Publication pressure is perceived to be filtering down into doctoral education worldwide. We explore the causes and effects of the perceived centrality of publishing among doctoral students, emphasising the impact of publication pressure on students’ identity trajectories. We draw on a qualitative analysis of 90 mainland Chinese doctoral students at universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. We find that the credentialisation of publications in the increasingly competitive and publication-dominant academic labour market results in publishing-centred doctoral journeys. Our key finding is that the centrality of publishing affects every aspect of identity trajectory development: it causes doctoral students to commodify knowledge production, devalues coursework, conference participation, and teaching assistantships, encourages students to regard their supervisors as publishing facilitators and their peers as rivals rather than collaborators, and marginalises engagement with external stakeholders. In discussing these dimensions, we emphasise the need for a more comprehensive evaluation of candidates’ abilities and honours in academic recruitment and call for policies to curtail the overemphasis on research output in academic evaluations. © 2022 Society for Research into Higher Education.

Undergraduate research (UR) is regarded as an impactful instructional practice, but implementing it in the curriculum is challenging. Faculty members' approaches to the design of UR are under-explored due to the scarcity of studies that situate practices in both the curricular contexts and the concept of the research-teaching nexus. This multiple-case study investigated faculty members' approaches to UR in four curricula in two research-intensive universities in Hong Kong. Document review and semi-structured interviews revealed five approaches to UR: project-based, process-based, lab-based, scenario-based, and research community-based approaches. Particularly, the scenario-based and research community-based approaches complemented the current typologies. Another contribution of this study is the identification of nuanced differences in the adoption of the approaches. Faculty members perceiving reciprocal research-teaching nexus at both departmental and personal levels, and viewing UR holistically, tended to connect students with their own research experiences. In contrast, those who only acknowledged the research-teaching nexus at a departmental level were unlikely to create such a connection. Meanwhile, concerns over curricular coherence and ethics were also discussed. The implications include creating a more transparent process of curriculum design and facilitating students' understanding of their contributions to the research community. It would also be useful to engage faculty members more fully in curriculum planning to enhance the coherence of students' research experiences. Copyright © 2023 Taylor & Francis.

The impact of neoliberalism in higher education has been widely discussed and debated, yet most analyses have viewed the changes on university governance and academic work in different countries as slavishly bound by more global neoliberal factors without paying sufficient attention to the local contextual factors. This empirical study foregrounds the local dimension by examining how the actual quotidian effects of RAE 2020 operate within higher education institutions and on working academics in Hong Kong. The paper reports on an interview-based study with 15 education academics from two government-funded universities in Hong Kong. Neoliberal forms of university governance based on a set of RAE-defined performance indicators were identified; academics’ divergent forms of ‘practice of freedom’ in coping with RAE 2020 were delineated. This study discusses why the universities displayed strong ‘reactivity’ to RAE 2020 and explains academics’ practicality and resilience in coping with policy changes by drawing upon Hong Kong's colonial history, government-university relationship and institutional culture in the specific academic environment. This article calls for greater flexibility in assessment regimes to restore trust and autonomy to the professions and development of alternative patterns of academic prestige to elicit a healthy diversity of policy responses. Copyright © 2022 Taylor & Francis.

Amongst all jurisdictions, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China has been one of the most effective in limiting cases of COVID-19, despite being one of the first places to be affected by the pandemic in early 2020. In the months since the first case was confirmed, COVID-19 has affected all aspects of Hong Kong society, including the higher education sector. In this collective reflective essay, we describe the effects of these unexpected external events on academics' lives and the responses of higher education institutions. Specifically, we address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on academics, their professional relationships, institutional frameworks, and Hong Kong's higher education sector as a whole. We conclude that the most significant effect of the pandemic is uncertainty, together with new realities expressed in sayings such as 'living with Zoom, learning from webinars'; 'you will be informed "in due course"', stay calm "until further notice"'; and 'people are stuck, but business is on steroids'. The essay further describes a three-pronged institutional reaction to the pandemic, focused on control, support, and positioning. It concludes with critical views on the way 'useful' knowledge in today's higher education is defined and how concepts and practices have been challenged during the pandemic. Copyright © 2021 Routledge.

