There has been a substantial rise in the number of students enrolling in part-time taught postgraduate awards. This study investigates the reasons or motivation for students to spend significant amounts on tutorial fees and find time alongside work, family and social commitments to take a taught postgraduate award. Data were gathered through interviews with 21 part-time students in taught postgraduate programmes in Hong Kong. Students all held several motives for studying, so the outcome was a framework for explaining multiple interacting motives. Main categories of motivation were related to qualifications, current career, potential future career, interest, perpetual students and professional and social networks. Individual students displayed varying degrees of these motivations and the sub-categories of them. Students were able to specify their needs in terms of advanced specialised study, so enrolment satisfied a need for continuing professional development. The rise in taught postgraduate enrolments, in search of advanced specialised knowledge, seems set to continue as undergraduate degrees become broader and more attribute-oriented and the knowledge explosion makes it harder to reach the frontiers of knowledge.
[Copyright of Studies in Continuing Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2011.646979]

A motivational orientation framework for higher education has previously been derived from interviews with 36 undergraduate students in an elite university system. The framework consists of six interacting facets of motivation represented by continua labelled: compliance, individual goal setting, sense of belonging, interest, career and university lifestyle. The aim of this study was to see whether the framework also applied to entrants to a community and vocational college sector, the emergence of which has boosted participation to mass higher education status. Individual interviews were conducted with 25 students in five colleges in Hong Kong. Analysis identified main themes and referenced these against those of the previous study. The data were consistent with the facets of the original framework. A fuller understanding was reached of the less motivated ends of the continua, as these were more commonly displayed than by the undergraduate sample in the previous study. There was evidence of avoidance goals, in the form of fear of failure. Sense of belonging was, in some cases, manifest in a form in which students socialised at the expense of academic work. There was evidence of interest being stifled because of curriculum design problems, as the awards were often not suited as terminal vocational awards, nor led to places in undergraduate degrees. The conclusion was that the motivational orientation framework also applies to the type of students entering mass higher education systems.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070903514062]

Governments are aiming to expand the intake to higher education, so it is important to understand what motivates students to enter university and choose a particular programme. The aim of this study was to see whether a motivational orientation framework, developed to explain motivation to study, could also be applied to motivation to enrol in a selected university programme. Data were collected through individual open interviews with 36 undergraduate students at three universities in Hong Kong. Analysis used a grounded theory approach. The motivational orientation framework consists of six continua, labelled: compliance, individual goal setting, university lifestyle, sense of belonging, career and interest. It was possible to interpret data on decisions to go to university and to pick particular programmes with the framework. Students could be allocated to a position on each continuum, which then characterised their initial motivation for study.
[Copyright of Studies in Higher Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03075070903023510]