The hegemonic wave of neoliberalism in higher education does not eradicate academic freedom in universities one by one. The possibility of resistance necessarily exists within the configuration of contemporary power relations. This study contributes to the theoretical debate on how global neoliberal forces are reproduced with local characteristics by providing a Hong Kong case. Based on interviews with 15 academics, their reactions and responses to a specific research evaluation system in Hong Kong, namely the Research Assessment Exercise 2020, are examined. The findings suggest that academic freedom has survived by adopting different forms of ‘masked resistance’ in the highly performative culture of Hong Kong academia. Such masked acts of resistance include ‘criticisms behind the curtain of conformity’, ‘scepticism and feigned compliance’, ‘cautious acceptance with substantial reservations’, ‘no reaction as an expression of muted dissatisfaction’, and ‘defence without rupture’. The ‘specificity’ of such inconsistent, ambivalent and nuanced responses is discussed by drawing on several local contextual factors: the political–educational culture, the government–institution relationship, and the disciplinary knowledge tradition. This study calls for greater flexibility in assessment regimes to make room for academics’ professional autonomy, which in essence enables, rather than dismantles, accountability in managerial reforms. © International Association of Universities 2021.

Sub-degree education is one of the key higher education sectors in Hong Kong. With the effect of managerialism, tertiary institutions tend to transition from a collegial toward a managerial model, and have shifted from teaching-intensive institutions to research-intensive ones. In this study, two key research questions are addressed: to what degree can managerialism influence organisational change? To what degree and how will an exogenous force generate organisational development? To answer the research questions, we present a case study at Hong Kong College via 15 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with the administrative staff, academic staff, department head, and a visiting scholar. The key research findings identified the difficulties or obstacles experienced in carrying out research or scholarly activities, the long-term impacts on the workplace of staff and sub-degree institutions changing from teaching to research, the advantages of the staff and institutions regarding their working areas in the process of new research directions, and the driving forces for enriching a research culture in sub-degree institutions. Academic and managerial implications are also provided in the paper. Copyright ©2023 Springer.

A considerable body of studies on neoliberalism in higher education has conducted macro-level philosophical analyses regarding the effects of assessment regimes on university management. This article expands the literature by providing an important set of empirical findings pertaining to Hong Kong universities' coping strategies in preparing their academics for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2020). Based on 16 in-depth interviews and document review at two universities in Hong Kong, this study reveals that the institutional preparation for the RAE 2020 can be considered as a multifaceted discourse that complexly interweaves managerialism and academic professionalism. This article further discusses how neoliberal forces, as manifested in the RAE 2020 policy, are locally interpreted, resisted and negotiated as they are shaped by different local contextual factors. The findings indicate the need for greater commitment to academic professionalism in research management and stress the importance of manager-academics' benign and mediating engagement in the coping process. Copyright © 2022 Routledge.

Purpose>This paper aims to examine how Hong Kong universities have responded to a newly included assessment element of socio-economic impact in a government-implemented research evaluation system – Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2020 – within the context of tightening audits and forceful knowledge economy objectives.Design/methodology/approach>This paper reports an institutional case study of the institutional-level response to the RAE 2020 impact requirement at a top-ranked comprehensive university in Hong Kong. A qualitative inquiry approach was adopted. The data sources mainly include university documents related to the RAE 2020 socio-economic impact policy, interview data with nine RAE-eligible academics at the case university, documents on the RAE exercises issued by the University Grants Committee (UGC) and field notes taken during the RAE information sessions.Findings>The institutionalisation process of the RAE socio-economic impact agenda could be considered as establishing an indicator-oriented reward and recognition regime for knowledge transfer and knowledge exchange (KT/KE). Overall, two major institutional strategies were identified in operating the RAE 2020 impact agenda at the case university: (1) launching various policy initiatives: driven by the RAE-defined socio-economic impact; (2) incorporating socio-economic impact into faculty evaluation: premised upon the 16 KT performance indicators laid down by the UGC.Originality/value>This article adds to the theoretical debate on the local reproduction of the global in studies of neoliberalism in higher education by describing a Hong Kong case study, supported by empirical data, of an actual university's responses to the newly included impact requirement in RAE 2020. More specifically, this study reveals that (1) the policy for socio-economic impact might be designed in a neutral or even benevolent manner, but has taken on a neoliberal and managerial dimension in its actual implementation; and (2) the

Objective: In view of the values of individualism and competition embedded in neoliberalism and global capitalism, this paper seeks to illustrate empirically students' instrumentalism in higher education, and to explore how far such instrumentalism could be conceptualized as student alienation. Method: The illustration relies on experiences of community college students from an ethnographic study of students studying in a liberal-arts oriented community college in Hong Kong. The study begun in 2005 to 2006, continued in 2009, and followed up in 2010 to 2011. Eighty-five students in total were recruited and interviewed; 39 of them were interviewed twice. The interviews were analyzed together with the author's observations and participation as a lecturer of that community college. Results: Against an intensely competitive environment, community college students were rather instrumental in their studies. Their alienation was also manifested in the following aspects: being instrumental about their career planning, preferring surface and strategic learning to deep learning in their studies, and being strategic or even manipulative in dealing with their classmates or teachers. Conclusion: This study provides a nuanced analysis of different aspects of student alienation. Student alienation is worrying, not simply because students are not learning what is required for becoming the educated workforce or citizens, but arguably because throughout the course of their studies, students acquire qualities that may make competitive employees for the cruel business world but do not necessarily make caring or critical citizens. Copyright © 2022 SAGE Publications.

