• Shortage of spots in Hong Kong education system - Waiting List of 2- 3 Years at the International Schools -  2012 March   RTHK News

To get ahead, and stay young, we need to continue to stretch our mind with additional knowledge.   Education is one way to stay ahead of the pack.  Even for adults.

• To land at a good school overseas
• How to Get into Harvard
• Elite university offer Courses in Life for Rich Children

Education is one of the cornerstones of most Asian's life.   Education and Family are core values and fundamental to Confucian philosophy.   As a result we have saved a number of articles relating to this.

• "It is mainly due to pressure to do well in a test that will decide their lives forever" -  Education Ministry of Korea

• "The Exam is seen so important that Asian parents pray for their children"

Overseas study still seen as smart move

Hong Kong parents are eager to send their children to education institutes overseas despite the stronger euro and the pound, according to a placement agency.

The credentials evaluation director of a private company promoting overseas studies said there was a 15 percent increase in inquiries this year, compared with the same period last year.

Ken Ng Chung-lai of the International Student Services Center Corporation also said that more parents now seem to prefer Britain or Canada to the United States. "Probably, Hong Kongers are wealthier ... perhaps it is related to the better economy," Ng said.

He said it appears the US may not be the top choice in the wake of several school shootings. Ng said 40 percent of students sent overseas by his company went to Canada, 30 percent to Britain and 30 percent to other countries including the US and Australia. But in the past 30 percent went to Canada and the US, 20 percent to Britain and 20 percent to other countries.

Ng said one of the surprising facts was that families earning only about HK$20,000 a month were also keen to send their children to Canada for study.

He said one possible reason is that many Hong Kongers have relatives in Canada. "Boarding is expensive, and in many cases it can cost as much as the school fees, so parents with moderate means are advised to send their children to schools in countries where they have relatives," Ng said.

It was a different story with the Hong Kong Overseas Studies Centre whose administrator, Michelle Leung Pui-ling, said more parents sought information about studying in the US.

"This is because the Hong Kong dollar is fixed to the US dollar and parents have a better idea of the costs involved," Leung said.

She advised parents sending their children elsewhere to budget for extra expenses as the pound as well as the Australian and New Zealand dollars have been appreciating.

A US report said that - fueled by Asia - foreign student enrollment in US higher education institutions has increased significantly for the first time since the September 11, 2001 attacks, which led to tighter visa controls.

According to the report by the Institute of International Education, enrollments from East Asia increased 3 percent, with strong increases from China, South Korea and Taiwan. This, though, was partially offset by declines from Japan and Hong Kong.

The report said 582,984 international students enrolled in colleges and universities in the US in the 2006/07 academic year.

"This is the first significant increase in total international student enrollments since 2001/02," the institute said in its annual " Open Doors" report.

In the previous academic year, the increase was just within a fraction of a percent.

Asia accounts for 59 percent of total US international enrollments, up 5 percent this year. Strong increases were seen from the top three sending countries - India up 10 percent, China up 8 percent and South Korea 6 percent.   -  2007 December 17   THE STANDARD

Korea exam hit by Mass Cheating
Police are investigating allegations of widespread cheating among students taking a key South Korean exam

Scores of students are suspected of using their mobile phones to receive texted answers, while others have confessed to candidate substitution.

Education is a national obsession in South Korea, and many people believe the results of the College Scholastic Ability Test determines future success.

Police said many texts on the day of the test, 17 November, were suspicious.

They said some of these only consisted of numbers from 1-5, The Korea Herald reported.  

The exam in question is mostly multiple-choice, and is taken by 600,000 students across the country.

Some students have reportedly admitted cheating, and one report said that the total number of people involved could be 300.

"It is mainly due to pressure to do well in a test that will decide their lives forever," said Jung Bong-mun, an Education Ministry official.

The cheating taps into both a belief in good education - as emphasised by the country's Confucian tradition - and technological prowess.

