learning culture
  • Emphasis on global experiences for students
  • Campus (and more importantly campus refers to the environment and culture)
  • Engage staff to the world.
  • HKU has responsibilities to society. The alumni are an important stakeholder group.
  • Ranking is one of the university Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that cannot be ignored, but we cannot change our policy solely because of rankings.

Research at HKU: a collective mind towards strategic goals

  • Funding depends heavily on student enrollment numbers in the undergraduate programmes (in the case of publicly funded institutions). Teaching is one of the core focus areas.
  • Walking in 2 legs: teaching + research. With good researches, students will be inspired as well. The challenge is to do both things very well.
  • To steer colleagues in research excellence. HKU values academic freedom. Conventionally HKU has a bottom-up approach, to empower to staff to do research that benefit themselves and society. Researcher needs top facilities and support for their researches.
  • Motivate our staff to do what HKU considers as important: publications are not only about quantity but also quality. The measure of quality in different disciplines is different yet it still can be measured.
  • QS World Rankings by subject 2016: 6 subjects in top 10, and a further 5 in top 20 in the world; HKU Dentistry ranked 1st in the world.
  • Functional Units of Research, Innovation and Enterprise: We need to realize the structure we need to support research development.

Competitive Research Funding (by the Research Grants Council (RGC), under HK UGC)

  • The major competitive funding scheme is an indicator of how well the university has done (in term of building a research team strategically – aligning with the university theme). They are categorized as Group‐based Collaborative Research Projects or Individual Research Projects.
  • In Hong Kong, research funding is an important income and KPI. The funding grants rely heavily on overseas reviews for assurance.
  • National research funding scheme requires bench-marking locally and internationally.

Building and Developing the strategic research themes

  • Major achievement of HKU: Convincing HKU staff in a gentle manner (not to force them) by providing initiatives to work together on research, so as to build the synergy that create more value than working alone. HKU is successful in grouping staff of different disciplines to work on research together.
  • The strategic research themes need to be reviewed and adjusted every 3 years, to change current and add new research area.

Interdisciplinary research development and direction

  • Research integrity: As as a research enterprise, it is important to ensure research integrity as the “DNA of the research cells”. Any university is always at risk for its staff to have temptation to be “selfish” in competitive world – by forgetting research integrity. 1 or 2 bad apples can ruin the entire meal. Participating in a research integrity workshop mandatory for all staff. They need to be reminded of what is acceptable and good behavior.

Student-centered: Job-ready upon graduation

  • Students need good supervisors to be mentored, regardless who their supervisor is: A mechanism is required to train any research supervisors and make them good for students. It is fair to the students no matter who they follow.
  • The university has responsibility to help students with finding jobs. Some students may choose to go for start-up. The university does not just train them up with research skill, but professional skills for them to take different jobs in the market.
  • Avoid in-breeding and provide the soil for international exchange – e.g., joint PhD programme, cross-institutional joint programme for 1+1 > 2 effect. These programmes are offered on selective ground and student-centered, i.e., not just because 2 presidents are friends.
  • Students are exposed to the cutting edge of research and are benefited from the research environment. Make sure we have a plan for them beyond graduation: provide postdoctoral training, learning opportunities (e.g., internship) that they can put CVs. Students do not graduate with only pure academic research roots, but are prepared for the professional world.

Performance‐, Merit‐based Assessment

  • This is for allocation of resources. Emphasis on motivation for staff, providing a fair mechanism for staff by setting appropriate targets at different level.

Internationalization

  • HKU is an English medium university. ~60% of staff are non-locals. Postgraduate around 50% are non-locals. The requirement for undergraduate student size in Hong Kong: to ensure ~80% are local – as to be responsible for taxpayer.
  • Internationalization at Home: To bring in international speakers, promote exchange with another institution. Now trying to promote that every student should spend 1 semester in another institution outside Hong Kong.

University Management

  • Change culture and policy (not by force, but) by modifying behavior. Involve staff to address issue that helps the university to become better, and be great. A good governance structure is important.
  • President overseeing the University, other senior management team members in charge of specific functions.
  • The senior management team: although they have specific functions, they meet up every week for communications for collaboration and cooperation.
  • Empower staff by human resources reform: to clarify what it means to be a professor at HKU – conventional appointment: teaching + research.
  • New specialist categories in teaching and research: to balance their ability, some are good at research and some are good at teaching. Encourage them to do what they are good at.
  • Contract renewal on performance- merit-based. Reviewed on continuous basis.
  • Motivating current staff and talent-hunt for new staff.
  • Streamlining human resources procedures to attract excellent staff, avoid bureaucratic procedures.