Realizing the growing importance of universities in Knowledge Transfer and innovation-centric entrepreneurship, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) actively encourages government-funded universities in Hong Kong to work with the market and industry, as well as wider society to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship. This article aims to examine the changing university governance in Hong Kong particularly when universities go beyond the academia to work with industries and businesses to promote innovation-centric entrepreneurialism. It begins with a conceptual framework for analyzing multiple sectoral collaborations for entrepreneurship with a focus on the role of universities. It will discuss how the HKSAR copes with the main challenges of university governance by adopting policies and measures to creating a hybridized ecosystem so as to embrace cross-sectoral collaborations. The article concludes by critical reflections on changing university governance in Hong Kong when responding to the quest for entrepreneurial universities.
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Across East and Southeast Asia, the International Baccalaureate (IB) is expanding and diversifying. More students from affluent families are 'opting out' of mainstream schooling to take the IB's Diploma Programme (DP), which is marketed as a distinctive skill-based education that prepares students for university. This research investigated how DP alumni reflect on their educational experiences in developing cognitive and non-cognitive skills and as preparation for elite universities in Hong Kong. An online undergraduate survey (n = 734) found that DP alumni self-perceived higher capacities than non-DP alumni in communication, creativity, critical thinking, cultural sensitivity, global-mindedness, leadership, and time management. In interviews (n = 42), DP alumni perceived the DP as a privileged educational experience that 'worked' in developing cognitive and non-cognitive skills. The DP alumni were overall positive about their DP experiences in developing skills for university preparation. However, there were complexities as the DP alumni also perceived that students from mainstream schools were often better prepared for pedagogy and assessments in the context of higher education in Hong Kong. Copyright © 2020 Society for Research into Higher Education.

Using the invariance test, this study compared the research experiences of students from two sibling cultural groups in a Hong Kong context. Data were collected from 304 Mainland Chinese and 225 local Hong Kong research students. Their research experiences were measured using the Student Research Experience Questionnaire (SREQ) (Supervision, Infrastructure, Intellectual and Social Climate, Generic Skill, and Overall Satisfaction) and two scales developed from previous studies on research students in Hong Kong (Peer Support and Communication with Supervisor). The data supported the construct validity and consistency of all the scales and the measurement equivalence of all measurements except Intellectual and Social Climate. The data showed that Mainland Chinese students had significantly higher satisfaction with Infrastructure, and marginally higher satisfaction with Supervision, Communication with Supervisors, and Peer Support than local Hong Kong students. The invariance tests on path coefficients indicated that there was a nonsignificant difference in the path models of the two groups.
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This study explores how master's students perceive their learning experiences and build their identities as postgraduate learners. It also investigates how these students' perceptions affect their aspirations regarding academic careers. By applying the Community of Practice (CoP) framework, this study focuses on three dimensions of master's students' experience; community, practice and identity. Seventy master's students from one research-intensive university in Hong Kong were interviewed regarding motivations for doing a master's degree and reflections on learning. The interview results showed that master's students build their communities partly around shared academic interests. However, the boundaries of these communities are loose and flexible, due to the nature of master's programmes with their short periods of study and large numbers of part-time students. The study also showed how master's students develop their knowledge and skills through doing research and how they evaluate the prospect of becoming an academic.
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Existing research on the psychological and academic experiences of China-born students studying outside of China has mainly been conducted in Western English-speaking countries. Using a coping resources framework, we investigated the predictors of psychological and academic adaptation of 2,201 mainland Chinese students (74% female) studying in universities in Hong Kong, China’s Special Administrative Region and a former British colony. We found that academic self-efficacy, social support, and low levels of perceived discrimination predicted both psychological and academic adaptation. Language competence in English and the local dialect Cantonese was found to be additional factors in mainland Chinese students’ academic adaptation. Implications for future research and higher education policies and practices are discussed. Copyright © 2019 Society for Research into Higher Education.

Despite considerable research in the higher education literature exploring the substantial values of eLearning and collaborative learning as distinct practices, few empirical studies have yet addressed the need for an integrated approach toward implementing eLearning and collaborative learning practices in a professional education development context. This paper documents a successful three-year project case entitled, Corpcommsynergy, which integrates eLearning and collaborative approaches in an e-platform implemented in undergraduate and postgraduate corporate communication courses at a Hong Kong university. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative content analysis methods to investigate how learners perceive this integrated approach and identified significant factors influencing their learning experience. Results suggested high feasibility and effectiveness of designing and implementing Corpcommsynergy and identified two significant factors: (1) design and facilitation of online courses; and (2) perception and participation of students affecting the effectiveness of collaborative eLearning.
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