Three quarters of South Korea's population have at least one mobile phone. - BBC   

Chinese Varsities
Harvard is still the dream school, but Qinghua and Beida can better prepare them for careers in the mainland

HONG KONG - For young achievers in Hong Kong, the dream universities are still Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge.

But some students are now setting their sights closer to home, considering elite mainland universities that might better prepare them for careers related to China's booming economy.

Nowadays, many Hong Kong students look north. The temporary Hong Kong recruitment centre for China's Qinghua and Beijing universities was abuzz one recent afternoon with students filing in and out of a small office for interviews.

'The centre of economic activity is veering towards China,' said 17-year-old Angie Ip, who is seeking admission at a top-notch Chinese university.

'Job opportunities are better in the mainland,' said another candidate, Mr Christopher Lau, 18.

Qinghua and Beida may not offer the global recognition of Harvard or MIT. But they carry instant cachet with Chinese employers, and multinationals hiring for local positions are impressed with their graduates.

Still, an elite Chinese education has drawbacks as academic freedom is restricted in the social sciences, which must adhere to the communist ideology. The schools also teach in Chinese, not English - the international language of business.

So, there has been no drop in the thousands of Hong Kong students studying in the West.

An average of 15,500 studied in Britain every year from 1998 to 2001. The US Consulate General in Hong Kong has issued at least 3,300 student visas every year since 1997. Canada hosted about 1,500 Hong Kong students every year from 2000 to 2002.

But while those numbers stay constant, the Chinese universities are seeing more interest from young Hong Kongers.

The number of students who signed up for the Chinese university entrance exam jumped from 58 in 1990 to 464 this year.

And while Qinghua had only four Hong Kong undergraduates in 1998, there were 33 in 2003. Beida had 42 Hong Kong students for the 2004-05 academic year.

Hong Kong education consultant Lily Chan, whose company hosted the Beida and Qinghua interviews this year, said about 300 students applied and 200 were picked for interviews for 50 spots at each school.

Tuition fees on the mainland are low. Beida charges about 10,000 yuan (S$2,100) a year - a bargain for wealthy Hong Kongers, who might spend more than 10 times as much on a US university.  - ASSOCIATED PRESS    

Generations and Cultures Differ on School Values

The Canadian model of education is imperfect, but in its focus on creativity, it best prepares students for a democratic society.

The educational system in Vancouver and in Hong Kong have come under attack in the past year.

Many Chinese parents in Vancouver have grumbled loudly about the public educational system. They have a long catalogue of complaints: the system neglects moral education; it is too-student-centred; there is too much freedom given to teachers in how to teach and to students in what to learn; there is little structure and continuity in learning; mixed classes put students of different ages and abilities together, thus dragging the feet of the brighter ones. Then there are available resource materials on sex education, same sex couples and gay parents, fearing that would encourage students to take up an "alternative lifestyle". What such parents would like to see is more emphasis on academic achievement, competition, homework, knowledge acquisition, and examination.

In Hong Kong, there is also dissatisfaction with the education system. The decision-makers of the government bureaucracy and the educational circle both agree that the traditional elitist spoon-feeding approach to education will not serve the social and economic developments of a cosmopolite going into a new century. Spoon-feeding means emphasis on knowledge transmission, product rather than process. It does not emphasis the role of thinking, extra-curricular activities, and the students' own experiences. Such an orientation dovetailed with the colonial political and administrative system of rule-by-elite instead of rule by popular participation.

The world economy has been undergoing a big change. The computer has revolutionized the business environment, one that requires its participants to be smart, independent, innovative, receptive of new ideas, and willing to question authority. When knowledge multiplies exponentially in this information age, a spoon-feeding education will not do.

Earlier in Hong Kong, in a horrible crime, teenagers tortured a kid to death. The Hong Kong Economic Times editorialized: "These teenagers have given up their school, and their school has given them up.... Such students were labelled failures at an early age. Because they did not do well in their studies, and did not pass some exams, they were rejected. How narrow are the educational goals! Exams are used to eliminate students. Our schools cater to a handful of achievers, and produce a hoard of failures.

