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.

This study aims to develop and validate a strength-based instrument for assessing the academic advising needs of university students in Hong Kong using the Appreciative Advising Inventory (AAI) as a blueprint. We reviewed the content validity and cultural relevance of the AAI and developed a 37-item AAI Hong Kong Version (AAI-HK). We conducted Rasch analysis and principal component analysis. The AAI-HK has four stable and reliable factors (social competence and support; positive identity and participation; positive values; and commitment to learning and study), which represent key strengths of university students. Four AAI-HK subscales demonstrate good reliability. We found significant differences in AAI-HK scores between students who are under academic probation or not and between students who are local or nonlocal. Copyright © 2021 NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising, Inc.

Each year in Hong Kong, only about 50% of Secondary Five students (age 16+) can pass the Hong Kong Certificate of Education (HKCEE), which is the threshold qualification for any further pursuit of education or employment. There has been concern for those who did not survive conventional schooling. Recent studies on education have increasingly emphasized life-long learning in the community. For students to be able to continue learning throughout their life, the development of appropriate generic skills is believed to be vital. An innovative continuing education programme known as Project Yi Jin (PYJ) was introduced by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government for those students who failed in the HKCEE. PYJ provides an alternative pathway for students to obtain a formal qualification equivalent to HKCEE. Instead of using the mainstream curriculum for secondary school, PYJ adopts a holistic approach in curriculum design, aiming at developing students’ generic skills. It is expected that students will acquire and develop certain skills that are generic enough to enable them to cope with personal, social and career development. A total of 2,806 students who attended PYJ responded to 13 survey items about their generic skills before PYJ (Time 1) and 13 parallel items after PYJ (Time 2). Principal components analysis found three dimensions of generic skills, viz., Cognitive, Academic, and Affective dimensions before PYJ and three parallel dimensions after PYJ. Repeated-measures analysis of variance found that the students scored significantly higher in each of the three dimensions in Time 2 than in Time 1. There was evidence of enhanced generic skills through PYJ. Whereas there was support for the effectiveness of PYJ, the findings also call for attention to the importance of generic skills in the curriculum of primary and secondary schools.

The article presents case studies showing student design agencies' potential as sustainable models for the transfer of creative knowledge and skills from academic institutions to the wider community, the findings from which were used in developing the structure of Young Artists Agency of Hong Kong's Academy of Visual Arts. Topics include the benefits of the student agency for the institution, clients and students and the student agency set up by Germany's Bauhaus-University Weimar in 1996.
[Copyright of Gateways (Sydney) is the property of University of Technology, Sydney & UTSePress. Full article may be available at the publisher's website:
http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/ijcre]

社會的急劇變化以及香港特別行政區的成立令高質素的人力資源需求激增。大學作為提供高等教育的主要基地，肩負著滿足二十一世紀社會需求的重要任務。可惜，隨著高等教育機會不斷增加，近年來大學畢業生的水平卻頻頻受到質疑。本文研究產生這些批評的原因並介紹一個名為「才能拓展計劃」的全面的領袖培訓計劃。這個簡稱「才展」的計劃是香港大學多個培訓優秀大學生迎接二千紀元新挑戰的項目之一。本文簡介「才展」的目的與建構並且總結一些經驗，擺出一些事實，並嘗試作一個尚未成熟的評價。
The rapid changes taking place in the society and the establishment of the Special Administrative Region have created huge demand in high quality human resources in Hong Kong. As major providers of higher education in Hong Kong, universities have the responsibilities to close the gap between the needs of the 21st century and the higher education. The standard of university graduates, however, has been severely criticised with the expansion of higher education. This article investigates the rationale behind such adverse comments and introduces a comprehensive leadership training programme named the Intensified Learning Opportunity Programme or ILOP in short. ILOP is one of the projects which the University of Hong Kong has devised to ensure that crops of outstanding graduates will be developed to meet the challenges of the new millennium. The vision and the construct of the programme as well as a pre-mature review and evaluation of the programme are also presented.
[Copyright of Journal of Youth Studies is the property of The Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups at http://yrc.hkfyg.org.hk/]