Beginning in 1995, the Hong Kong University Grants Committee (UGC) embarked on a programme of Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPRs) to gauge institutional commitment to assuring and improving educational quality. While rooted in academic audit principles, the reviews covered more aspects of education quality work than was typical in earlier audit implementations elsewhere. The paper describes the dynamics of the TLQPR process, presents examples of good and bad practices unearthed during the site visits, and reports on an external consultant's ex-post review of the exercise. It concludes by discussing lessons learned from the TLQPR experience and the way forward toward a second round of reviews.
[Copyright of Quality in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13538320120045067]

Globalisation is a central concept in this paper but it is important to note that 'globalisation' is a highly contested term. Strong globalisation theory argues that the global economy is dominated by uncontrollable global forces in which nation states are structurally constrained and therefore the capacity of modern states eventually declines. Unlike strong globalists, other scholars believe even though there may be similar trends and patterns in public policy and public management domain along the line of privatisation, marketisation, commodification and corporatisation, different governments may use the similar strategies to serve their own political purposes. Hence, modern states may tactically make use of the globalisation discourse to justify their own political agendas or legitimise their inaction. The present paper sets out in this wider context to reflect upon globalisation effects on national policy, with particular reference to how the selected East Asian societies such as the four Tigers, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea as well as mainland China have transformed their higher education systems. More specifically, this paper discusses the theme of 'similar trends, diverse agendas' by examining how the selected East Asian governments have reformed their higher education systems to cope with the growing impact of the global tide of marketisation and decentralisation.
[Copyright of Globalisation, Societies & Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1476772032000105519]

University entrepreneurialism has been adopted as a way of promoting quality education in Hong Kong. In light of the role of the state in Hong Kong's changing higher education governance, this article critically reviews the rationale for privatising and corporatising the university sector. With a focus on the current trends of privatisation and corporatisation, the article discusses and examines how the entrepreneurial culture has changed university governance in Hong Kong and whether these changes have boosted Hong Kong's academic diversity, particularly when the Hong Kong government has set as its vision the promotion of the city as a regional hub of higher education.
[Copyright of Asia Pacific Journal of Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188790701591543]

A revised version of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory was used to examine the relation of study strategies with academic performance of 100 Hong Kong university students. Analysis indicated the high academic-achieving group differed significantly from the low academic-achieving group in terms of intrinsic disposition factors of motivation, scheduling, concentration, and selecting main ideas.
[Reproduced with permission of author(s) and publisher from: Yip, M. C. W., & Chung, O. L. L. Relation of study strategies to the academic performance of Hong Kong university students. Psychological Reports, 2002, 90 338-340. © Psychological Reports 2002 Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://ammonsscientific.com/link.php?N=5937]

University education has been thrust into the limelight by policymakers in Hong Kong and Singapore in recent years. Reforming university education thus has become a norm for both city-states. This article reviews and compares some recent developments in the university reforms in both city-states. It argues university education, as a public policy area, is not immune from the profound influence of such concepts as accountability, performativity, quality assurance and market relevance, which prevail in a wider policy context of public sector reforms and governance changes. Hong Kong and Singapore's university reforms are similarly extensive, ranging from the admission mechanisms through to the governance and funding systems. This article has four main sections. The first sketches a paradigm shift in the policymaking process and the changing state-university relationships in the age of globalization. The second reviews and compares some recent developments of the university reforms in both city-states. The third turns to assess the impacts of the reforms on university stakeholders. The final section is the conclusion.
[Copyright of Higher Education Research & Development is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0729436032000083625]

As staff developmental initiatives become increasingly common in educational institutions, the evaluation of such programmes may need careful consideration. This paper describes a staff developmental initiative in which a one-on-one mentoring service was offered as part of a funded staff development project entitled 'Effective English Communication for Teaching and Research' (EECTR). EECTR provides language support to all academic staff in a Hong Kong university. The mentoring sessions typically require a discussion of the nature of academic writing. For evaluation purposes, feedback was collected through various questionnaires which indicated that the EECTR mentoring had been a fairly successful programme. However, these traditional measures could not tell the stakeholders the impact of the mentoring process on individual clients. Thus two additional measures were taken. First, three in-depth case studies were undertaken to ascertain how individuals saw the impact of mentoring. Additionally, interviews with clients were also conducted over a two-year period. With support from the data, this paper demonstrates how multiple measures of evaluation provided an opportunity to see the dynamic interaction between general perceptions of impact and individual learning within a programme.
[Copyright of Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0260293022000001373]