They do not develop a student's personality.... They download into society wave after wave of people crippled by a sense of failure. The so-called successful students are only good at passing exams, and because their personality has not been nurtured, their potentials are not fully explored and utilized."

The shocking result of the recent Hong Kong high school public exam shows that one out of six students gets zero marks in all subjects!

The weaknesses in the Hong Kong education system are precisely those points where Canada scores. Canadian education gives prominence to process rather than product; integration of knowledge; logical progression; student initiative, interest and innovation. But from the perspective of parents who are themselves the product of traditional schooling, teachers and students seem too often to be engaged in games rather than learning and textbooks are often ignored.

In Hong Kong, the teachers' job is to pass on their knowledge to the next generation. In Canada, the teachers' role is to lead students to learn. They communicate more and the teacher often knows more about a student's ability, interest and progress. Students with different abilities can work at their own level. They often develop self-confidence and have a genuine interest in learning. "Everything is your textbook" is a familiar educational dictum. The idea is that knowledge comes from daily life, and students should be trained to deal with raw data. Such training gives students in Canada the ability to independent study, and the skill serves students well when they get to college or university.

Immigrant parents often comment that elementary school students love to go to school. This in itself is a point of great importance. There is a Chinese proverb says that what you are at eighty years old is determined by what you are at three. Educational research has also borne this out. The elementary stage is crucial to one's development. Interest once sparked fuels a student on. Canadian students on the whole like to read and are good at using the library to do research. Hong Kong students, on the other hand, generally do not like to study again once past graduation.

As for the question of moral education, Canadian schools do not really discard the subject. In a multi-cultural society, it is of course not desirable to propagate a particular set of religious or cultural values.

And traditions often contain questionable values. Boys are often highly valued more than girls. Children are punished physically. Divorced women are looked down upon. Animals are treated cruelly. Such values are not worth perpetuating. The values fostered in a school with children of different abilities, different races and different ages are co-operation, tolerance, mutual help, mutual respect, and equality (irrespective of sex, race, wealth, age). In particular, environmental conservation and the honest "honour system" are encouraged.

The reason why Chinese parents are not happy with the schools is that schools do not teach the set of traditional cultural or religious values they themselves embraced. Such values teach respect for seniority and authority. They tend to be conservative in attitude towards marriage and sex. Many parents blame the high divorce rate in North America on a lack of moral education in schools. The question is: does traditional Asian moral education prevent marriage problems? Hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong men keep "a second woman" north of the border. Can such problem be blamed on schools?

Chinese parents often feel their authority challenged by their children. This is both understandable and inevitable. In traditional Chinese culture, the senior imposed their decision on their children. Whether it isreasonable or not, it is not to be questioned. Canadian teachers treat students more like equals. Such a relationship when brought home will cause friction between parent and child. The parent will feel threatened. But in a democratic society, the rightness or wrongness of something is based on reason and not on seniority. Children will argue for something they consider right. This habit of appeal to reason and challenge of authority is later applied to the spheres of work, creativity, academic study and research. It is what makes a citizen stand up for what is right or be critical of the government.

Canadian education is far from perfect. It worries me that the teachers' union is too protective of the teachers. Even those not doing their job properly can carry on, almost without effective checks. More of that another time.     -   by Gabriel Yiu     * Edited version appeared in Vancouver Sun Forum               

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For the next generation, here is a partial listing of some of the best schools in the world.  Our role as parents is to equip our children with the skills to make it to some of these instutitions where some of the world's best teachers will teach our children skills for life.   

• Chinese University of Hong Kong
• Oxford
• Insead
• Le Rosey
• Stanford
• Harvard
• Yale
• Wharton
• MIT
• McGill
• Western Ontario
• Eton College
• Phillips Andover
• Choate Rosemary
• Smith College
• Vassar

Asian-Americans challenge ideas of race in U.S. universities

BERKELEY, California: When Jonathan Hu was going to high school in suburban Southern California, he rarely heard anyone speaking Chinese. But striding through campus on his way to class at the University of California, Berkeley, Hu hears Mandarin all the time, in plazas, cafeterias, classrooms, study halls, dorms and fast-food outlets. It is part of the soundtrack at this university, along with Cantonese, English, Spanish and, of course, the perpetual jackhammers from the perpetual construction projects spurred by the perpetual fund drives.

