The Chronicle of Higher Education - February 10, 2012

lum-development officer for the Hong Kong
Education Bureau, who is sitting in on the
class. It is meant to increase students’ aware-
ness of their society and the world, to broad-
en their knowledge base and expose them to
differing perspectives, and to enhance their
critical-thinking skills. Last year, the gov-
ernment handed out grants of more than
$41,000, to help schools build their liberal-
studies programs.
As part of the day’s lesson, Mr. Li is show-
ing the students snippets of a news docu-
mentary on the demolition of the historic
Star Ferry terminal on Hong Kong’s Victoria
Harbour. The pier was pulled down five years
earlier, before many of these 14- and 15-year-
olds can remember, and between segments of
the film, which features interviews with con-
servation activists, urban planners, and envi-
ronmentalists, he asks the girls to go to the
chalkboard and mark whether or not they
support the destruction. They do, giggling.
At first, nearly all the students indicate
they favor the tear-down, no surprise in a
city in which new construction alters the sky-
line almost daily. But as they hear arguments
about the environmental impact and the pier’s
historic significance, many change their vote.
This pleases Mr. Yiu. “In almost every les-
son,” he says, “we’re trying to get them to see
issues from multiple perspectives.”
Mr. Li leads the class smoothly through a
discussion of conflict and compromise, but
later, over tea and cake, he admits that adjust-
ing to the new coursework hasn’t been easy.
There are no textbooks, and teachers, pulled
from different disciplines, have struggled
to master the subject matter. Mr. Li, whose
background is in biology, regularly exchang-
es tips and lesson plans with other St. Clare’s
faculty and is also working with Mr. Yiu’s
agency on training materials and workshops
for teachers throughout Hong Kong. “We
have had to learn new skills,” he says.
If teachers are uneasy, students and par-
ents appear even more so. More than half the
students surveyed by a Hong Kong educa-
tion-policy group said they were not confi-
dent of doing well in liberal studies. Parents
have thronged question-and-answer sessions
hosted by the Education Bureau and by in-
dividual schools; one cornered Mr. Yiu the
previous weekend at a wedding banquet. The
source of much of the anxiety? How new
questions about liberal studies will affect stu-
dents’ scores on the high-school exit exam.
Hiring for More Than Skill
Uncertainty about Hong Kong’s liber-
al-education reform, and about the coming
changes in the undergraduate curriculum,
have helped drive up applications to British
universities by more than 35 percent. It’s un-
derstandable in a culture where a university
degree is viewed as the final step in a path to-
ward a career and where children are expect-
ed to provide for their parents in old age.
Wang Yu, or David, a third-year Boya Col-
lege student, says his parents “were not ex-
actly excited” when he decided to switch his
major from business English to liberal arts,
questioning what kind of profession such a
degree would lead to. “They’re always wor-
ried about practical problems,” he says.
There’s some irony at play: Students and
parents suspicious about liberal education
cite fears about job prospects, yet it’s busi-
ness leaders who are among the loudest voic-
es for reform.
Jim Leininger is with the Beijing office of
the human-resources-consulting firm Towers
Watson. He recalls one American oil execu-
tive frustrated by the lack of participation by
Chinese employees in brainstorming sessions.
These workers are uncomfortable shouting
out possible solutions, Mr. Leininger told the
man, because they were educated in a system
where “there always is a context where some-
thing is right and something is wrong.”
It’s not just multinational companies that
express concern about graduates’ readiness
for a global work environment. Executives at
Japanese companies complain about gradu-
ates’ poor critical-thinking and problem-
solving skills. “People know their own field,
but once they’re outside it, they don’t know
where to start,” says Keiko Momii, who con-
ducted an employer survey for the country’s
National Institute for Educational Policy Re-
search. That was fine, she says, when com-
panies hired for life, but today’s employees
need to be able to shift jobs and careers.

