Community College Students in Hong Kong: Class Inequality in Higher Education (Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective) 3030824608, 9783030824600

Table of contents :
Acknowledgement
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction
Background
Four Theoretical Explanations for an Observed Class Gap
Literature on Parents’ Capital for Their Children’s Education
Capital
Cultural Capital and Social Capital
My Focus: Their Parents’ Use of Capital for Students’ Educational Pursuits
Literature on the Class Nature of Educational Institutions
The Setup of Community College
My Focus: Students’ Learning Experiences at Community College and Their Academic and Coping Strategies
Literature on Parents’ Aspiration for Their Children’s Education and the Children’s Own Educational Aspiration
Rational Choice Approach: Risk Aversion in Making an Educational Choice
Limitations of Rational Choice Approach
My Focus: The Contextual, Processual, and Emotional Aspects of Students’ Choice-Making
Literature on Emotions of Parents and Their Children in Relation to the Children’s Education
Emotional Capital
My Focus: Emotional Capital of Students in Seeking a Second Chance
Second Chance and Class Inequality in Education
Organisation of This Book
References
Chapter 2: The Development of Higher Education in Hong Kong: An Overview
The Education System in Hong Kong
Four Types of Schools and Three Academic Bandings
Educational Pathways
Two Improvements
Significant Changes in the Sector of Higher Education
The Launch of the Community College Policy
The Creation of New Routes to University
Availability of a New, Expensive, Risky, and Second-Rate Second Chance
An Expansion of the Sub-degree Sector of Higher Education
An Expansion of the Sector of University Education and the Emergence of a New Hierarchy
The Implications of the Community College Policy for Class Inequality in Higher Education
References
Chapter 3: A Longitudinal Qualitative Study of Community-College Students in Hong Kong: Research Design and Process, Methodological Concerns, and Reflections
Research Design and Research Process
Recruitment and Preliminary Analyses
A Continuation, a Follow-Up, and an Extension
Interviews
Data Management
Methodological Issues of This Study
Statistical Representativeness
Reliability and Validity
Recognising the Limitations of This Study
Respondents’ Own Perspectives
Richness and Thickness
Authenticity
A Longitudinal Dimension
Reflections
Becoming Interested in Education and Educational Inequality
Doing Interviews Before Reviewing Literature
An Insider Perspective
My Emotional Struggle
Profiles of Respondents
References
Chapter 4: Class Differentials in Parental Assistance: Deciding to Seek a Second Chance
Parental Support at Previous Educational Stages
Reaching the Decision on Seeking a Second Chance in a Community College
Academic and Career Advice
Financial Assistance
Emotional Support
Another Opportunity Versus the Last Resort
References
Chapter 5: Class Differentials in Academic and Coping Strategies: Studying at Community College
Competition at This Community College
Middle-Class Advantages in Course Selection?
Middle-Class Advantages in Learning?
Middle-Class Advantages in Learning Through Parents’ Understanding?
Middle-Class Advantages in Learning Through Schooling?
Middle-Class Respondents Outperforming Working-Class Respondents at Community College?
Middle-Class Advantages in Groupmates Selection and Peer Assessment?
Could Community Colleges be seen as a Middle-Class Institution?
The Setup of Community College Against a Neoliberal Context
References
Chapter 6: Class Differentials in Making Decisions in Seeking a Transfer: Deciding What Programmes to Apply for and What Option to Take as the Final Offer
Educational Choices at Two Particular Stages of Seeking a Transfer
Deciding What Programmes to Apply For
Deciding What Offer to Accept
The Most Desirable Offer of a Degree Programme at UGC-Funded University: University as Opposed to Subject
The Least Desirable Offer of a Top-Up Degree Programme: Second-Rate Degree as Opposed to No Degree
The Contextual, Processual, and Emotional Aspects of Educational Decisions
Subsequent Choices at Later Stages
What Could be Learnt from This Modified Framework?
References
Chapter 7: Class Feelings About Rectifying a Critical Educational Failure: The Relevance of Emotional Capital
Entitlement and Legitimacy as Classed Emotional Capital
Failing HKCEE or HKALE: Violating Middle-Class Entitlement as Opposed to Challenging Working-Class Legitimacy
Studying at Community College: Middle-Class Confidence and Working-Class Doubt
Getting Transferred: Middle-Class Earned Respect and Working-Class Continuous Doubt
An Additional Mechanism of Class Reproduction Through Higher Education
The Emotional and Rational Aspects of Educational Experiences
References
Chapter 8: Conclusions and Suggestions
A Summary of Empirical Findings
Contribution of This Study
Potential Policy Implications
Why Not Apply Bourdieu’s Framework for the Whole Book?
Possible Directions for Future Research
Comments on the Community College Policy
References
Appendix A: A Letter of Consent
Appendix B: Demographic Information on the Respondent
Appendix C: Interview Schedule for Community-College Students
Appendix D: Successes in Hong Kong: Ranking of Ten Factors
Appendix E: Interview Schedule for Graduates
Appendix F: Follow-Up Interview Schedule
References
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES ON CHINESE EDUCATION IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Community College Students in Hong Kong Class Inequality in Higher Education

Yi-Lee Wong

Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective Series Editors Fred Dervin Department of Education University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland Xiangyun Du College of Education Qatar University Doha, Qatar

The transformation of China into a global super-power is often attributed to the country’s robust education system and this series seeks to provide a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the development of Chinese education on a global scale. The books in this series will analyze and problematize the revolutions, reforms, innovations and transformations of Chinese education that are often misunderstood or misrepresented beyond its own borders and will examine the changes in Chinese education over the past 30 years and the issues as well as challenges that the future of Chinese education faces. For more information or to submit a proposal please contact Eleanor Christie ([email protected]) More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14568

Yi-Lee Wong

Community College Students in Hong Kong Class Inequality in Higher Education

Yi-Lee Wong Faculty of Education Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong

Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective ISBN 978-3-030-82460-0    ISBN 978-3-030-82461-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82461-7 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgement

This book reports a longitudinal qualitative study of 85 community-­ college students in Hong Kong. This study would have been impossible without the participation of the respondents and the assistance of some former colleagues of mine. I am grateful to the respondents for sharing generously with me their educational experiences. And I am also thankful to those former colleagues for referring some respondents to me. I completed the transcription of the first batch of interviews and conducted some preliminary analyses of this study while working at the Center of Social Stratification and Inequality (CSSI), Tohoku University, Japan (2006–2008). The Center also funded my presentation in an academic conference in New Jersey, USA.  I then carried out a follow-up of this study while working at the Faculty of Education, University of Macau, Macao (2009–2013), after securing a start-up fund from the University. Ever since working at the Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 2013, I have been granted a number of funds that support the academic presentations of this study’s findings and the writing up of the study in the forms of journal articles and books, including this book. Without the financial assistance and practical support of all kinds, I would not have been able to continue this study over these years; for such assistance and support I am grateful to Tohoku University, the University of Macau, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. I began this study in 2006 and it has been evolving over the last fifteen years. Assistance as well as feedback, of various kinds, from friends and colleagues and students is of great significance to making possible the development of this study; for such assistance and feedback I am indeed v