"Here, many people speak Chinese as their primary language," said Hu, a sophomore. "It's nice. You really feel like you don't stand out."

This fall and last, the number of Asian-American freshmen at Berkeley has been at a record high, about 46 percent. The overall undergraduate population is 41 percent Asian. On this golden campus, the creek running through a redwood grove, there are residence halls with Asian themes; good dim sum is never more than a five-minute walk away; heaping, spicy bowls of pho are served up in the Bear's Lair cafeteria; and numerous social clubs are linked by ancestry to countries across the Pacific.

Asked what it is like to be on a campus that is overwhelmingly Asian, to be of the demographic moment, Hu shrugs, saying there is a fair amount of "selective self-racial segregation," which is not unusual at a university this size: about 24,000 undergraduates. "The different ethnic groups don't really interact that much," he said. "There's definitely a sense of sticking with your community."

But, he quickly added, "People of my generation don't look at race as that big of a deal. People here, the freshmen and sophomores, they're pretty much like your average American teenagers."

Spend a few days at Berkeley, on the manicured slope overlooking San Francisco Bay toward the distant ocean, and soon enough the sound of foreign languages becomes less distinct. This is a global campus in a global age. And now, more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity.

The change at Berkeley has been a quiet one, a slow turning of the forces of immigration and demographics. What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill does not mirror the ethnic face of California, which is 12 percent Asian, already more than twice the national average. But it is the new face of the state's vaunted public university system. Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at its nine undergraduate campuses.

The oft-cited goal of a public university is to be a microcosm — in this case, of the nation's most populous, most demographically dynamic state — and to enrich the educational experience with a variety of cultures, economic backgrounds and viewpoints.

But 10 years after California passed Proposition 209, voting to eliminate racial preferences in the public sector, university administrators find such balance harder to attain. At the same time, affirmative action is being challenged on a number of new fronts, in court and at state ballot boxes. And elite colleges have recently come under attack for practicing it — specifically, for ignoring highly qualified Asian-American applicants in favor of other minorities with less stellar test scores and grades.

In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically underrepresented blacks and Hispanics. This year, in a class of 4,809, there are only 100 black freshmen at the University of California at Los Angeles — the lowest number in 33 years.

At Berkeley, 3.6 percent of freshmen are black, barely half the statewide proportion. (In 1997, just before the full force of Proposition 209 went into effect, the proportion of black freshmen matched the state population, 7 percent.) The percentage of Hispanic freshmen at Berkeley (11 percent) is not even a third of the state proportion (35 percent). White freshmen (29 percent) are also below the state average (44 percent).

This is in part because getting into Berkeley — U.S. News & World Report's top-ranked public university — has never been more daunting.

There were 41,750 applicants for this year's freshman class of 4,157.

Nearly half had a weighted grade point average of 4.0 or better (weighted for advanced courses). There is even grumbling from "the old Blues" — older alumni named for the school color — "who complain because their kids can't get in," said Gregg Thomson, director of the Office of Student Research.

Across the United States, at elite private and public universities, Asian enrollment is near an all-time high. Asian-Americans make up less than 5 percent of the population but typically make up 10 to 30 percent of students at the nation's best colleges: In 2005, the last year with across-the-board numbers, Asians made up 24 percent of the undergraduate population at Carnegie Mellon and at Stanford, 27 percent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14 percent at Yale and 13 percent at Princeton.

And according to advocates of race- neutral admissions policies, those numbers should be even higher.

Asians have become the "new Jews," in the phrase of Daniel Golden, whose recent book, "The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates," is a polemic against university admissions policies. Golden, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is referring to evidence that, in the first half of the 20th century, Ivy League schools limited the number of Jewish students despite their outstanding academic records to maintain the primacy of upper-class Protestants.

