Wingki Kwok
Editor-in-Chief

Associate degree programs
No such thing as a quick fix

With the ever increasing demand for talent in our knowledge-based economy, there is growing consensus that mass tertiary education is of vital importance.

Compared with other Asian nations, a relatively small segment of Hong Kong’s population receives a tertiary education. This has urged Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa to announce a bold new objective in his last policy address – namely, to increase university enrollment by 60 percent within the next 10 years. The Hong Kong government made the associate degree a major tool to accomplish this goal, proposing to increase the quota for associate degrees to 30,600 by 2010, according the South China Morning Post.Only 14,000 of the some 36,000 candidates were fortunate enough to proceed on university education this year, although half of them were qualified. At the same time, the number of spots for associate degrees increased by 2.5 times, serving as another door for less qualified candidates. If students in the associate degree programs then prove themselves at that level, they have the opportunity to obtain a bachelor’s degree later on.

To develop the associate degree program, the Hong Kong government has planned to contribute about $20 billion. The value of this program is disputed, however, as many argue that it does not nurture qualified students. It seems that the government, in its attempt to increase the quantity of students, is paying for and supporting a lower quality of students. There are thousands of qualified candidates who received all of the minimum allowable scores the on Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination, but are still denied university admission. At the same time, however, students who achieve just one pass on the HKALE and 10 units on the Hong Kong Certificate Level Examination qualify for an associate degree. There are clearly significant differences in entry requirements between these groups and yet, rather than increase the quota for bachelor’s degree students, the Hong Kong government has expanded the number of spots for associate degrees, effectively supplying more students of a lower quality the opportunity to achieve a higher education.

The government has announced that it will cut university funding by 4 percent in the 2001-to-2004 triennium, but it has still invested a tremendous amount of money on the associate degree program. A likely outcome is the deterioration of the quality of undergraduates and a large group of over-qualified youngsters.Billions of dollars can only increase the number of students receiving higher education, but with no guarantee of quality. It would be useless to merely expand the quotas if we do not have enough qualified students. Therefore, investing in associate degree programs does little to meet the demand for talent in our knowledge-based economy. On the contrary, if the money is used to improve basement education, there will be more qualified candidates for tertiary education. Followed by an expansion of bachelor’s degree quotas, we will have more qualified university students. Even though this would be a very slow process, it would be more credible than the “quick-fix” of achieving mass tertiary education through associate degree programs.