Bulletin Spring‧Summer 1980

Higher Education in Hong Kong N o w having made these broad observations about developments in this unique historic period, let me say a couple of things by way of application. On Hong Kong——let me say once again that I come here as an occasional visitor and know far less about the situation here than you do——it does seem, looking at the world-wide experience, that here you have a high quality of post-secondary education, that on a quantitative basis it is much more restricted than one would expect for a very dynamic and increasingly complex economy competing with countries around the world. It is almost unbelievable that you would have as low a proportion of your young people in post-secondary education as you do and still be able to keep up your rate of advance. N o w you do have developing here a certain number of private institutions filling in some of the gaps. You also have a fairly large number of your students, and very able students, going abroad. In the United States we have in our colleges and universities about as many students from Hong Kong as you have in your two universities put together. Of all of our students from abroad, about 5% of them come from Hong Kong, which is a city and not a country. In terms of representation in our student body in the United States, the fifth largest group is students from Hong Kong. And so I would raise as a question for your future planning whether it might not be wise, for the future of the Hong Kong economy, for there to be more places here in post-secondary education, which would also be desirable from the point of view of your young people, giving them the maximum opportunity. I particularly argue perhaps for the introduction of some one- or two-year programmes and community colleges. Second Explosion in Higher Education A second observation is about China. When I had the opportunity to lead an American delegation to study education work in China, we were given their statistics. I think the greatest thing that is going to be happening in the next generation or two in education, looked upon on a world-wide basis, would be the explosion of post-secondary education in China. The great explosion around the total world after 1945 bypassed Mainland China, and forthcoming is the second great explosion—a tremendous explosion as they modernize. I think it is a cautious, conservative estimate that, as Mainland China modernizes—— whether by the year 2000 as they hope or not——and I rather do not think that can be done—the system of higher education in a nation with a billion people, about a third of the world's population will have to be expanded ten times over in the course of the process of modernization. And this will be the most important thing happening, the biggest thing happening to higher education around the world in the foreseeable future. Then just one additional comment: Plato a long time ago said, according to the Jowett translation at least, that the wheel of education, once set in motion, moves in an ever faster pace. Historically this has not been true. It moved at a slower pace in the Dark Ages in Europe, but it speeded up enormously after World War II around a good deal of the world, and now enormously in Mainland China. But it seems to me that what Plato said 2500 years ago is particularly true to the modern situation, that the wheel of education will be moving faster and faster, and that higher education, despite a certain decline in many countries in the world (as in the United States at the present time), does face an expanding future almost of necessity, in at least two ways. As the expectations of people for the quality of their lives go up, one of the best ways of improving the quality of life is by getting more education and on a lifetime basis. And soon with the new electronics there is going to be a real revolution in the access of people to all the knowledge of the world. By the end of this century there will be, up in the satellites and available to most human beings around the world, any time day or night if they want it, nearly all the knowledge of the world. Also, in terms of the increasing role of education especially advanced education, in the lives of the world, one of the main ways in which society now evolves is through higher skills and new knowledge, and higher education is at the very centre of the evolution of society, by providing these higher skills and new knowledge. So I have as m y title ‘Higher Education: More Limited Horizons?', I might as well end by saying that, at the moment in most countries around the world, as in the United States, we are facing at least a steady state for higher education, no more growth, perhaps some decline (it will be some decline in the United States), but that in the long run I really cannot envisage the world, with technology becoming more complex, the social institutions becoming more complex, and yet with higher education being able to avoid becoming of increasing importance in societies all over the world; and that we are facing now a future in which Plato's rule that the wheel of education moves faster and faster will once again be true for as far ahead as anyone can see. 9