Social capital accrued via cross-racial/ethnic networks plays an important role in the adjustment, persistence and success for minority groups of university students. Yet, few studies offered insight into how intercultural social capital impacts learning and socialising experiences among minority students in non-Western contexts. Drawing on interviews with minority university students in Hong Kong, this study canvassed their intercultural networking, its influences and institutional factors that conditioned its accessibility. Findings showed that participants garnered a full array of social capital in ethnic minority cliques, whereas their connections with institutional agents were more inclined to pastoral care rather than academic advising and mentor services. This study unearthed a campus environment wherein a monolithic Chinese/Cantonese culture and de facto racial/ethnic-segregation contributed to their restricted academic/social engagements with other counterparts and added to the manifestations of marginalisation in the literature that has been preoccupied with racial lines around the Black-White binary in Western contexts. Copyright © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

The extant literature on parental involvement in the university choice process sheds light on the positive impact of parents' social capital on enrolment. Little research captures the complex dynamics of parental social capital that might within certain sociocultural and economic contexts compound the effects on university choice and access. This study contributes insight to address this gap, from the context of Hong Kong. It administered a questionnaire survey to 139 students and examined the role of parental social capital in students' university aspirations. Moderated multiple regression analysis and simple slope analysis revealed that parent-student involvement – a main composite of parental social capital – weakened rather than strengthened the effect of parents' cultural capital on the students' educational aspirations. This study cautions us against a context-independent stance towards the value of parental social capital and warrants future research and policy work on how to optimise parental involvement in education. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis.

Empirical studies on university choice and access among under-represented racial/ethnic minorities have utilised the concept of school-based social capital (SBSC)–defined by Stanton-Salazar as key resources and support provided by institutional agents (i.e. teachers, counsellors and other staff). They primarily relied upon minority students’ perceptions. Few of them canvassed both staff and student understandings and experiences of SBSC and thus have not yet captured the nature of SBSC and its influence from both the supply and demand sides. This study interviewed 18 secondary school teachers and nine minority students of South/Southeast Asian ethnicity enrolled in a publicly-funded school of Hong Kong. Its findings shed light on the highly-valued school-based support and resources staff and students viewed as helpful in the university choice process. The findings also disclosed the challenges minority students expressed about being exposed to SBSC while living in the school community, characterised by an ethos of “treating everybody the same”. This in turn rationalised staff understanding of diversity and equity-based support as a transitional approach to mainstreaming/assimilating minority students. As a result, some staff members either withheld critical information on university admission requirements or were less responsive towards the needs of the most disadvantaged minority students, despite a presumable promise to envision university for all. This study calls for structural and institutional transformation so that both individual and collective efforts can empower the least advantaged and promote their university choice and access. Copyright © 2023 Educational Review.

With the intensification of globalization and its international competitiveness as a key benchmark, universities are under pressure to increase their social and economic growth while remaining sustainable. ‘institutional brand, ' the way how an institution presents itself to the public, is a valuable asset for higher education sustainability. Through multiple case study methodology, this research showcases Hong Kong universities institutional brand-building processes to achieve their regional and global standing. It is argued that Hong Kong universities often spell out their branding strategies and persuade and push their staff adhere to intuitional vision and mission, with the hope that such an identification with the institutional brand will lead to corporate sustainability. Copyright © 2022 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Despite national policies, de facto school segregation for racial/ethnic minority students in the West and East has continued to deepen. In Hong Kong, the segregated school system was abolished in 2013, while from 2004 reformed School Places Allocation Systems encouraged minority students to choose mainstream primary and secondary schools. However, de facto ethnicity-based school segregation continues to prevail. Most minority students in the mainstream system are stuck in low-status schools where they face discrimination and institutional exclusion. This has led many of them to retreat to a limited number of schools that have traditionally catered for minority communities. Such segregation calls forth scholarly attention to the paradoxical correlation between the physical mixing of diverse students and equality of educational opportunity, especially equal access to post-secondary education (PSE)—a key for minority youth to function in the competitive labour market. This study employed the theory of school-based social capital (SBSC) and compared the ways in which PSE-relevant institutional resources and support were rationalised and enacted by staff in de facto segregated and desegregated school contexts. Case studies of two secondary schools lead us to argue that desegregation is only effective when institutional structure, culture and agents empower minority students through access to instrumental resources and support for the pursuit of PSE. The findings confound the desegregation policy and call for structural/institutional interventions to ensure instrumental SBSC is accessible to PSE-bound minority students in all schools, and thus increase the effectiveness of school desegregation. Copyright © 2023 British Educational Research Association.

