This small-scale exploratory study identified strategies used by three intellectually very able university students with specific learning difficulties for maintaining motivation on their path to achievement. All three participants were located in Hong Kong. The research questions were: (a) What coping strategies are used by intellectually very able university students with specific learning difficulties? (b) What are the critical influences driving and supporting their motivation to achieve? A narrative inquiry method was used to obtain and analyze data. Two gifted university graduates and one undergraduate, all with specific learning difficulties, were interviewed using a semi-structured questionnaire and open discussion. Data indicated that they developed strategies to cope largely in response to adverse learning environments. The support of significant persons, such as parents and teachers, were also seen to be essential for sustaining their motivation to achieve. Implications for supporting university students with specific learning difficulties are briefly discussed.
[Copyright of Gifted Education International is the property of SAGE Publications]

The objective of this study was to compare dental graduates' perceived preparedness for practice after being educated in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum with those who graduated from a traditional undergraduate curriculum, both at the University of Hong Kong. A cohort of graduates from the traditional dental curriculum (1997-2001) and a cohort of graduates from the PBL curriculum (2004-08) rated their self-perceived preparedness for dental practice in fifty-nine aspects of dentistry across nine domains. Perceived preparedness for dental practice was compared at domain and item levels (accounting for multiple comparisons) using chi-square statistics. Both cohorts felt well prepared for the "bread and butter" aspects of dentistry, but less so for specific specialty disciplines. There was no significant difference between PBL and traditional graduates' self-perceived preparedness in eight of the nine domains of dental practice (P>0.05). However, in the area of orthodontics, both cohorts felt ill-prepared for practice and more so among the PBL cohort (P<0.01). For the most part, regardless of curriculum design, these dental graduates perceived themselves to be well prepared for dental practice.

Under intensified pressures for improving the global competence of university graduates, national governments across different parts of the globe have to on the one hand expand higher education enrolments and on the other hand assure high quality in teaching and research in order to make sure their higher education systems can compete globally. Many Asian states have been in the forefront of this effort to improve national competitiveness by raising their higher education enrolment rate. As state financing and provision alone will not satisfy the growing demands for higher education, governments in Asia adopt more pro-competition policy instruments and increasingly look to the market/private sectors in running higher education. Therefore the private higher education sector has paid for much of the higher education sector expansion, leading to revolutionary changes and imparting a growing 'privateness' to Asian higher education systems. This article sets out in this wider socio-economic context to examine the rise of transnational higher education in three Asian societies: Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. With particular reference to examining how the growing prominence of privateness in higher education has challenged the conventional education governance models, this article critically examines how these Asian states have reinvented their regulatory regimes to govern the growing complexity and highly contested public-private mix in higher education.
[Copyright of Pacific Review is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09512740801990220]

The expansion in the number of people entering higher education has resulted in a substantial increase in the proportion of students enrolling in nontraditional modes, such as part-time study. This study examined the question of whether part-time study curtails the development of the types of intellectual capabilities needed for a knowledge-based economy, because the students would have markedly less exposure to a stimulating campus environment than their full-time counterparts. Graduates from discrete full- and part-time programs from 1 university in Hong Kong completed a survey seeking perceptions of the nurturing of a range of capabilities, together with measures of teacher-student relationships and type of teaching experienced. Two hypotheses were tested by structural equation modeling: (a) the same mechanism for capability development operated for full- and part-time modes and (b) the principal element of the mechanism was the nature of teaching and the quality of teacher-student interaction. Hypothesis 1 was supported because configural invariance between hypothesized models for capability development between the 2 modes was found. Hypothesis 2 was also supported because the models showed that the principal influence on capability development came from teaching for understanding, through promoting active learning experiences and the degree and quality of teacher-student interaction.
[Copyright of Structural Equation Modeling is the property of Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15328007sem1302_6]

In a rapidly changing society, business education needs to likewise change and evolve to remain relevant and useful. This paper looks at the graduates of one university in Hong Kong and examines how well they feel they are prepared for the world of work. Through the analysis of secondary data, an assessment was made of the success or otherwise of the restructuring and redesign of the undergraduate business programme at City University of Hong Kong, in terms of appropriately training students to meet the demands of the market. By comparing the results of an exit survey conducted on four cohorts of final year students, with the Government's recommendations on what tertiary education should achieve in the contemporary knowledge-based society of the twenty-first century, it was found that the new Bachelor of Business Administration programme at City University of Hong Kong, through its formal and informal curricula, appears to have equipped its graduating students with not only solid technical knowledge but also other valuable competencies and life-skills.
[Copyright of Journal of Teaching in International Business is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J066v16n04_04]

The purpose of this study is to identify attributes of public accounting firms that accounting graduates find most desirable in their job selection decisions, and the impacts of individual differences on these perceptions. Factor analysis performed on the responses of 167 final-year accounting students in Hong Kong to a 30-item questionnaire identified seven factors. The results indicate that accounting graduates considered help in finishing their professional accounting examinations and good staff relationships as the most important criteria in their choice of employers. In addition, female accounting graduates were more concerned about the possibility of being required to travel or be transferred, but were less concerned about the reputation and profile (such as the client base and the size) of the firms than their male counterparts. Accounting graduates with a higher grade point average (GPA) were less concerned about the working environment, but more concerned about a firms' reputation and profile than those with a lower GPA. The implications of these results are discussed.
[Copyright of Accounting Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09639280010010452]