Management of Resources

  • Resources are limited.
  • Hong Kong SAR government mainly funds for undergraduate students. There is an increasing trend for taught postgraduate studies (people wants 2-3 master’s degrees) so the university needs to plan for taught postgraduate funding in order to be prepared for the expansion. For launching any programme, we need to consider the university strategic plan – not just to benefit individual or small group of people.
  • HKU looks forward to expanding. We need to realize the limitation on undergraduate development (demographic and resources) also to cater taught postgraduate expansion.

University vision for next 10 years

  • Deans, Heads and staff need to know what to do.
  • Missions and vision are quite similar across different universities in Hong Kong.
  • What is our highest priority? Creating opportunities to students, when they leave the university they can pursue their dreams or help others.
  • For achieving our vision, we need to set targets, to remind ourselves by checking the intermediate measures that we are heading in the right direction (step-by-step).

Conclusions

  • To become Asia’s Global University: Asia is on the rise and Hong Kong has its strategic location in this place – we have the advantage as part of Asia. The vision is achieved by:
  • 3 pillars: 1) teaching and learning 2) research 3) knowledge exchange
  • 3+1 Is: Internationalization, Innovation and Interdisciplinarity, converging to Impact

Questions and Answers

Q1: There is an internal debate about ranking: China has a 211 scheme to promote ~110 world class universities. What will happen to the other universities that are not receiving money and they are not the best ones? In developing countries, what we should do about rankings? They worry about regional development but on the other hand they need internationalization.

  • Responses: Within Oxford, colleges were ranked. When this league table comes out, Deans are furious and refuse to provide data for this table. Should a developing countries aim at rankings? They do not need to do everything for rankings, but they should consider the ranking criteria for improvement. It is not realistic for every university can be world class.
  • These universities are for educating the next generation, and teaching will be improved if teachers are researchers. In developing countries, bright minds may not return home. China is top down and ambitious. It has economic power to fund good universities. Educating the next generation and retaining talent is a noble achievement (recall: teaching and research walk in 2 legs). Rankings (focus too much on research) can deprive us from doing our basic – teaching. Ranking is not completely objective.

Q2. China defines its policies in allocating resources by ranking. After the Cultural Revolution, the entire higher education system was destroyed. China is rising very fast. In Brazil the progress is slow, not much improvement in rankings throughout the years. Why use QS? The subject ranking is kind of marketing thing. Shanghai Jiao Tong ranking compares research so it has better objectivity.

  • Responses: As a comprehensive university, HKU is still developing its research in some disciplines. Shanghai Jiao Tong (SHJT) ranking – provides good intentions to include Nobel prize winners in its ranking formula. Yet the picture can be skewed. China has >1000 universities and huge population compared to Hong Kong. Now universities fight for recruitment of Nobel prize winners, gaining the best players in the world to boost their ranking. This drives out the opportunities for young players, who have potential to become good.
  • Having different ranking systems is good, because universities can be evaluated in different aspects. For truly top universities they are consistently ranked top in all league tables. So in that sense there is some fairness by having a comparison.
  • There are ~18,000 universities in the world. How to advice, e.g. Moroccan people how to choose a university? Every country should aim at having at least one top research institution.
  • Excellence can be defined in many ways. Example: An undergraduate college in the US does not do research nor postgraduate programmes, but it is a very good college. Institutions can define itself as a very good regional university. It depends on your vision and how to work towards the vision.

Q3. Regarding HKU strategic research themes, how they are formed and how to get inspiration for what to develop? In developing countries, it is really difficult for professors to apply western knowledge locally. What inform research themes?

  • Responses: By considering your own university’s environment. HKU has a good base that we have the ingredients of 60-70% of our staff being active researchers; HKU’s role is bringing them to the next level. HKU wants a small number of research themes. Researchers who propose a theme will need to justify how it contributes to the university. Institutions need to understand their own strengths and weaknesses to find their own niche that arise from an opportunity. The role of management is to transform and merge them towards the direction - by funding, target setting and reviewing in a 3-years cycle. From the review, around 50% will flourish in their results, while the remaining will not effectively use the money. Some will be in-between for a 2nd trial or chance. The direction will then become sharper and sharper. Adjustment is needed along the process.
  • Consider your country, if there is no more than 70% research staff, you might need international experts to look at your staffing and advise on how to achieve. The first step is to find out your competitive advantages – you cannot just follow what the government wants. Instead of proposing a research theme out of your own country’s context, you might need a balance of local and international interest. Especially in humanities / social science research, local context can be used as case studies for the world e.g., effect of mother tongue in teaching. You will need to connect your local knowledge to the world, and make local content relevant to the world.

Q4. In Malaysia, most universities focus on teaching. One of the practical challenge is: How to promote research culture among academics? Malaysia has been corporatizing and commercializing our research. Share your strategies in Hong Kong: