What would you study in Hong Kong?

[skylee]

I live in Hong Kong. And Hong Kong aims to become a regional "education hub" (whatever that means). So I am quite curious about the opinions of the members in these forums. From some recent threads posted here, I have these impressions -

• it is not good to study Putonghua in Hong Kong because Hong Kong people can't speak it (hell they can't even speak English) (relevant thread)
• not good to study Chinese medicine in Hong Kong, even if there are courses taught in English, as it is expensive and undergrad students have to do their last-year internship in China (relevant thread)
• not good to study for an MBA in Hong Kong, even though there are top Business Schools here and the programmes are in English, because it is expensive (?) and the people don't speak Putonghua (though the OP wanted an English programme) (relevant thread)
• not good to study even Cantonese here because it is expensive (relevant thread)

So I just wonder what non-local students (granted, most of them are from Mainland China) study here and why anyone would choose to study in Hong Kong. Any views?

[skylee]

Perhaps I am not asking the right question. Would it be more appropriate to ask "who" would study in Hong Kong?

Also, would Hong Kong be more attractive as far as education is concerned if more people know about this programme mentioned by wushijiao (ie complete a full-time local degree and you can stay to work)? The programme is called Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG), more details here.

[anonymoose]

"who" would study in Hong Kong?

Mainlanders who have enough money to go to Hong Kong, but are not smart enough to get into a good university on the mainland.

Edit: In view of the argument below that this post seems to have unleashed, let me clarify that my statement above is in no way meant to be a slight at Hong Kong, but merely an answer to the question quoted above.

[skylee]

Enlightening remark.

[Don_Horhe]

I'd definitely do Chinese University of Hong Kong's MA in Chinese Linguistics and Language Acquisition - I've been drooling at the course list for over a year now, although HKD 80,000 for a two-semester program is a bit too steep.

[studychinese]

Trying to be the 'hub' of this or that seems to be the trend among Asian governments at the moment. I lack knowledge of HK but I would say HK has very little chance of being an educational hub for the reasons you give.

[imron]

I seem to recall wushijiao's wife was studying in Hong Kong, possibly an MA, but I can't remember the specifics.

[paike]

"who" would study in Hong Kong?

Mainlanders who have enough money to go to Hong Kong, but not enough intelligence to get into a good university on the mainland.

Yeah, that's where HK is getting its money from. I know more than 50 students in the last two years who went to one of the four or so universities that they can get in at. Some ARE bright, super crazy smart, those who get into HKU. The 高考 score they need it absurd.

But there are three or four other schools that need a decent score, interview and money. I'm in one normal city in China, if you extrapolate you can see there probably are thousands of students paying the big tuition and filling seats in those schools. From what I understand some of the schools are enlarging just to handle the Mainland demand.

[skylee]

Yeah, that's where HK is getting its money from.

The brightest undergrad students get scholarships. I know of one scholarship which was (it's been used up) quite generous (HKD 0.3M per head for three years). There are others, such as these.

[imron]

Yeah, that's where HK is getting its money from.

And there was me thinking HK got its money from being one of the main financial centers of the Asia Pacific.

[paike]

Clearly HK is a financial center and the big shiny buildings come from banking and most of east asia funneling through there, but in THIS POST, yes, that's where HK schools are getting there money from, that's who is going to school in HK.

None of the students I know get scholarships and they have Gaokao scores in the mid 600's. Any higher and they go to Beida, so I dont know who would be getting the scholarships you are talking about.

You are Chinese skylee? You seem pretty against the idea that rich, smart, but not-smart enough mainlanders are filling up HK schools? 信不信由你。thats your issue.

-to imron. blah

[skylee]

You are Chinese skylee?

Is this relevant?

[jbradfor]

You seem pretty against the idea that rich, smart, but not-smart enough mainlanders are filling up HK schools?

Actually, my reading is that skylee is wondering where some of this anti-Hong Kong sentiment often expressed here comes from.

And I'm wondering that too. I understand that almost everyone learning Chinese (as a foreign language) is learning Mandarin, not Cantonese, which does put Hong Kong at a pretty major disadvantage, but it often feels to me that "Hong Kong is a bad place to learn Mandarin" gets shorted to "Hong Kong is a bad place".

[xiaocai]

None of the students I know get scholarships and they have Gaokao scores in the mid 600's. Any higher and they go to Beida, so I dont know who would be getting the scholarships you are talking about.

Just because you don't know doesn't mean that they don't exist. If you are making a statement rather than a speculation, you need clear evidence to support it. In this case I would suppose you need a full list of mainland students enrolled in Hong Hong universities this year and proof that none of them is actually getting scholarship of any kind. And only then I think we can continue a meaningful discussion on this matter.

Clearly HK is a financial center and the big shiny buildings come from banking and most of east asia funneling through there, but in THIS POST, yes, that's where HK schools are getting there money from, that's who is going to school in HK.

Again I think you need evidence here. You should at least show how much money mainland students are paying to Hong Kong universities in total and on the other hand, the grants these institutes are getting from Hong Kong government every year. You need numbers to prove that the contribution made by mainland students is significant to a point that the schools are "getting their money" mainly from them, as you should be aware that most of the public universities are known to be funded through The University Grants Committee of Hong Kong.

[sleepy eyes]

When I was in HK I heard that many several poor mainlanders are there on scholarship schemes. Well, at HK Baptist University at least. My friend told me some wear the same shirt every single day; they live on as tight a budget as possible. As do the poor scholarship students here in the mainland, alas. The foreigners I did meet where mostly on temporary exchange programs. I guess it's the type of place that would attract westerners from grad studies upwards.

I've been entertaining the idea of studying in HK for a long time. I came to the mainland instead because I didn't amass the necessary money for studying in HK; plus I was already studying Putonghua, having sinological topics as one of my many amateur interests.

HK still holds a lot of cultural sway over a subset of foreigners. I'm one of them. Even with its movie industry severely weakened and South Korea and the Mainland's booming, it's still an attractive location for studying Film. But the prices for tuition are indeed quite high. Under my budget, the price for housing would a big issue as well, even if I happenened to live in a dorm.

Answering the title question, after I finish my MD here, I plan on moving to HK, unless I get a job in the (mainland) industry. The initial idea was pursuing a postgrad degree, but the tuition would be an issue, not to mention the length, so I'll take an open course (night school?) instead. Reasons: mostly for getting contacts, trying my luck professionally (even with the current state of the movie industry, there are still opportunities with the china-hk co-productions etc.), and, frankly, indulging myself by living in a place that I love and lives in my affective memory.

That hardly answers the better part of your questions, but it's my perspective anyway. I wonder what are the dynamics with koreans, japanese etc.

[skylee]

xiaocai, I am really impressed that you know about that committee. And both "most of the public universities" and "funded through" are very accurate. Those universities are actually mainly funded by the HK Govt.

[xiaocai]

Cause I actually thought about studying in Hong Kong quite a while back. But I gave up as I clearly knew that I was not in the demography of 630/750 with English over 130 to compete for a scholarship and could never be able to afford the 100000 HKD tuition fee, let alone the living cost. But I did my research nevertheless. ;)

[paike]

Just because you don't know doesn't mean that they don't exist. If you are making a statement rather than a speculation, you need clear evidence to support it. In this case I would suppose you need a full list of mainland students enrolled in Hong Hong universities this year and proof that none of them is actually getting scholarship of any kind. And only then I think we can continue a meaningful discussion on this matter.

You and Skylee should write some emails back and forth because its clear if someone is not parroting the same ideas as you, you don't care. I don't care to look up HK newspaper articles to back up what I've seen many times. Just last summer I have almost 30 students at my own private school, one of 15 such schools in my one city in China, that all were preparing for interviews at HK unis, to pay their own way. Most of them had Gaokao scores ranging from high 500's 585and up to low 600's. Couldnt get into HKU. All were paying there way, that's what the HK schools want, money.

What Skylee should have started the discussion off with was, "I'm looking for someone who will share my own opinions and say what I'm looking for, and that is, HK is great and people love to study there. Mainlanders only go to HK on scholarship and there is not a huge wave of mainlanders paying there way, I can't believe that. If you share my opinion, please post, others follow suit." Then this would have worked out much better.

[xiaocai]

Hmmm, this is very odd. You said that I don't care about different opinion, but I do. That was why I requested for more evidence to support your assertion so we can have, as I have said, a meaningful discussion other than personal attack (of which I see some tendency in your post to be honest). However, you, on the other hand said you yourself didn't care to make it clear on what basis you drew your conclusion, which I think was not very helpful. Even now you have given some figures, they are far from convincing as the sample number is too small. If you have look here you will find that the contribution made by your 30 students is like a drop of water in the ocean (the eight institutions funded through UGC get about 10 billion HKD grants from the government, not to mention other private funds). But of course if you are not interested to elaborate your statement, then we can stop here even though you are the person who brought it up.

And the most strange thing is skylee asked some question ("What would you study in Hong Kong?") but you answered with something which is not really very relevant ("Yeah, that's where HK is getting its money from."). And now you are suggesting the skylee have asked the wrong question, how odd is this! :blink:

And even though the schools want money, I don't see anything wrong with that. Who doesn't need money to run a school? You mentioned somewhere in your post that you own a private school, so do you charge your students? Do you make profit? Do you need money yo sustain the business if it is profitable? Do you need money to cover all the expenses if it is non-profitable? And scholarships will be granted by majority of those Hong Kong public universities if you meet the criteria, otherwise you will have to pay for your expensive choice and I just can't, as I have said, see anything wrong with that.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Dear all,

Trying to be the 'hub' of this or that seems to be the trend among Asian governments at the moment. I lack knowledge of HK but I would say HK has very little chance of being an educational hub for the reasons you give.

I don't know about that.

I used to be like everybody else thinking that Hong Kong is just known for her duty-free shopping and action movies, kung fu flicks and triad shoot-em-ups where everyone is firing two guns at the same time in slow motion and doves and all.

That her academics must be crap.

But then in America we don't know any universities outside of the ones in the US. Most Americans would be hard pressed to name a foreign university. Maybe only Oxford and Cambridge.

So you can imagine what we'd think of universities in Hong Kong.

Then I read this article last year and it blew me away.

World's Top Universities for 2010

It's U.S. News and World Report magazine's annual ranking of the best universities in the world for 2010.

Here's the top 50:

1 University of Cambridge United Kingdom 100.0

2 Harvard University United States 99.2

3 Yale University United States 98.7

4 UCL (University College London) United Kingdom 98.5

5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) United States 98.2

6 University of Oxford United Kingdom 98.2

7 Imperial College London United Kingdom 97.8

8 University of Chicago United States 97.5

9 California Institute of Technology (Caltech) United States 96.5

10 Princeton University United States 96.0

11 Columbia University United States 96.0

12 University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) United States 96.0

13 Stanford University United States 93.6

14 Duke University United States 92.3

15 University of Michigan United States 92.2

16 Cornell University United States 90.4

17 Johns Hopkins University United States 89.7

19 ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Switzerland 89.3

18 McGill University Canada 89.3

20 Australian National University (ANU) Australia 88.6

21 King's College London (KCL) United Kingdom 88.5

22 University of Edinburgh United Kingdom 88.0

23 University of Hong Kong (HKU) Hong Kong 87.3

24 The University of Tokyo Japan 86.8

25 Kyoto University Japan 85.9

26 Northwestern University United States 85.4

27 University of Bristol United Kingdom 85.3

28 University of California, Berkeley (UCB) United States 85.2

29 University of Toronto Canada 84.3

30 University of Manchester United Kingdom 83.4

31 National University of Singapore (NUS) Singapore 82.8

32 École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Switzerland 82.3

33 École Normale Supérieure de Paris (ENS Paris) France 82.1

34 Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) United States 81.9

35 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) United States 81.5

36 École Polytechnique, ParisTech France 81.3

37 University of Sydney Australia 81.3

38 University of Melbourne Australia 80.6

39 Brown University United States 80.5

40 Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Hong Kong 78.7

41 New York University (NYU) United States 78.5

42 Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Hong Kong 77.9

43 University of Queensland (UQ) Australia 77.6

44 University of British Columbia (UBC) Canada 77.4

45 University of Copenhagen Denmark 76.8

46 University of New South Wales (UNSW) Australia 76.7

47 Peking University China 76.4

48 University of Wisconsin-Madison United States 76.3

49 Osaka University Japan 76.2

50 Seoul National University (SNU) South Korea

Yes, it's heavily weighted toward US unis. What can I say?

There are three Hong Kong universities in the top 50.

The University of hong Kong is ranked at number 23 just above the highest ranking Japanese university, the University of Tokyo at number 24.

There are more Hong Kong universities in the top 50 than French universities. France has only two. And the University of Hong Kong is ranked higher than either of them.

There are no German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Mexican, Latin American, Southeast Asian, South Asian universities in the top 50.

The University of Hong Kong ranks higher than Northwestern University (#26), Berkeley (#28), the University of Toronto (#29), National University of Singapore (#31), Carnegie Mellon University (#34), UCLA (#35), Brown University (#39), and a whole host of other unis.

The highest ranking mainland university is Beida at #47. Below all three of the Hong Kong unis.

Didn't check to see if Qingdao or Shanghai Jiaotong were just bubbling under the top 50.

America has thousands of unis. so that means these 3 Hong Kong unis are ranked higher than all of them. USC, Arizona State, Notre Dame, Georgetown. Even Ivy League Dartmouth.

Wikipedia entry for "University of Hong Kong".

Wikipedia entry for "Hong Kong University of Science and Technology".

Wikipedia entry for "Chinese University of Hong Kong".

According to Wikipedia, they've got 4 Nobel Prize winners on their faculty.

A Sept. 22, 2010 article titled "Hong Kong University Now Tops Asian Rankings"

Hong Kong University may be experiencing its golden age in global competitiveness as the recently released Times Higher Education World University Rankings showed it is now the top Asian University, outranking perennial leader University of Tokyo for the first time.

However, the achievement was a bit dampened when another university in the city refused to join the ranking, while another seemed less enthusiastic now that the system under the British magazine no longer collaborates with Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a company specializing in overseas education. While QS continues to publish its ranking reports — the latest published just eight days after the THE rankings — Times Magazine has now partnered with Thomson Reuters with a new set of methodologies that highlight HKU as number one in Asia.

Overall, the University of Hong Kong is ranked 21st best in the world, five places ahead of University of Tokyo. Last year, the ranking saw Tokyo at 22nd and HKU at 24th. Three other universities in Hong Kong rounded up the top 200 in the region, with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 41st position (lower than its 35th place last year). From 307th last year, Baptist University zoomed into 111th while Polytechnic University made a huge strides, leaping up 46 places to 149th. Last year, five universities made it to the top 200.

City University thought the untested methodology formulated by the Times Magazine and Thomson Reuters doesn’t bode well with the university’s interests to be in the list, whether on top or at the bottom. Chinese University was even less diplomatic, refusing to respond to repeated invitations to take part.

For the record, HKU isn’t newcomer when it comes to top university rankings in the past.

This list came out before the nuclear crisis in Japan. With the news that the water in Tokyo is radioactive (no showers and only bottled water) and rolling black outs (to preserve electricity because of the damaged power plants), I'm sure more people will opt to not go to the University of Tokyo.

Hong Kong a hub for education in Asia?

If not then where?

Mumbai U?

Manila U?

Calcutta U?

Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.