vi 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

grateful. I would like to underscore the assistance and feedback I have received throughout these years in the following paragraphs. I started to take seriously the idea of education during my stay in the region of Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova (2002–2005) as a visiting fellow for a non-governmental organisation whereby I was supposed to bring in critical thinking to reform the education systems of these three former Soviet countries. I mentioned and even discussed some of my thoughts on the idea of university education, and education more generally, with Winston Ng and Veronica Lai at the time. With their encouragement and suggestions, I started to read a lot on the philosophy of education and the sociology of education, and education more generally, and then decided to design an exploratory study on community college education. While doing the interviews for this study in 2006 and 2009, I shared my on-the-­ spot observations and/or analyses with Stella Kao, Veronica Lai, and Carmen Tong on a number of occasions. I thank them for their insights, enabling me to make better sense of respondents’ stories and also encouraging me to develop this study further. During my stay in Tohoku University, Japan (2006–2008), as a centre-­ of-­excellence fellow of the CSSI, I presented some findings of this study— especially on the themes of achievement ideology, emotion, and community college education—in several sessions of the weekly CSSI seminar series organised by the Center as well as in two annual meetings with sociologists from Yonsei University, South Korea, held in 2007 and 2008. Graduates, scholars, and conference participants were very helpful, posing questions to the study and offering me constructive comments and useful suggestions of various kinds. In particular, Yoshimichi Sato, the CSSI director, was extremely supportive, giving me a lot of encouragement. At a later stage, he recommended me to join the Global Network on Inequality (GNI). I then took advantage of some findings of this study to make a presentation on the theme of emotion at a mini-conference that GNI organised in New Jersey, USA, in 2008; the presentation was subsequently turned into a book chapter (Wong 2010). Ever since, I have presented different findings of this study in many academic conferences and discussed—formally or informally—my ideas related to this study with academics, colleagues, and friends. The in-depth discussions over many cups of coffee with Carter Johnson in Toronto, Canada, in 2006; Senka Bozic in Zadar, Croatia, in 2010; Anna Glazebrook in Oxford, Britain, in 2014; and Vincent Tse in Hong Kong in 2016 were especially inspiring, which made me see some new themes in my findings. I am indeed thankful

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

vii

for the feedback—of all kinds—received on a variety of occasions, which has been of great use for the subsequent publication of the study’s findings. Ever since joining the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013, I have been discussing this study with my students, graduates under my supervision, as well as students taking my courses. Given their enthusiasm about the topic of educational inequality for their doctoral studies, Wenwen Zhang and Qing Liao asked very good questions about this study, which made me re-think how I could frame its findings. Moreover, I have been sharing some specific findings of this study which fit particular themes of two courses I have been teaching: one is ‘Structure and Process of Schooling’ for frontline teachers and the other is ‘Understanding Schooling and Education Policy in Hong Kong’ for undergraduates. Meanwhile, I have also been referring to this study for methodological discussions with graduate students taking the course of ‘Qualitative Methods in Educational Settings.’ Students’ questions raised in these classes oftentimes served as opportunities for me to explain the design and to re-present the findings of this study. Christian Chan and Zanna Lo, two student helpers hired for managing the transcripts of this study, were efficient in organising the research material and generously shared their thoughts on respondents’ narratives; discussions with them were of help to me in re-structuring the material for further publications. I enjoyed discussions of all kinds with my students, of various academic levels, and thanked them for giving me opportunities for re-considering how I could make better use of different parts of this study to address various issues. Of late, I have been discussing further with Veronica Lai, Robert Mason, Eric Ng, and Richard O’Leary the possibility of consolidating all findings of this study along a number of themes in a book or two. Without their support and encouragement, this book would have never come into existence; needless to mention, I would not have considered writing another two books based on this study, albeit with different approaches as well as emphases. A big thank you goes to them! Special thanks go to Eric Ng for his time and his ears; his responses are always stimulating and helpful! Robert Mason was very generous in providing editorial support for this book; he raised important questions and made useful suggestions for further revisions of the book. For his editorial comments and suggestions, I am really thankful! Over the years, I have shared my publications derived from this study with friends and academics. Friendship, regardless of their (academic) feedback, is valuable. Thanks goes to Amy Au (my late cousin), Senka Bozic, Annie Chan, Jason Chang, Hon-Fai Chen, Wei-Wen Chen, Anna

viii 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Glazebrook, Carter Johnson, Anita Koo, Paula Kwan, Veronica Lai, Candice Lam, Natalie Ma, Robert Mason, Eric Ng, Winston Ng, Makiko Nishikawa, Richard O’Leary, Moonju Seong, Erik Sleutjes, Charlotte To, Stella Wong, and Alison Yeung. Last, but definitely not the least, I would like to thank my mother and my siblings, Terence and Queenie, for their unfailing support. They make my life more balanced. In particular, gatherings with Queenie, Terence, and Janice (his wife) are always relaxing: they often offer me companionship, delicious food, and nice wine. They are always there for me, for which I am indeed grateful. The material of this study—appeared as substantially different versions from this book (and the article published by Higher Education is kindly granted permission by the publisher for reprinting)—has been used to address a number of different issues in the following journal articles: • Wong, Y.-L. (revised and resubmitted). The Limitations of Risk Aversion in Explaining Educational Inequality: An Illustration with Community-College Students’ Educational Choices in Hong Kong. • Wong, Y.-L. (accepted). Student Alienation in Higher Education Under Neo-Liberalism and Global Capitalism: A Case of Community-­ College Students’ Instrumentalism in Hong Kong. Community College Review. • Wong, Y.-L. (2021). An Emotive Operation of Neo-Liberalism in Higher Education: Seeking a Second Chance in Hong Kong. Community College Review, 49(1), 76–95. • Wong, Y.-L. (2020b). Understanding Potential Dynamics Between Transfer and Native Students in Top-Ranking Universities in Hong Kong: The Relevance of a Sense of Legitimacy. Community College Journal of Research and Practice (published online 12 October 2020). • Wong, Y.-L. (2020a). “Entitlement” and “Legitimacy” as Emotional Capital: Living Out Class Through a Critical Educational Failure by Community-College Students in Hong Kong. Studies in Higher Education (published online 4 June 2020). • Wong, Y.-L. (2019b). An Empirical Illustration of Social Legitimation Through Hegemony: Narratives of Students from a Community College Seeking a Transferal in Hong Kong. Community College Journal of Research and Practice (published online 22 October 2019). • Wong, Y.-L. (2019a). Angels Falling from Grace? The Rectification Experiences of Middle-Class Community-College Students in Hong Kong. Studies in Higher Education, 44(8), 1303–1315.

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

ix

• Wong, Y.-L., & Tse, W.-S. (2017). An Illustration of the Operation of Social Legitimation for “Winners” and “Losers”: A Comparison of Accounts of University and Community-College Students in Hong Kong. Journal of Adult Development, 24(4), 277–286. • Wong, Y.-L. (2017). Class Differentials in Getting Parental Assistance for Seeking a Second Chance of Getting into University: An Illustration of Community-College Students in Hong Kong. Higher Education, 74(1), 163–178. • Wong, Y.-L. (2016). Self-Explanation, Self-Evaluation, Legitimation of Social Inequality: The Case of Community-College Students in Hong Kong. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 21(2), 252–266. • Wong, Y.-L. (2015b). Middle-Class Students Studying in Community College in Hong Kong: A Mismatch Between High-Status Habitus and Low-Status Field? Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, 6(1). http://www.sic-­journal.org/ArticleView. aspx?aid=379 • Wong, Y.-L. (2015a). The Community College Policy in Hong Kong: Intention, Practices, and Consequence. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 39(8), 754–771. • Wong, Y.-L. (2011). Community College Students in Hong Kong: Class Differences in Various States of Cultural Capital and Their Conversion. Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, 1(2). http://www.sic-­journal.org/en/past-­issues/2/ literature-­and-­culture/yi-­lee-­wong-­community-­college-­students-­ in-­hong-­kong-­class-­differences-­in-­various-­states-­of-­cultural-­capital-­ and-­their-­conversion • Wong, Y.-L. (2010). Middle-Class Losers?: The Role of Emotion in Educational Careers. In P. Attewell & K. Newman (Eds.), Growing Gaps: Educational Inequality Around the World (pp.  162–184). Oxford University Press. Department of Educational Administration and Policy Faculty of Education Chinese University of Hong Kong Hong Kong May 2021

Yi-Lee Wong

Contents

1 Introduction  1 2 The Development of Higher Education in Hong Kong: An Overview 35 3 A Longitudinal Qualitative Study of Community-College Students in Hong Kong: Research Design and Process, Methodological Concerns, and Reflections 61 4 Class Differentials in Parental Assistance: Deciding to Seek a Second Chance 89 5 Class Differentials in Academic and Coping Strategies: Studying at Community College111 6 Class Differentials in Making Decisions in Seeking a Transfer: Deciding What Programmes to Apply for and What Option to Take as the Final Offer133 7 Class Feelings About Rectifying a Critical Educational Failure: The Relevance of Emotional Capital155 8 Conclusions and Suggestions177

xi

xii 

Contents

Appendix A: A Letter of Consent193 Appendix B: Demographic Information on the Respondent195  Appendix C: Interview Schedule for Community-College Students197  Appendix D: Successes in Hong Kong: Ranking of Ten Factors203 Appendix E: Interview Schedule for Graduates205 Appendix F: Follow-Up Interview Schedule211 References215 Index233

Abbreviations

AD GPA HKALE HKCEE HKDSE JUPAS POAS Pre-AD SSPAS

associate degree grade point average Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination Joint University Programmes Admissions System Primary One Allocation Scheme pre-associate degree Secondary School Placement Allocation Scheme

xiii

List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 2.5 Table 3.1 Table 3.2 Table 4.1 Table 4.2

Table 4.3

Table 4.4 Table 5.1

Twenty-two degree-granting institutions in Hong Kong, 2020 41 Figures on the full-time self-financing sector of sub-degree programmes, 2000–2019 49 Numbers of student enrolments and graduates in full-time self-­financing sub-degree programmes, 2001–2019 50 Numbers of transfer students and approved senior-year places of UGC-funded programmes, 2012–2019 51 Figures on the full-time self-financing sector of degree programmes, 2001–2019 54 Distribution of parents of respondents by their place of birth, by their class position, and by their gender 84 Distribution of parents of respondents by their formal qualification, by their class position, and by their gender 85 Types of primary and secondary schools that 85 respondents (the proportion %) attended by their class origin 91 The performance of 85 respondents (the proportion %) and the 64 respondents providing full information on their entire educational trajectories (the proportion %) in HKCEE by their class origin 92 The performance of 85 respondents (the proportion %) and the 64 respondents providing full information on their entire educational trajectories (the proportion %) in HKALE (in terms of the number of AL subjects passed) by their class origin 93 Distribution of 85 respondents of the two classes (the proportion %) by their route to community college 94 The HKCEE grade in English language for 85 respondents by their class origin 124 xv

xvi 

List of Tables

Table 5.2 Table 6.1

The HKALE grade in English language for 66 respondents by their class origin 124 Distribution of the 64 respondents whose educational trajectories are known by their final offer and by their class origin141

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book reports on a longitudinal qualitative study of community-­ college students in Hong Kong, begun in 2006, continued in 2009, followed up on in 2010, and extended in 2011. Referring to narratives of 85 respondents collected in first interviews as well as in second interviews (for 39 of them), this book seeks to offer a class perspective to make sense of respondents’ experiences in rectifying a critical educational failure (i.e., failing to get straight into university through end-of-school public examinations) and taking advantage of a newly available option of community college to seek a second chance. Specifically, this book examines and compares the educational experiences and outcomes of respondents of the working and middle classes (see Chap. 3 for the classification adopted in this book) in seeking this second chance, in specific regards to the parental assistance they received for reaching a decision on seeking this second chance, their learning experiences as well as coping strategies at community college, their educational decisions made at two particular stages, and the emotional aspect of these experiences. This would, then, offer insights into understanding the following puzzle: Why does a class gap in obtaining a bachelor’s degree persist in spite of a continuous expansion of education and how is this possible?

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Y.-L. Wong, Community College Students in Hong Kong, Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82461-7_1

1

2 

Y.-L. WONG

Background In view of economic re-structuring as well as an emergence of the so-­ called knowledge economy in developed industrial-capitalist societies in the twenty-first century, it is believed that the labour force is required to have a higher qualification so that its members are able to meet the new demands of a changing economy. Consequently, many governments seek to expand their sector of higher education in order to nurture more highly qualified people to join the future labour force in a new era. Meanwhile, many governments also take an expansion of higher education as a means of promoting social mobility for their newer generations, in that young people are encouraged to compete for advantaged occupations in an ever-­ more competitive labour market through acquiring a relatively high qualification. While higher education has kept expanding, participation in higher education is oftentimes dominated by a relatively advantaged class, however it is defined (e.g., Cloonan, 2004; Thompson, 2008). Briefly, in most industrial-capitalist societies there exists a class gap in education (e.g., Hout & DiPrete, 2006). That is, although basic education becomes free and compulsory, this class gap persists (e.g., Torres & Antikainen, 2003; Schofer & Meyer, 2005; Buchmann et  al., 2008). What has undergone change over the last few decades is, perhaps, the level of education where this class gap is observed. When basic education is not free or compulsory, a class gap is observed in rates of attendance and completion in basic education; when basic education is free and compulsory, nearly all people complete a basic level of education but a class gap is observed with regards to access to higher education and acquisition of a post-secondary qualification; and, when higher education becomes more and more accessible to all, a class gap still exists in obtaining a bachelor’s degree, as well as a higher degree (e.g., Fergusson et al., 2008; Baert & Cockx, 2013). Many sociologists argue that the persistence of a class gap in education is due to the fact that students of the relatively advantaged class (the middle class thereafter for the sake of convenience; and, to repeat, see the classification adopted in this book in Chap. 3) are better able than those of the relatively disadvantaged class (the working class thereafter for the sake of convenience) to grasp newly available educational opportunities, as it has been put forward in such theses as maximally maintained inequality and effectively maintained inequality (e.g., Lucas, 2001; cf. Raftery & Hout, 1993; Hout, 2006). But what remains unclearly answered is how it could be

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

possible for the middle class to do that in comparison to the working class. The last few decades have witnessed the advancement of a number of sociological explanations for illustrating how the observed class gap is possible; and at least three major explanations in class differentials could be distinguished: capital, aspiration, and emotion. An expansion of education not only enables more students to get straight into university but also creates more indirect routes for them to do so. Many of these indirect routes could well be seen as a newly available second chance for students, meaning that even when students fail to get into university at their first attempt, they are now offered a greater number of options of second chance. Nevertheless, sociologically speaking, how well students of the middle and working classes fare in grasping such a newly available second chance has been under-researched. Meanwhile, it is argued that schools in general, and universities in particular, could be regarded as a middle-class institution where the capital, aspiration, and even emotion of the middle class are more likely to be rewarded than those of the working class (e.g., Bourdieu, 1984; Lynch & O’Neill, 1994). This then leads me to the fourth explanation for illustrating how the persistence of a class gap in education is possible. New tertiary institutions offering such a second chance could be similarly taken as a middle-class institution so that students of the middle class are better able than those of the working class to meet the academic standard set by such institutions and are thus more likely to succeed in seeking their second chance. Meanwhile, it is observed that an expansion somehow leads to a stratification of higher education; a bachelor’s degree is ranked by its awarding institution as well as subject (e.g., Brown et al., 2010). So, an expansion of higher education and the availability of a second chance do not immediately make it more equal for students of the middle and working classes to obtain a bachelor’s degree, let alone becoming equally advantaged in the future labour market. As with many industrial-capitalist societies, Hong Kong has also been going through economic re-structuring, with a shrinking—if not disappearing—manufacturing sector alongside an expanding service sector and an emerging technological sector (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 1961, 2016). In view of such changes, the first Hong Kong government right after the 1997 handover—from a British colonial city to a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China— launched a top-down project of education reform in year 2000 in the hope that a greater proportion of relevant-age students would receive at least a

4 

Y.-L. WONG

post-secondary qualification so as to meet the new demands of a changing economy (Education Commission Report, 2000). Over the last three decades Hong Kong has witnessed a rapid expansion of higher education. Moreover, the community college policy launched in year 2000 unintentionally created an alternative route to university by offering students a second chance through getting transferred to university. Meanwhile, the policy also accentuated the expansion and stratification of higher education in Hong Kong. Therefore, Hong Kong could be used as an example to illustrate how the four above-mentioned sociological explanations operate to make sense of the persistence of a class gap in obtaining a bachelor’s degree despite a continuous expansion of higher education and despite the availability of a newly available second chance. In what follows, I shall firstly review the literature related to the four theoretical explanations for the persistence of a class gap in education. Secondly, I shall discuss the necessity for looking into the role of a second chance to make sense of the persistence of this class gap, underscoring the significance of this study. And finally, I shall end this chapter by outlining the organisation of this book.

