Dr Leung Chi Yuen, Chico
Dr. CY Leung is now a Teaching Fellow of APSS of HKPU. He was once a community social worker working on resident’s organizations and public housing redevelopment issues. He is now teaching community work, macro social work and service learning subjects in the university especially those relating to children poverty in Hong Kong and village poverty in Mainland China. His fields of research interests are varied including hawker and market, urban poverty, social movement, disadvantaged groups, social work education and community work practice. as As a Co-PI, his research team has successfully applied for a RGC Grant research project named, ‘Education For Whom and for What?’ . The research which formally starts on Jan 2016 will access the actual impact of the self-financing sub-degree education on social mobility in Hong Kong.
ABSTRACT Education For Whom and for What? : Examining the Impact of Self-financing Sub-degree Education on Social Mobility of Hong Kong Youth Level of educational attainment of the population is an important indicator of human capital development of modern society especially in what we called the ‘knowledge-based’ one. Education is also commonly assumed to be a legitimate and significant key to advancing one’s social position. As an important social investment that positively associated with the city’s competitiveness, the Hong Kong Government has been spending considerable amount of money in education, accounting for an average of around 20% of annual total public expenditure. Amid the flourishing of degree and sub-degree programs all around the world, Hong Kong’s postsecondary education has expanded much more dramatically. Among the senior secondary school leavers, the government aimed at increasing their post-secondary education opportunities from 33% in 2000 up to 60% in 2010. This target has achieved eventually and mainly, however, only by the introduction of two-year postsecondary sub-degree education, including the higher diploma (HD) programs and the newly developed associated degree (AD) programs, offered by self-financing higher education institutions in Hong Kong. With the increasing chances of educational attainment, social mobility of young people seems to be promising. Has it really been the case? What are the concrete developmental paths of the sub-degree program graduates grown up in a period of ‘credential inflation’ or ‘diploma disease’? Is the self-financing sub-degree education in Hong Kong articulated to degree education, higher employability and income, and thus upward social mobility? What are the actual personal aspirations, family environment, mobility barriers/generators and school life experiences of the students studying sub-degree programs? The research will access the actual impacts of the self-financing sub-degree education on social mobility with the considerations of different underlying and possible intermediated factors including credential inflation, social class and professional qualification. It will bring about theoretical concerns and reflections on the expected right of children and role of education attainment in the pursuit of a more open and equal society particularly in the years witnessing youth activism in Hong Kong. |