In neoliberal contexts, schools are accountable for educational quality, and effectiveness is measured by objective indicators, such as examination scores. Schools tend to become committed to preparing students for examinations rather than all-round and complete personal development, making it difficult for students to identify the meaningful connections between themselves and learning activities, and, in turn, resulting in negative learning experiences. Marxist theorists refer to this condition as alienated learning, that is, the internal contradiction between the learner’s self and learning labour. In contrast, curricular reforms across the globe have promoted a progressive pedagogy that values engaging students in the full range of life experiences in education, enabling them to overcome alienated learning. Yet the effects of curricular reforms are still unclear. The present study sheds light on the extent to which reforms permit students to confront alienated learning. To achieve this aim, the study investigated 44 Hong Kong secondary and undergraduate students with photovoice methods. Its findings suggest that the effects of these curricular reforms are minimal, though they offer opportunities for students to explore their interests. Many students will still experience alienated learning; their interests continue to be subordinated to examinations and even devalued by their schools and teachers. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Favoring individual entrepreneurial freedom and free-market competition, neoliberalism has reshaped the social and discursive practices of higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world. In this paper, I draw on methods from critical multimodal discourse studies and an analytic concept from linguistic anthropology to examine several sets of student service materials circulating on the campus of a Hong Kong university between 2016 and 2017. While these materials are purportedly designed with student welfare in mind, I demonstrate how they effectively position students as (1) consumers of tailored services or experiences provided by the university; and (2) entrepreneurial selves, that is, socio-economically competitive and self-managed young individuals. I conclude by arguing that these service materials are shaped by and espouse a neoliberal governmentality that (re)orients HEIs and their students towards an all-pervasive marketization, competitiveness, and assertion of class privilege in a globalizing, particularly Westernized late capitalist society in Asia. Copyright © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Critical (multimodal) discourse studies of marketing or corporate documents of universities have shown the rapid neoliberalization of higher education and academia around the world. However, little attention has been paid to promotional materials for academic events. This chapter examines posters advertising invited lectures, colloquiums and conferences displayed on the campus of a “top” university in Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong (HKU). The study draws on multimodal discourse studies and social theories of branding to analyze how different discursive components and semiotic placements of the posters create particular social meanings and values for the academic events and/or institutions. It identifies several dominant “tropes of branding” emerging from the displayed posters such as global connection and leadership, hierarchical internationalization with local advantage and interdisciplinarity. It shows how these tropes manifest or resonate with HKU’s more general self-branding enterprise of building itself into “Asia’s Global University”. The chapter concludes by discussing how its findings can deepen our understanding of institutionality in the areas of higher education and academia under the conditions of neoliberalism and globalization. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Operating as a hegemonic, market-driven governmentality, neoliberalism has been colonizing academic institutions and academic professionals’ everyday lives globally. This article demonstrates how several sets of academic event posters displayed at a public Hong Kong university work as spatialized multimodal branding devices that discursively entangle certain types of individuals, activities, institutions, and political economy under a specific mode of neoliberal governmentality. It shows that the posters position the university and its academic units as internationally competitive, Global-North-oriented knowledge enterprises in a mutually shaping relationship with a globalized neoliberal political economy par excellence in Asia. The study signals the need for research on neoliberal academic discourses to pay closer attention to the spatialized, multi-semiotic nature of discursive practices and the multi-layered institutional, politico-economic and cultural contexts in which the neoliberal discourses are situated. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s).

Objective: Educational expansion as a policy is believed to address the issue of the youth's blocked social mobility. But, the argument that the transition to university is emotionally straining in a deindustrialized neoliberal context suggests an emotive aspect of neoliberalism in higher education. This article seeks to offer an illustration of such an emotive operation of neoliberalism through examining the emotional struggles of community-college students in Hong Kong. Method: This study draws on two qualitative analyses based on data collected from 83 community-college students in Hong Kong pursuing a bachelor's degree through a newly available transfer function of an associate degree. Results: Given an emphasis of neoliberalism on individualism and competition, the respondents showed the following negative emotions: perverse feelings of inferiority about the new option, stress about the competitiveness of this pursuit and strategic/calculating in organizing their learning and dealing with their classmates, and anxiety of being seen as inadequate despite their successful transferals. Contributions: The emotional struggles of the respondents suggest that in view of a lack of well-paid prestigious professional or managerial jobs in a deindustrialized capitalist context, educational expansion as a policy—expanding the sector of community college in particular—wrapped up in a neoliberal discourse is not merely giving the youth a false hope but inflicting on them unnecessarily strained emotions. This suggestion urges policy makers to rethink the effectiveness of adopting an educational policy with a neoliberal approach to address an economic issue. Copyright © 2021 SAGE Publications.