Today, he writes, "Asian-Americans are the odd group out, lacking racial preferences enjoyed by other minorities and the advantages of wealth and lineage mostly accrued by upper-class whites.

Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science."

As if to illustrate the point, a study released in October by the Center for Equal Opportunity, an advocacy group opposing race-conscious admissions, showed that in 2005 Asian-Americans were admitted to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, at a much lower rate (54 percent) than black applicants (71 percent) and Hispanic applicants (79 percent) — despite median SAT scores that were 140 points higher than Hispanics and 240 points higher than blacks.

To force the issue on a legal level, a freshman at Yale filed a complaint in the fall with the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, contending he was denied admission to Princeton because he is Asian. The student, Jian Li, the son of Chinese immigrants in Livingston, New Jersey, had a perfect SAT score and near-perfect grades, including numerous Advanced Placement courses.

"This is just a very, very egregious system," Li said.

"Asians are held to different standards simply because of their race."

To back his claim, he cites a 2005 study by Thomas Espenshade and Chang Chung, both of Princeton, which concludes that if elite universities were to disregard race, Asians would fill nearly four of five spots that now go to blacks or Hispanics. Affirmative action has a neutral effect on the number of whites admitted, Li is arguing, but it raises the bar for Asians. The way Princeton selects its entering class, Li wrote in his complaint, "seems to be a calculated move by a historically white institution to protect its racial identity while at the same time maintaining a faηade of progressivism."

Private institutions can commit to affirmative action, even with state bans, but federal money could be revoked if they are found to be discriminating. Li is seeking suspension of federal financial assistance to Princeton. "I'm not seeking anything personally," he said. "I'm happy at Yale. But I grew up thinking that in America race should not matter."

Admissions officials have long denied that they apply quotas.

Nonetheless, race is important "to ensure a diverse student body," said Cass Cliatt, a spokeswoman for Princeton. But, she added, "Looking at the merits of race is not the same as the opposite" — discrimination.

Elite colleges like Princeton review the "total package," in her words, looking at special talents, extracurricular interests and socioeconomics — factors like whether the applicant is the first in the family to go to college or was raised by a single mother.

"There's no set formula or standard for how we evaluate students," she said. High grades and test scores would seem to be merely a baseline. "We turned away approximately half of applicants with maximum scores on the SAT, all three sections," Cliatt said of the class Li would have joined.

In the last two months, the nation has seen a number of new challenges to racial engineering in schools. In November, the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case questioning the legality of using race in assigning students to public schools in Seattle and Louisville, Kentucky.

Voters are also sending a message, having thrown out racial preferences in Michigan in November, following California, Texas, Florida and Washington. Last month, Ward Connerly, the architect of Proposition 209, announced his next potential targets for a ballot initiative, including Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska.    - by Timothy Egan    INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE    7 January 2007    

When 22-year-old Kun Hsu of Toronto graduates from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania next spring, he's confident his Ivy-League-branded education will open some big doors.

"We're pretty much a trade school for Wall Street," he chuckles. Encouraged by his Canadian parents to apply to U.S. institutions after high school -- his two American cousins attended Princeton -- his education has been peppered with special guest lecturers like Jack Welch, Madeleine Albright and Warren Buffett, and his finance program includes a Nobel Laureate as a professor. The price tag? $50,000 a year for tuition, room and board.

Mr. Hsu's American choice is an increasingly popular one, even though a year at a Canadian university is just a fraction of the cost at about $10,000.

Last year 25,279 Canadians drifted southward for post-secondary education -- an increase of 7.4% over the year before. And for U.S. institutions that are stepping up their Canadian recruitment efforts, the hope is that this number will continue to increase.

Drawn to Canada in part by Ontario's "double cohort," -- in 2003, 290,000 Grade 12 and 13 students will graduate at the same time -- hundreds of U.S. schools are now offering incentives to Canadian students across the country.