Tertiary education in Hong Kong has a long history. In 1911, The University of Hong Kong was the first university to be founded. The enrollment of tertiary education in Hong Kong after the Second World War was considered elite-type. The participation rate increased to 18% for first-degree courses, an expansion of approximately 50% in the undergraduate student population, during the early 1990s. Over time, it has changed from elitist to mass-type tertiary education. Another essential development of Hong Kong’s tertiary education system was a past Chief Executive announcement in 2000 to double the number of students participating in tertiary education up to 60% within ten years. This chapter aims to look historically at the development of tertiary education in Hong Kong and the impact of internationalization on its universalization. It also analyzes the problems in processes and discusses the sustainable development of tertiary education in Hong Kong this century. Copyright © 2022 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Ethnic minority students—often descendants of earlier waves of immigrants from neighbouring South and Southeast Asian countries—have been under-represented in enrolment in higher education in Hong Kong. In addressing low university/college-enrolment, traditionally under-represented students’ family and community are considered deficit and under-resourced, and their inherent values and strengths remain unrecognised and less-explored. This study employed the community cultural wealth framework to highlight the various forms of capital existing within the families and communities of 15 South/Southeast Asian university students that had allowed them to navigate university predisposition, search and choice processes. The findings of this study unveil the diversity and richness of capital within non-dominant communities that have limited access to capital, normalised within hegemonic and oppressive educational institutions and call for researchers and educators to legitimise and utilise the community resources for widening university attendance. Copyright © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This edited book highlights the identities and practices of ethnically diverse families and schools in contexts where multicultural policies are not always a priority. In an era of globalization and ensuing population mobility, it places a focus on Asia-Pacific, a continent with diverse customs, populations, and languages, but grapples with what it might mean to be multicultural.The book features studies and frameworks that illustrate how minoritized communities engage with the diversity they live in and strategies in adjusting and adapting to their sociocultural environments, including practices that might support these efforts. This book represents initiatives and interdisciplinary scholarship from Japan, Hong Kong, mainland China, Australia, South Korea, Thailand, and Taiwan, which underscore the intersection of identities, cultural values, efforts, conflicts, and religions in making diversity work in their contexts. Collectively, these works make a unique contribution by invigorating debates on the flows and evolvement of cultural values and practices within and across families and institutions.This book will appeal to researchers, practitioners, and readers with interest in the current state of cultural diversity among minoritized families in Asia-Pacific and beyond. Copyright © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Jan Gube, Fang Gao and Miron Bhowmik; individual chapters, the contributors.

Using multicultural education as a lens, this article details the discursive formation of Hong Kong’s linguistic landscape with a focus on policy arrangements around teaching Chinese as a second language for non-Chinese ethnic minorities since the early 2000s. We pose two research questions: What are the identifiable policy trends in education for ethnic minorities? And how effective are the policy provisions in managing diversity and social justice for ethnic minorities in Hong Kong? The study draws upon documentary analysis to review existing local literature, which highlight the school admission, curriculum design, language teachers’ professional development practices, and assessment pertaining to the education of ethnic minority students. Our analysis reveals a narrow concentration of policies that focus exclusively on supporting ethnic minority students’ Chinese language learning regarded as the barrier to their advancement in education and an omission of other nonlinguistic, structural and ideological challenges and barriers. This barrier contributes to prejudices in school access, curriculum and assessment that function within an assimilationist integration framework. We call for policy measures that broaden the focus of multicultural education for ethnic minorities and that seek to manage ethnolinguistic diversity for equal citizenship rights in the Asian context. Copyright © 2020 Fang Gao, Jan Gube.

The evolution of globalisation and ensuing internationalisation of higher education need radical reform of institutional policies and practices to promote education for diversity, equity and inclusion. Extant literature on university/college student persistence/retention witnesses a lack of research on the subjective sense of belonging on campus among ethnic minoritised students who have been historically marginalised in higher education and are now part of the emerging demographic on campus. This study attempted to fill the gap. Engaging qualitative individual interviews with 12 university students of South/Southeast Asian ethnicity in Hong Kong, the purpose of this study was to examine their perceptions and experiences of institutional affiliations and engagement in university. Findings suggested that being connected to the programme and university, and the depth and quality of intragroup dynamics, are key to a sense of belonging among ethnic minority students. Findings also elucidated a lack of cross‐cultural interaction and racial/ethnic diversity within the university environment, which shaped participants’ feelings of isolation and exclusionary experiences as they sought to adjust to the campus academically and socially. The study’s findings could help inform the development and evaluation of institutional strategies that can sustain minoritised students in university transitions and promote institutional connectedness and academic success among all students on campus. Copyright © 2021 British Educational Research Association