Is is a loss of university?

        University is ideally the best place for academic research and study, just like the school Academy founded by Plato as a school of philosophy. Although the history of such schools is very long, the spirit of Socrates’s “love of wisdom” should never vanish. Thus, studying in university itself should be an on-going process of persuit of knowledge, as well as of spiritual and mental enlightenment. Unfortunately, this seems exactly the reverse in Hong Kong. What we have in university, are attendance and grades, piles of loan documents, club activities, and sexual scandal. There are still, of course, excellent students, professors or scholars. However, behind all these few people, there are load of students who spend three years of their life in university, just for the graduation certificate. I would like to point out some facts that contributes to such a situation directly or indirectly from a student’s point of view.

        To study means to learn. The willingness to learn is the key to making good progress in studies. In Hong Kong, many students are persuaded by their surroundings, such as parents, mass media or social norm, to strike for getting in university in order to earn a better living. This is not new saying but the situation is getting worse. Many students who come from pre-job training institutes such as IVE, began to earn good reputation for their competence over university students in certain fields, such as design, films, etc. The loss of confidence towards the value of the graduation certificate makes students perplexed about their future. Apart from this, the decrease in size of job market due to the narrowing down of industries and saturation of supply of university students, also alert students that they might not be able to find a good job even having graduated from university. They are afraid that they would perhaps still be a mere salesman or waitress. Mass media also helps spread the hopelessness of them. The news of doctors find it difficulty to buy estate, or employer is losing their confidence towards university students, or the like, all make students in university or those who are on their way, do not understand whether their original goal can be achieved. They end up giving up and drifting along.

        A seed needs to be farmed in good lands in order to grow strongly. The same logic applies for students. The structure of university curriculum and basic requirement for graduation become another factor that adds to the difficulties. For one thing, there are courses repeating things learnt in secondary schools or even other courses. A student studying in normal secondary school and got a pass in HKALE Use of English should be able to write all kinds of simple essays, regardless of the genre. Now students are required to learn the basic paragraphing skills, or article structure again, not for a short revision, but the whole semester. Another example, one might have learnt basic programming in course A, or during secondary school when preparing for HKALE computer application exam. Now he wanted to get into course C, but that course requires him to finish in advance course B , which teach things that are basically the same as course A or that from HKALE. All these messy curriculum design drives students crazy and make them frustrated for having too many mandatory courses, which he might not need to study. Those courses that are designed to imitate liberal studies are especially good example to show such problems. I have heard from many other students complaining the redundancy of such courses, yelling these extra courses which have nothing to do with their major is draining their patience, energy and time. Worrying about their grades or GPA, they turn out to choose all courses with nice professors that give an easy grade, or courses that require less workload due to the lack of content of the course itself.

        Whether or not there is any need to provide students with such courses is still debatable. The reason or intensity of willingness of students studying in university is much diverse than those aforementioned. Still, universities in Hong Kong are competent and ranked very high among the rest of the world. However, the truth is, most of the university students do not care. They only care about jobs, and fun.