While a Canada Student Loan is available to help out with some designated schools, and U.S. academic or athletic scholarships can sometimes be available, many America-bound Canadians must foot the often-massive bill themselves.

Penny Bissett, an education consultant who has spent the last nine years helping American institutions with their Canadian recruiting efforts, says she's watched Canadian students grow increasingly interested.

"The U.S. is becoming much more appealing to students," she says. Adventure, specialized programs and U.S. family connections are all common reasons. "The financial side has been the big obstacle, but that's slowly changing," she explains. "Those universities that are actively recruiting are making every effort to make a much better deal for kids in Canada."

For the most part, these aren't the super-prestigious schools like Hsu's, but the hundreds of other private institutions that dot the country charging anywhere from US$10,000 to US$16,000 in tuition.

As only a selective few can ever get into the top schools anyway, this is good news, Ms. Bissett says.

"There's interest in the Ivy League schools no doubt," explains Jennifer Humphries, director of membership and educational services at Ottawa's Canadian Bureau for International Education, "but there's also interest in the state universities. Sometimes that's because of a particular program, sometimes that's because of sport scholarships which are much bigger than here and then there's the specialty institutes that are religious based."

Melik Khoury, director of admissions at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, is eager to grow the Canadian population at his small 1,000-student state school. So much so that they'll allow Canadians to skip the entrance test, the SATs, that Americans write.

"As long as you are in the top half of your class and you have a grade point average above a C, you can potentially be accepted," he says. As well, it offers Canadians a special tuition rate of US$5,000 -- instead of about US$8,000 -- and freshmen scholarships of up to US$2,500. Total? About US$10,000 for a year.

Over at Southern New Hampshire University, an incentives program was launched in late spring allowing Canadian dollars to be accepted at par for tuition payments -- a savings of about US$6,000 a year. The reason for the deal, explains Steve Harvey, director of International Admissions, is that so far they haven't had tons of luck wooing Canadians to their Manchester campus.

"Price has been the major drawback," he says. While he has spotted plenty of interest from Canadian students at the recruitment fairs he's attended across the country in the last four years, the price has always been too steep. His hope: at a cost of just US$10,000 a year -- instead of US$16,000 a year as in the past -- will make a difference.

For universities, however, that don't offer much in the way of cost incentives or scholarships for Canadians -- like University of Notre Dame in Indiana -- Michael Gantt, assistant director of admissions, says their US$35,000 annual price will continue to be prohibitive to many. While he will continue to attend recruitment fairs in Canada, it will have to be the students who can "make it happen financially" that will be accepted.

At the moment, of the school's 25 Canadian undergrads, almost all of them are on an athletic grant.

Kyle Doerksen, a 19-year-old neuroscience undergrad at Stanford University in California, says that he's fortunate his dream-school offered him a large scholarship that's completely based on need.

"At Stanford it's not need-blind for international students," -- where students are accepted on merit and then the finances are figured out later -- "but they kind of work that into the mix when they're considering whether or not they're going to let you in."

(Harvard, for example, has a need-blind program.) With this financial support Mr. Doerksen only has to pay a small portion of the US$35,000 fee for tuition, room and board every year. He also works in a campus lab.

But money aside, actually getting into an American school, is a much different - and arguably more complicated - process than applying to a school in Canada.

Aside from usually having to write SATs (which costs about $100 a pop) and getting recommendation letters from guidance counsellors and teachers, Mohammed Badi, a 26-year-old Torontonian also at Stanford, says there are also tricky entrance essays.

"My question for Stanford was, 'tell us about you favourite conversation,' " he remembers. And once accepted, a higher cost of living -- depending on what part of the country you're in -- can also be a downside.

This said, Mr. Hsu, Mr. Doerksen and Mr. Badi are all thoroughly enjoying their American education.

But all of them also have a major goal in common: to someday bring their new skills back to Canada. "I would like to end up in Canada," says Mr. Badi, "because it's home".     -  Saturday Post    27 July 2002

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