Four Theoretical Explanations for an Observed Class Gap In order to make sense of the persistence of a class gap despite a continuous expansion of education, a number of sociological explanations have been offered. Two major venues of these explanations can be distinguished: the family and the school (e.g., Moore, 2004). Schools are arguably of a middle-class nature according to which their setup and arrangements would favour more middle-class students than working-class students and thus somehow explain why middle-class students would outperform their working-class counterparts at school (e.g., Bourdieu, 1984). But, when the battlefield of education is shifted from basic education to higher education, perhaps this argument about the class nature of educational institutions could be extended from schools to universities (post-­ secondary institutions more generally) (e.g., Reay et  al., 2001; cf. Reay et al., 2009). Where the family is concerned, the focus is essentially on the assistance of parents for their children’s education. What do parents of different classes do to promote the educational success of their children?

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

Three common explanations could be distinguished further: capital, aspiration, and emotion. Literature on Parents’ Capital for Their Children’s Education Class arguably shapes capital available to parents’ uses for their children’s education. Presumably, middle-class parents have more capital—of all kinds (e.g., economic capital, cultural capital, and social capital)—than working-class parents; besides, middle-class parents are also believed to be more likely to use their capital than working-class parents to promote their children’s educational success. Consequently, middle-class children are more capable than working-class children of obtaining a bachelor’s degree. Some sociologists simply argue that educational inequality is a result of ‘parentocracy,’ a term coined by Brown (1990): children’s educational success resulting more from their parents’ assistance including strategies for their education (Ball, 2003; cf. Henderson, 2013) than the children’s own academic ability and effort (Savage & Egerton, 1997). And yet my concern is not simply about whether middle-class or working-class parents are more successful in getting their children a bachelor’s degree but how they do it. Capital In the existing literature, parents are reported to use their capital—of various kinds—at each educational stage to promote their children’s educational success, which is of great relevance to understanding educational inequality (Fergusson et al., 2008). When education was neither free nor compulsory, perhaps parents’ economic capital (e.g., income, wealth, assets, and properties)—used to pay for their children’s tuition fees and related expenses—explained most of a class gap in educational attainment in many industrial-capitalist societies, as it was also the case in Hong Kong during the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Wong, 2005, 2011). However, when higher education has become readily accessible, parents were found to use more of their varied capital to promote their children’s educational success much earlier on and also take the battlefield to higher education. For example, at the level of basic education, parents in the USA or UK are found to be concerned about getting children into a school of their choice and/or become involved in school activities (Edwards & Alldred, 2000; Lynch & Moran, 2006; cf. Hartas, 2012). This response partly led to more parent-school collaboration for students’

6 

Y.-L. WONG

effective learning, and a relative strategic concern about giving the children a head start (West et al., 1998; Wilder, 2014). As mentioned above, when a bachelor’s degree becomes more and more accessible, what matters is not a degree but what kind of degree. Consequently, parents’ concern is shifted from getting their children a bachelor’s degree to which degree from which university (e.g., Brown et  al., 2010). Moreover, in order to enable their children to become more advantaged in the future labour market, parents become strategic in helping their children to get valuable internships and build a competitive portfolio of experience (e.g., Bathmaker et al., 2013; Fingerman et al., 2014). At issue is what capital parents of different classes use to enable their children to obtain a prestigious degree with a competitive profile so as to become advantaged in the future labour market.  ultural Capital and Social Capital C While capital—tangible or not—is just one of many general concepts used to account for class inequality in education, there are some specific concepts such as ‘cultural capital’ and ‘social capital’ (Bourdieu, 1984; Coleman, 1990; cf. Putnam, 1993). Bourdieu’s (1997) concept of cultural capital refers to three states: an embodied state (e.g., mentality and disposition), an objectified state (e.g., the possession of art work and books), and an institutional state (e.g., formal qualification). With reference to the concepts of habitus (referring to disposition and orientation developed through one’s upbringing) and field (a structured space operating with a specific logic), Bourdieu (1997) argues that a class structure is reproduced through a relationship between family and school, in that the habitus and cultural capital nurtured at home or the cultural capital provided by middle-class parents is rewarded by school as part of the field of education; by contrast, this is not the case for the working class. Social capital basically seeks to elucidate how social networks of different types can serve to access and obtain information of various kinds and thus generate or perpetuate class inequality in education (Field, 2010). Granovetter’s (1995) distinction between strong ties and weak ties and Woolcock’s (2001) typology of bonding ties (ties between people in similar situation), bridging ties (more distant ties of like persons), and linking ties (people in dislike situations) are two examples. While ambitious and appealing, the two concepts are met with theoretical challenges. Cultural capital also refers to cultural activities that are highly regarded in society; this reference does not tell us how such

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

activities are related to students’ academic performances and thus why such activities would benefit students in the education system (Sullivan, 2001). Cultural capital is criticised for conflating such cultural activities with activities that promote children’s cognitive development and enhance their academic performance (Lareau & Weininger, 2003; Van de Werfhorst, 2010). The use of social capital is incoherent and there is confusion over what social capital exactly refers to in the study of educational inequality. Coleman focuses on how social capital developed through connections with parents of their children’s classmates in the community (rather than parents of another school or parents outside of the community) helps parents to monitor and to keep children in school rather than having them drop out of school (Ferrara, 2015); but Bourdieu places an emphasis on how the social capital of middle-class parents is better rewarded by the education system than that of their working-class counterparts in terms of accessing relevant information for their children’s pursuit of educational goals (Ream & Palardy, 2008). Social capital is criticised for conflating the sources (Coleman’s sense of social capital) (e.g., Dakhi & De Clercq, 2004) with the consequences of different social networks (Bourdieu’s sense of social capital) (e.g., Field, 2005) in its explanations for class inequality in education. This difference between defining social capital as sources and defining social capital as consequences may seem subtle, but is perhaps worth noting when addressing different educational issues (Field, 2010). Nevertheless, such criticisms do not make the two concepts any less insightful in making sense of how class operates in educational inequality. Because of their cultural capital, either in an embodied state (e.g., mentality or disposition rewarded by the education system) or in an institutional state (e.g., first-hand experience of the education system), middle-class parents are knowledgeable about the operation of the education system and are thus capable of using economic capital and academic advice in such a way that their children would benefit from the education system vis-à-vis working-class parents (e.g., De Graaf et  al., 2000; Kim & Schneider, 2005). Furthermore, their social capital—whether involving strong ties/formal connections or weak ties/informal connections— enables middle-class parents to access information on how to promote their children’s educational success (Horvat et al., 2003; Crosnoe, 2004; Abada & Tenkorang, 2009). Where relevant information is concerned, ‘hot knowledge’ (or tacit knowledge) and ‘cold knowledge’ are differentiated (Ball & Vincent, 2001). ‘Hot knowledge’ refers to information

8 

Y.-L. WONG

obtained through the ‘grapevine,’ a particular manifestation of social networks (social capital), and it is related to recommendations based on first-­ hand experience (cultural capital). In contrast, ‘cold knowledge’ refers to information that is official or readily open to the public. It is argued that ‘hot knowledge’ is more reliable than ‘cold knowledge’ and thus will enable students to make more informed educational decisions.  y Focus: Their Parents’ Use of Capital for Students’ M Educational Pursuits Where examining parental assistance for reaching a decision on seeking a second chance of getting into university is concerned, my focus is essentially on the ability of parents of the middle and working classes to use economic capital and relevant information (constituting their cultural and social capital) for the sake of their children’s education rather than acquiring capital of different kinds as such. However, this effort risks being criticised for adopting a deficit approach, which emphasises a comparison between what middle-class parents have or do for their children’s education and what working-class parents do not, and I would be accused of upholding a prescribed standard of what parents should do for their children’s education to judge what parents actually do for their children’s education. What should be noted is that a deficit approach actually allows us to identify so-called symbolic capital: that is, capital, of various types, used by parents that is symbolically recognised by an education system. But this approach may have us overlook, if not misinterpret, parental support offered by working-class parents (Reese, 2002; Bottrell, 2009). Consequently, a sociological analysis of parental assistance undertaken in this book is supplemented by an examination from children’s own perspectives. Literature on the Class Nature of Educational Institutions As mentioned immediately above, parents are believed to make use of their capital to promote the educational success of their children; and, in doing so, parents are required to know how to work the education system to the favour of their children. Then, how is it possible for the qualities or skills of middle-class students to be rewarded more than those of their working-class counterparts by an educational institution? When class competition essentially takes place in basic education, sociologists examine the setup of schools: their curriculum designs, pedagogical preferences,

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

assessment formats, and teachers’ expectations of students (e.g., Giroux, 1981; Hammersley & Woods, 1984; Apple, 1988, 1995, 1999, 2000, 2009; Hargreaves, 1989; Jackson, 1990; Levinson et al., 1996; McLaren, 1998; Hammersley, 1999; Rothstein, 2004; Brint, 2006; Van Galen & Noblit, 2007; Barton et  al., 2012; Hammersley & Hargreaves, 2012; Harris & Williams, 2012; Stahl, 2018). With regards to curriculum, subjects taught at school are essentially academic rather than vocational subjects, taking more of a theoretical orientation than a practical orientation; ultimately, abstract and logical reasoning rather than common-sense reasoning are preferred at school (e.g., Meo, 2011; Rata, 2012; cf. Labaree, 1986; Lynch & O’Neill, 1994; Nash, 2002). It is then argued that this kind of emphasis on abstract and logical reasoning would favour more middle-class students than working-class students because middle-class students also use this kind of reasoning at home in communicating with their parents and siblings whereas working-­ class students do not but are instead nurtured at home with a common-­ sense reasoning. This class contrast is consistent with Bernstein’s (1973) differentiation of two language codes: elaborated code (cf. an abstract language) and restricted code (cf. a context-specific language); while both middle-class and working-class children are able to speak with a restricted code, middle-class children are found to be better able than working-class children to speak with an elaborated code which is preferred at school, and therefore the former are found to outperform the latter academically. However, differences are noted for schools of different rankings in regards to their respective pedagogical preferences and assessment formats (e.g., Anyon, 1980; cf. Oakes, 2005). With regards to pedagogy, high-­ ranking schools tend to take a student-centred approach and use interactive as well as creative teaching methods in order to develop students’ critical/independent thinking and nurture students’ leadership skills; by contrast, low-ranking schools tend to take a teacher-centred approach and use didactic teaching methods and rely on rote-learning or even drilling so as to make sure that students memorise a lot of facts rather than develop their own perspectives, and a great emphasis is placed on students’ obedience and compliance. With regards to assessment, low-ranking schools tend to rely on traditional pen-and-paper tests/examinations, which essentially seek to assess students’ ability to memorise factual information; by contrast, high-ranking schools tend to use a variety of assessment formats in addition to pen-and-paper tests/examinations, such as essay writing and individual/group projects (including oral presentations) and even

10 

Y.-L. WONG

portfolios, which aim to assess students’ ability to develop their ideas and formulate their arguments and even articulate their thoughts on the spot. The qualities cultivated in students resulting from such differences in pedagogical preferences and assessment formats between high-ranking and low-ranking schools are actually consistent with those nurtured through parenting within the middle and working classes, suggested by Kohn (1977). Because of their respective occupational orientations, middle-­class parents enjoy autonomy and self-direction in their work, but working-class parents learn that what are praised in their work settings are their obedience and deference to authority. Such occupational experiences lead middle-class and working-class parents to raise their children rather differently. Middle-class parents place a great emphasis on independence and self-discipline, and working-class parents on obedience and submission. Kohn’s work has never been examined sociologically; whether there indeed exists such a class divide in parenting is an empirical question to be examined further. This preference of parenting also leads middle-class and working-class parents to send their children to high-ranking and low-­ ranking schools respectively. Meanwhile, given class differences in parents’ capital, middle-class children are more likely than working-class children to be admitted to a high-ranking school, and working-class children are more likely than middle-class children to attend a low-ranking school. Despite the variation across schools of different rankings in pedagogy and assessment, it is argued that schools in general impose a middle-class standard in defining who is a good student and judging whether a student is doing (academically) well (e.g., Harris & Williams, 2012). In particular, teachers—in all kinds of schools—are usually more impressed by middle-­ class students’ appearance and behaviour than working-class students’ and consider the former to be smarter (cf. middle-class leadership vs. working-­ class obedience) and more articulate (cf. class-specific language code) than the latter (e.g., Hammersley & Hargreaves, 2012). Such qualities required or expected of students could be conceptualised to be students’ habitus and cultural capital when Bourdieu’s framework is applied (e.g., Stahl, 2015). In a way, arguably, middle-class students possess habitus matching the expectations of schools and cultural capital rewarded by schools, but working-class students do not have the matched habitus and necessary cultural capital. Consequently, regardless of the rankings of schools, middle-­class students are feeling at ease at school but working-class students have to struggle (e.g., Bourdieu, 1984, 1990); this, then, explains why middle-class students usually outperform academically their

1 INTRODUCTION 

11

working-class counterparts. In short, middle-class and working-class students are channelled to high-ranking schools and low-ranking schools respectively, and in general middle-class students usually outperform working-class students; this, in turn, explains why the middle class are more likely than the working class to get into university.  he Setup of Community College T Taking this argument about class a step further, higher education as a field in general and community college as its sub-field in particular could also be seen as of a middle-class nature (cf. Reay et al., 2009). The nature of subjects could be seen as the most obvious aspect that favours middle-class students as opposed to working-class students. Although subjects offered at community colleges are rather different from what are offered at school, as will be discussed in Chap. 2, these subjects remain theoretical rather than practical subjects. Theoretical knowledge, abstract thinking, and logical reasoning are valued more highly than folk wisdom, practical thinking, and personal intuition in an academic setting; there is no exception in community college. As will be reported in Chap. 2, community colleges seek to distinguish themselves from schools not only according to subjects offered but also according to pedagogical preferences (i.e., small-class teaching and student-­ centred interactive teaching) and by assessment formats (e.g., continuous assessment and a variety of assessments such as class participation, essay writing, and group work). In particular, in promoting itself to prospective students, in view of its liberal-arts orientation, the community college of this study believes that such pedagogical preferences and assessment formats would offer students a very different learning experience. Nevertheless, as is discussed briefly above, such pedagogical preferences and assessment formats seem to favour middle-class students rather than their working-class counterparts, especially those having attended high-­ ranking schools rather than low-ranking schools. But how such pedagogical preferences and assessment formats would actually enable middle-class students to do better than working-class students at this stage of education remains empirically under-researched. Moreover, taken together with cultural and social capital of parents discussed above (which will be discussed in Chap. 4), would middle-class parents be more familiar than working-class parents with the learning mode of community college and would this difference, if any, impact on their children’s studies at community college? Put simply, would the setup of community college lead

12 

Y.-L. WONG

middle-class students to outperform their working-class counterparts and how, if so, could this be possible?  y Focus: Students’ Learning Experiences at Community College M and Their Academic and Coping Strategies It is well noticed that social competition between classes has shifted its battlefield from basic education to higher education and thus from schools to tertiary institutions. However, analysis has mainly focussed on what parents do for their children to work the system of education, specifically to enable them to benefit from an educational institution. What have been under-explored are the performances and the learning experiences of students of different classes in a given tertiary institution with a specific focus on the setup of the institution. Specifically, would middle-class and working-­class students use rather different academic and coping strategies so as to benefit from the setup of the institution? And how far could we argue that such an institution is of a middle-class nature? This study seeks to address these issues. Literature on Parents’ Aspiration for Their Children’s Education and the Children’s Own Educational Aspiration Whether parents would use capital available for their children’s education depends on parents’ educational aspiration (cf. Wong, 2005). Similarly, whether children would make use of their parents’ capital for their education depends on the children’s educational aspiration. What is particularly puzzling is why at each branching point middle-class students are more likely to opt for ambitious educational choices than their working-class counterparts even when the level of their previous academic performances is the same (Nash, 2003, 2006). Boudon’s (1974) secondary effect of social stratification is of paramount relevance; class shapes primarily capital available at individuals’ disposal for educational pursuits and secondarily their educational aspirations (thus choices). Classed educational aspiration refers to the fact that middle-class and working-class parents, as well as their children, have very distinctive reference points and thus aspire to different levels of education. Working-class parents usually have a low qualification and are constrained financially; after weighing costs and benefits, either they do not see why their children should aspire to a high level of education or they simply could not afford for their children to do that. By contrast, middle-class parents oftentimes have a high qualification and

1 INTRODUCTION 

13

have an abundance of capital; using themselves as a reference, they see it necessary for their children to aspire to a high level of education and they could also afford to support their children to do that. This, then, explains why middle-class parents and their children usually choose more educationally ambitious options but their working-class counterparts do not throughout the course of their children’s education, and ultimately why middle-class children are more likely than working-class children to obtain a bachelor’s degree.  ational Choice Approach: Risk Aversion in Making R an Educational Choice What underlies the secondary effect of social stratification is an assumption that individual actors are essentially rational beings engaging in a cost-­ benefit analysis and seeking to maximise their gains in making an educational choice (Jackson, 2013). A rational choice approach refers to individual actors’ sensitivity to potential risk in making choices to explain a class gap in educational attainment, thus underscoring the sensibility of individual actors’ choices under their circumstances without blaming the actors (Gambetta, 1987; Voigt, 2007; Goldthorpe, 2016). A considerable number of quantitative studies take up this issue and show that middle-class and working-class students indeed differ in their risk aversion, in that they refer to dissimilar sets of relative opportunity cost in their calculations (e.g., time, finances, emotional/psychological cost, opportunity cost in terms of foregone earning or educational option, and even future employment prospects and earning derived from a job that requires this qualification) in weighing up different educational options. Consequently, even when they both have the same level of previous academic performances, middle-class students would still aspire to and indeed take up a more ambitious educational option at a particular branching point; by contrast, working-class students would not (e.g., Breen & Goldthorpe, 1997; Hillmert & Jacob, 2003; Becker & Hecken, 2009; Breen et al., 2014).  imitations of Rational Choice Approach L However logical it sounds, the conceptualisation of rationality as risk aversion in understanding class differences in educational choice are criticised; at least three points are noted. The first is the way in which it plays down the significance of context. The preferences of specific educational options do not exist in a cultural vacuum; the so-called rationality underlying such

14 

Y.-L. WONG

preferences could be context-specific (Ball et al., 2000). In particular, a rational calculation by no means tells us the social meaning of a bachelor’s degree in a specific context or its personal meaning to individual students of different classes (Archer & Hutchings, 2000). Presumably, each qualification would be linked with particular employment prospects and specific economic and social returns in a given social context. Therefore, the educational choices of students should be understood not only against a particular educational stratification but also against a specific wage stratification. The second criticism of such an approach to rationality targets at its simplification of different options. In quantitative studies, a choice is essentially made between a higher qualification with potentially higher future gains in terms of social and monetary returns and a lower qualification with secured immediate lower gains. However, when the sector of higher education has kept expanding in many industrial-capitalist societies, the expected value of a degree could be lowered in the future labour market (Van de Werfhorst, 2009). Besides, qualifications are not simply vertically ranked but also horizontally stratified (Gerber & Cheung, 2008). Consequently, it is not immediately transparent which choices are more educationally desirable or ambitious than others; neither is it immediately clear which choices are more rational than others to a given class. What has remained under-explored is how people process so-called risk when those in the middle and working classes are asked to choose between two or more similarly (un)desirable/(un)ambitious educational options. The third criticism of conceptualising rationality as risk aversion is levelled at the fact that the complexity of choice-making is overlooked. This conceptualisation does not tell us the (subjectively perceived) openness/ feasibility of a particular educational option to students of the middle and working classes against a specific educational hierarchy (Bourdieu, 1984). Bourdieu’s cultural capital is then of relevance. It is argued that Boudon’s secondary effect of social stratification and Bourdieu’s embodied state of cultural capital—in the form of one’s values attached to education or disposition to an educational option specific to their class/culture—are comparable in explaining educational aspiration and thus educational choices (e.g., Reay & Ball, 1997; Ball et al., 2000). In explaining why working-­ class students do not opt for an educationally ambitious option, risk aversion (rationality: this option is too risky or costly for me) and an embodied state of cultural capital in the form of their perception that such an option is beyond their reach (class/cultural disposition: this option is not for me)

1 INTRODUCTION 

15

could be similarly convincing. But what should be underscored is that a sense of ignorance or awareness that is well captured by cultural capital may not be conveyed by rationality. An educational choice is not necessarily derived from a set of pre-conceived preferences, but could result from negotiations between individual students and their respective structure (Lynch & O’Riordan, 1998). And such negotiations could even be messy (cf. Reay, 1996). In other words, the same individual may be rather ambivalent about a particular option, make contradictory comments on the option, and even finally make an arbitrary decision (Reay & Ball, 1997; Ball et al., 2002). I am not sure if Bourdieu’s cultural capital could address the processual and emotional aspects of choice-making, but rationality conceptualised as risk aversion—especially reported in quantitative studies—could by no means address these aspects of choice-making (Stevens et al., 2008).  y Focus: The Contextual, Processual, and Emotional Aspects M of Students’ Choice-Making What quantitative studies on risk aversion in educational choices seek to achieve is to offer an explanation based on universal/statistical regularity on the operation of secondary effect of social stratification. Nevertheless, how to make sense of such quantitative accounts is still reliant on researchers’ contextual interpretations (Reay & Ball, 1997). Consequently, the contextualisation of rationality, including the process (e.g., messiness, contradiction, and arbitrariness) and emotion involved in decision-­making, should be understood so as to provide an authentic illustration of the secondary effect of social stratification against a changing landscape of higher education. This study seeks to address these aspects of decision-making in the field of higher education. Literature on Emotions of Parents and Their Children in Relation to the Children’s Education Despite the persistence of a class gap, the democratisation of access to university makes it possible for a greater number of working-class students, as well as disadvantaged university students more generally (e.g., the so-called non-traditional university students in the UK, including mature students and ethnic minority students, and first-generation university students in the USA), to get into university. A number of studies then seek to make sense of the educational experiences of working-class

16 

Y.-L. WONG

university students and offer understandings of the operation of class against a changing landscape of higher education (e.g., Reay et al., 2010; Spiegler & Bednarek, 2013). In particular, many studies have examined the emotional aspect of working-class university students’ experiences in higher education; three concerns could be distinguished. The first concern is about whether in a neoliberal era, where education is seen as an individual’s investment for future social competition, an acquisition of a bachelor’s degree could be seen as an emotionally straining pursuit for working-class university students (Christie, 2009). The second concern is about working-class university students’ academic and social frustration at university due to their lack of academic and language skills to make an educational success as well as their lack of social skills to ease their social life there (e.g., Reay, 1998; Christie et al., 2004; Saunders & Serna, 2004; Christie et al., 2008; Barry et al., 2009; Reay et al., 2009; Delvin, 2013; McKay & Delvin, 2014). The third concern is about working-class university students’ contradictory feelings about studying at university and thus about their potential identity transformation; they were proud of their educational success, but they were ashamed of their working-class origin and felt out of place at university (e.g., Granfield, 1991; Lawler, 1999; Leathwood & O’Connell, 2003; Read et  al., 2003; Kaufman & Feldman, 2004; Aries & Seider, 2005, 2007; Lee & Kramer, 2013; Loveday, 2014; Mallman, 2015, 2017). Emotional strains, academic and social frustration, and contradictory feelings of working-class university students could somehow illustrate some specific emotional forms of class obstacles that the students have to overcome in order to become educationally successful. Meanwhile, such feelings or emotions (feelings and emotions are used interchangeably in this book despite their subtle differences between the words’ meanings) could also somehow explain why some working-class students find it difficult to adapt at university and some eventually drop out of university (cf. Quinn, 2004). As such, emotional strains, academic and social frustration, and contradictory feelings could be seen as constituting some further explanatory mechanisms for the persistence of a class gap in obtaining a bachelor’s degree despite an expansion of education. Additionally, echoing Sennett and Cobb’s (1972) hidden injuries of class, their contradictory feelings explain further why an immediate educational success or even eventual upward mobility and thus a social/economic achievement does not necessarily make working-class people feel more confident about themselves (Friedman, 2014; cf. Friedman, 2016).

