‘These are not the best students’: continuing education, transnationalisation and Hong Kong's young adult ‘educational non-elite’

Abstract

This paper examines the under-explored relationship between young people's transitions to higher education (HE) and the opportunities afforded by transnational education (TNE) programmes, with a focus on understanding the contemporary situation in Hong Kong. A fascinating association has developed, over the past decade, between the expansion of TNE in the territory and the government's commitment to providing ‘continuing education’. We explore what this relationship might mean for the young people directly affected by these new opportunities, by drawing on 70 in-depth interviews with students/graduates. Our sample is, what Brinton [2011. Lost in Transition: Youth, Work, and Instability in Postindustrial Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press] has termed (in another context), Hong Kong's ‘educational non-elite’. We ask: how does this ‘non-elite’ negotiate the shifting terrains of educational provision in an era where credentials (particularly at degree-level) are seen as ‘everything’? Our paper contributes directly to discussions around young people and (international) education, and considers frankly the specific role that transnational HE plays in the education/employment transition of thousands of (hitherto neglected) individuals in contemporary Hong Kong.

Keywords:

• transnational higher education
• young people
• Hong Kong
• continuing education

Notes

1. TNE is defined here as programmes ‘in which learners are located in a country other than the one in which the awarding institution is based’ (McBurnie and Ziguras 2007, 21).

2. SCOPE stands for ‘School of Continuing and Professional Education’; SPACE is ‘School of Professional and Continuing Education’ and SPEED is ‘School of Professional Education and Executive Development’.

3. We gratefully acknowledge the generous financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK and the Research Grants Council in Hong Kong (RES-000-22-3000). We also acknowledge the work of Yutin Ki, who conducted many of the interviews for this project.

4. The translation was carried out by our research assistant and double-checked by one of the researchers.

5. Before 2012 and the introduction of the new secondary education certificate, the HKCEE (taken at age 15–16 – Form 5) and the HKAL (taken at age 17–18 – Form 7) determined university entrance in Hong Kong.