University rivalry - an unaffordable luxury.

(From South China Morning Post)

While I have every sympathy with Michael Share's description of the department of history at the University of Hong Kong ("Vanishing faculty", November 19), universities in Hong Kong are only now starting to catch up with the level of funding cuts and restructuring that Australia has experienced in the past eight years and Britain has had since the Thatcher years.

The stark reality is that the "traditional" (read elitist) university system is no longer viable now that a first degree is a prerequisite for most jobs; where lifelong learning is a necessity, not a leisure time pursuit. Mass undergraduate education is just too expensive to support without extensive restructuring.

Dr Share laments that some students may have to go to Chinese University, but is this a bad thing? Perhaps it is time to consider the unthinkable and exchange credits between universities, or share courses or rationalise departments so that we have just one, excellent, department of history. The rivalry between the universities, encouraged by the University Grants Committee, is a luxury Hong Kong cannot afford. Let alone eight separate ...