1 INTRODUCTION 

17

In many studies mentioned above, some scholars take advantage of Bourdieu’s framework of class reproduction through education—together with his three major concepts—and then propose that Bourdieu’s framework could be extended to the emotional aspect of class (e.g., Reay, 2000). However, this extension thus far has focussed on the emotional involvement of parents in their children’s educational pursuits by taking advantage of the concept of emotional capital. Emotional capital as a concept, however, has not yet been fully utilised in understanding the relationship between emotion and class inequality in education. In particular, how could the concept of emotional capital be used to theorise further emotional strains, academic and social frustration, and contradictory feelings experienced by working-class university students so that we could make better sense of the emotional aspect of class operation/reproduction in the field of higher education? Most of the studies quoted above mainly focus on examining how class is lived out by working-­ class university students through an educational success. And yet, when students fail to get straight into university, an expansion of university education makes it possible for them to rectify this critical educational failure (cf. Marshall et al., 1997). In coping with this educational failure, their emotions, as well as the emotions of their parents, could be of particular interest. Then, an examination with reference to the concept of emotional capital of how class is lived out through a critical educational failure by students of the middle and working classes may shed light into making sense of the emotional aspect of class operation as well as class reproduction. In order to fill this gap, this study seeks to analyse how class is lived out through a critical educational failure. Emotional Capital Sociologists of emotions have argued that there exists a stratification of emotions and that it operates through class whereby middle-class people usually feel such positive emotions as pride and confidence but working-­ class people usually feel such negative emotions as shame and anxiety (Turner, 2010; cf. Collins, 1990; Barbalet, 1998). However, what remains unclear or under-theorised is the link between emotion and class reproduction. This link could be bridged by the concept of emotional capital. The concept of emotional capital has been widely used in the context of work and professionalisation. Two major applications of emotional capital could be distinguished. The first is to treat emotional capital as a kind of emotional labour in a specific industry; the focus of this application is on

18 

Y.-L. WONG

how the members of a particular industry activate and/or manage their feelings or emotions so as to get their jobs done (e.g., Bolton, 2005). The study of how flight attendants manage their emotions in dealing with difficult customers in order to live up to the professional standard set in the airline service is one classic example (Hochschild, 1983). The second application is to treat emotional capital as a kind of emotional socialisation in a particular profession; the focus of this application is on how some specific emotions are acquired—if not internalised—so that individuals could become members of particular professions (e.g., Iszatt-White, 2012). Studies of how such professionals as doctors, lawyers, and school principals should learn how to feel in particular ways so that they could handle their respective clients professionally have provided a variety of examples (e.g., Wharton, 2009). Such usages are somehow similar to the idea offered by Williams’s (1977) structure of feelings. This idea could perhaps be incorporated within Bourdieu’s framework (1984, 1990), in that emotional capital could arguably be seen as a specific kind of habitus or embodied cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1997). Two meanings could be derived from this incorporation: first, children of the working or middle classes are socialised to feel in particular ways; and, second, people of the working and middle classes are exposed to respective emotional regimes and thus used to managing their emotions in specific ways (e.g., Pugh, 2009; Froyum, 2010). Perhaps, certain classed emotions would be rewarded by the class system. And presumably, such emotions would allow middle-class people to cope better than working-class people in the system, in such a way that those emotions could even be seen as promoting social success for the middle class but prohibiting it for the working class. In other words, the concept of emotional capital could be seen as a kind of parents’ emotional socialisation. To repeat, presumably there exists a stratification of emotions (Turner, 2010). Emotional capital, then, could refer to individuals’ emotions specific to their class position and accompanied experiences. Be that as it may, an education system rewards such emotions as perseverance and resilience because such emotions could probably play positive roles in achieving educational success, although there is no proof that such emotions are class specific. However, as is shown in some studies, the two following emotions seem class specific: entitlement is more related to the middle class and doubt or lack of legitimacy to the working class. Indeed, a number of studies have vividly illustrated a sense of entitlement cultivated in middle-class students in either

1 INTRODUCTION 

19

boarding schools or elite universities (e.g., Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2009; Howard & Gaztambide-Fernandez, 2010; Jack, 2016; cf. Lareau, 2003). Similarly, working-class doubt or lack of legitimacy is also well documented in some studies, in that such a sense of doubt or lack of legitimacy could make working-class students feel their individual worth, dignity, and responsibility (e.g., Luttrell 1997; Friedman, 2014; cf. Jackson & Marsden, 1962). It would be of interest to examine how middle-class entitlement (vis-à-vis middle-class pride and confidence) and working-class doubt or lack of legitimacy (vis-à-vis working-class shame and anxiety) are being internalised by students of the middle and working classes respectively so as to cope emotionally in an education system. An examination of such kind could, then, shed light into the relationship between emotion and class inequality in education and thus class reproduction through education (Reay, 2005; cf. Sayer, 2005). What is of concern, then, is the ways in which parents with specific emotional capital socialise their children and thus pass on to them their emotional capital so that their children would feel in particular ways. The concept of emotional capital could also be seen as a kind of parents’ emotional labour. Indeed, the concept has already been used to theorise the roles of involvement of mothers of the middle and working classes in their children’s education (e.g., Lucey & Reay, 2002; Gillies, 2006; O’Brien, 2008). The concern of these studies is about how mothers activate or manage their emotional capital—in terms of knowledge, contacts and relations, and access to emotionally valued skills and assets (Nowotny, 1981)—so that such emotions could be translated into their children’s educational success (Zembylas, 2007; cf. Cottingham, 2016). And yet the following remark by Reay (2000) is worth noting. What is shown in many studies is that parental use of capital for their children’s education is directly proportional to their children’s educational achievement: the more the capital used, the higher the children’s educational achievement. But, whether this is also true of the relationship between parents’ emotional involvement and their children’s educational success remains unknown. For example, parents could get anxious about, angry at, or even disappointed at their children’s education; such emotions could surely be seen as conveying the parents’ expectations of their children; but such emotions could also arguably make a parent-child relationship strained and even adversely affect their children’s educational performances. Consequently, Reay’s remark underscores potential complexity involved in understanding two different operations of emotional capital in

20 

Y.-L. WONG

class reproduction through education. One is the intergenerational transmission of emotional capital and the other is the translation of parents’ emotional capital into their children’s educational success.  y Focus: Emotional Capital of Students in Seeking a Second Chance M Three points could be derived from the discussion above on conceptualising emotional capital to understand educational inequality. The first is to distinguish two aspects of emotional capital: children’s and their parents’ aspects. The second is to recognise that their parents’ emotions could be regarded as a kind of emotional support, as opposed to emotional capital; but, this very much depends on children’s interpretations, as will be reported in Chap. 4. And the third is to address an ambiguity suggested by Reay (2000) involved in making sense of emotional capital—of children or their parents—and thus to distinguish three understandings of emotional capital. The first understanding of emotional capital refers to emotions spontaneously expressed under certain educational circumstances, as it is argued in class-specific habitus. The second understanding of emotional capital refers to emotions strategically managed or activated in order to cope under a specific educational circumstance, as it is suggested in the understanding of emotional labour or doctrine of feelings. Finally, the third understanding of emotional capital refers to emotions— spontaneous or managed—rewarded by the education system or at least enabling individuals to cope well in the education system so that their educational success is promoted. This study attempts to examine how far emotions of students in seeking this second chance, as well as emotions of their parents, could be conceptualised as emotional capital so as to understand the operation of class in higher education.