Commentary: O China’s struggles
to reform higher education yield
lessons for the United States. A29.
Audio: O Reporter Karin Fischer talks
about Asia’s fascination with the liberal
arts, at chronicle.com
versities turning out graduates for a manufac-
turing economy, he asks, when more than 90
percent of the jobs are in the service sector?
Whipping out a dry-erase board—“I have to
use one of these now that I’ve moved into
the educational domain,” he jokes—he enu-
merates the qualities a well-rounded worker
needs to have, such as the capacity to be a
lifelong learner.
“Business people would say there’s some-
thing missing” in current graduates, Mr.
Chung says. “We can train skill, but we need
to hire something more.” If Hong Kong can
revamp its educational system, he predicts,
it can serve as a critical bridge between a
booming China and the rest of the world.
Tapping Into Talent
To help make that happen, Mr. Chung,
who attended Whittier College and Hum-

COURTES Y OF S T. CLARE’S GIRLS’ SCHOOL
In Bruno Li’s classroom at St. Clare’s Girls’ School, in Hong Kong, the curriculum includes a mandatory subject known as liberal studies,
meant to increase students’ awareness of their society and the world. A similar requirement will hit colleges this fall.
boldt State University, both in California,
has brought more than two dozen American
academics with liberal-arts expertise to act
as in-house advisers to Hong Kong univer-
sities, through his support of a special Ful-
bright Grant program.
Many of the efforts at reform tap imported
talent. In addition to the Fulbrighters, Ameri-
can and expat professors populate academ-
ic leadership positions: The provost at City
University of Hong Kong and the vice presi-
dent for academic development at Hong Kong
Polytechnic University are both hires from
the University of California system. Haydn
H.D. Chen, who spent more than two decades
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Cham-
paign, has emphasized liberal education at
Tunghai University, in Taiwan, since becom-
ing president in 2004. The National Univer-
sity of Singapore has turned to Yale faculty
to help start the nation-state’s first residential
liberal-arts college.
David Jaffee didn’t know much about Hong
Kong when he came to spend a Fulbright
year at City University, but as a former assis-
tant vice president for undergraduate studies
at the University of North Florida, he does
know a lot about the liberal arts.
Like others in the program, Mr. Jaffee, a
professor of sociology, organized faculty-
development sessions at Hong Kong’s eight
universities and helped City University vet its
general-education course proposals. In many
ways, he walked away from the experience
impressed. “We tinker with general educa-
tion all the time here, but they were doing it
from the ground up,” he says, by phone from
Florida.
At the same time, he became concerned
that a lack of familiarity with the tenets of
liberal education was leading some institu-
tions and faculty members to construe it very
broadly. Mr. Jaffee recalls a proposal for a
course in computer security. As a straight-
forward primer on the subject, he thought it
should not qualify as general education be-
cause it didn’t delve into wider social and
philosophical issues like the effect of online
piracy on concepts of privacy. But others on
the curriculum panel did not have such ob-
jections: “They’d say, ‘It’s general knowledge
that people should have. It’s in a discipline
not students’ own.’”
At Hong Kong Poly, meanwhile, general
education will have a decidedly practical fla-
vor, with requirements in public speaking,
writing, and leadership and interpersonal
skills. As a largely engineering and science-
oriented university, Poly has historically
had few faculty members in the humanities,
points out Walter W. Yuen, the vice president
for academic development.
Other offerings are more interdisciplinary.
A philosopher, a biologist, and a mechani-
cal engineer at City University, for example,
have teamed up to offer a course on the sci-
ence of kung fu. At the University of Hong
Kong, students can choose among courses
such as “Blood, Beliefs, and Biology,” “Cul-
tural Heritages in the Contemporary World,”
and “Love, Marriage, and Sex in Modern
China.”
Tsz Hin Law is loitering in a City Univer-
sity hallway, waiting to talk with his profes-
sor, Rocío G. Davis, about a general-educa-
tion course he is taking, “Reading and Writ-
ing America,” one of several dozen in a pilot
this year. “Before, I thought America is all
white people,” Mr. Law, who introduces him-
self with the English name Hennessy, says.
But he’s learned about other groups, black,
Hispanic—and Amish. “I did a project on
them, a strange culture,” he says. He has en-
joyed the course, with its nontraditional sub-
Continued on Page A8

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