Second Chance and Class Inequality in Education Theoretically speaking, students can still get subsequently into university even when they fail at a critical educational stage. A failure to get into university at their first attempt does not necessarily imply that student’s educational career should be terminated, but signals a need for a second chance. Indeed, an expansion of higher education not only allows more students to get directly into university but also makes it possible for students to seek a second chance. That is, against an expanded sector of higher education, their educational setback even at a critical stage or branching point is not necessarily an end of their pursuit of a bachelor’s

1 INTRODUCTION 

21

degree but could arguably be temporary; and this critical educational failure simply calls for additional parental support, as some sociologists have suggested (Marshall et al., 1997; Power et al., 2003; cf. Savage & Egerton, 1997). Would students of the middle class then remain advantaged in seeking a second chance vis-à-vis students of the working class? If so, then how is this possible? Or else, if students of the working class are able to take advantage of a second chance better than students of the middle class, then after all higher education could still serve as an equaliser in narrowing an observed class gap (cf. Wickersham, 2020). Despite a rapid expansion in higher education and thus the availability of a new second chance, parental assistance and educational aspiration for seeking such an immediate second chance is inadequately empirically researched. It is true that there are studies on second chance, but many focus on how individuals do that at a later stage in the UK (e.g., Britton & Baxter, 1999; Baxter & Britton, 2001; Leathwood & O’Connell, 2003) or how individuals do that in a community college through a transfer in the USA (Alfonso, 2006; Flaga, 2006; Grites, 2013). I therefore maintain my stand that an examination of how parents support their children to make an immediate second attempt is of increasing significance to a better understanding of the operation of class against a changing landscape of higher education in many industrial-capitalist societies. Community college in Hong Kong could be an example of such a second chance. Furthermore, how do students learn in seeking a second chance? In this case, how do they learn at community college in Hong Kong? Would the setup of community college also play a role in putting students of the middle class at an advantage vis-à-vis their working-class counterparts? This issue has remained unasked. As will be discussed in Chap. 2, community colleges in Hong Kong are rather different from their counterparts in the USA. In the USA, community college is a multi-function institution where remedial, junior-year college-level, vocational, or developmental courses are offered to students with different goals (e.g., Cohen & Brawer, 2003; Raby & Valeau, 2009); but considerable scholarly effort has still been made to examine the transfer function of community college, in serving as a different pathway to university, and thus its roles in educational inequality by focussing on attrition, retention, and transfer (e.g., Tinto, 1993, 2012; Townsend, 2001; Townsend & Wilson, 2006; Bahr, 2008; Dennis et al., 2008). As will be underscored in Chap. 2, nearly all students who enrol in community colleges in Hong Kong are not mature students but students of the relevant age who fail to get straight into university

22 

Y.-L. WONG

through the public examination(s) and seek a second chance through the transfer function of community college. This distinctiveness of the student body of community college in Hong Kong could be of great relevance to understanding their learning experience at community college. If any failure to obtain access to a bachelor’s degree programme is devastating, then it must be quite emotionally straining to make a second attempt. In seeking a second chance, students, supposedly, at least have to cope with frustration resulting from the failure of their first attempt and also to bear extra cost (e.g., taking more time). What are also under-­ explored are their emotional struggles. Moreover, how far can we say that their parents’ emotional support is of relevance to their experience of rectifying such an educational failure? If the persistence of a class gap is maintained not only through a class differential in getting straight into university (i.e., succeeding in making use of new opportunities as a result of an expansion of higher education) but also through a class differential in succeeding in taking advantage of a newly available second chance, then it would be definitely of great significance to examine how students of the middle and working classes rectify a critical educational failure, in regards to how they decide with the aid of their capital to seek a second chance, how they perform in seeking such a second chance, how they make relevant decisions in seeking a second chance, and how they feel about pursuing a second chance. Examinations of this kind would then provide additional mechanisms for explaining how it is possible to observe the persistence of a class gap in obtaining a bachelor’s degree despite a continuous expansion in higher education. Many studies seek to refer to one particular explanation to analyse their research findings on students’ educational experiences or to apply one specific framework to make sense of such findings. However, the four explanations are not competing explanations but could be seen as offering a variety of explanations at different stages of seeking this second chance; particularly, I shall explain further in the conclusion why I do not apply Bourdieu’s theoretical framework throughout the entire book. Indeed, not many studies examine the applicability of these four explanations simultaneously to understand the experiences of students who seek a second chance; I seek to do exactly this in this book. These four explanations will frame the analyses undertaken in this book about the experiences of 85 respondents of rectifying their critical educational failure in order to get into university in contemporary Hong Kong. Consequently, this book does not simply provide an empirical account of how students seek a

1 INTRODUCTION 

23

second chance, but engages simultaneously in four theoretical discussions over the operation of class in higher education and thus offers new/additional theoretical understandings of why class reproduction is possible against a changing landscape of higher education.

Organisation of This Book This book analyses the narratives of 85 community-college students on how they seek a second chance in order to offer new/additional explanatory mechanisms for the reproduction of class inequality through higher education. Consequently, this book suggests that a class gap exists not simply because students of the middle class are better able than students of the working class to take advantage of a continuous educational expansion to get straight into university, which has been well documented, but also because the former are better able than the latter to make use of the availability of a new option to rectify successfully a critical educational failure (and to succeed at a second attempt). Chapter 2 will provide an overview of the context for this study, describing the characteristics of the system of higher education in Hong Kong and discussing its major development over the years. One specific focus is the impact of the community college policy on the development of higher education in Hong Kong. Chapter 3 will make clear the rationale behind the research design of this study and discuss how this study has been conducted over a decade. In addition, the methodological concerns of this study and my reflections on how my background—professional and personal—impacts on the design and implementation of this study will also be discussed. Chapters 1, 2, and 3 then provide the background against which narratives of respondents are analysed with a class perspective. Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7 are four chapters reporting my empirical findings, analysing respectively how class operates in the aspects of respondents’ getting parental assistance to reach the decision on seeking a second chance, their learning experiences and academic and coping strategies at community college, their decision-making at two stages, and their feelings about their rectifications. Chapter 4 will examine the assistance provided by parents of respondents of the two classes for them after the failure of respondents to get straight into university. Specifically, the chapter focuses on what sort of parental advice, financial assistance, and emotional support that

24 

Y.-L. WONG

respondents received from their parents in coming to the same decision of taking an associate degree at community college so as to seek a second chance. This examination, then, provides an additional explanation for the perpetuation of class inequality through seeking a second chance. The newly available second chance was taken as another opportunity for rectifying a critical educational failure for middle-class respondents but it was regarded as the last resort for working-class respondents, meaning that the latter had to shoulder greater pressure in taking up the same option to seek a second chance. Chapter 5 will analyse the college lives and the learning experiences of respondents of the two classes. In particular, given the academic requirements of the community college of this study, the analysis focuses on what respondents did at community college in order to score a high grade point average (GPA), such as their course selection, their study routine, their performance in classes, their management of such designated types of assignments as individual essays and group projects, and also their handling of personal relationships in selection of groupmates and peer assessment. This analysis, then, illustrates class advantages of middle-class respondents in making use of the option of community college to rectify their critical educational failure vis-à-vis working-class respondents. The illustration will, in turn, enable us to discuss further if community college could be seen as a middle-class institution. Chapter 6 will investigate concerns underlying specific educational decisions made at two particular stages, namely, what programmes to apply for at the stage of seeking a transfer and what offer received (if any) to accept as the final offer at the end of their studies at community college. This investigation, then, illustrates how middle-class respondents were still more advantaged than working-class respondents in terms of accessibility to a variety of educational choices and finally obtaining the most desirable educational offer. Chapter 7 will explore the emotional aspect of respondents’ experiences in rectifying their critical educational failure. In particular, the concept of emotional capital will be used to theorise respondents’ feelings about their rectifications. Respondents all felt ashamed of failing to get straight into university through the public examination(s); and yet middle-­ class respondents then gained academic confidence and even felt entitled to a university education, offering a heroic account of their rectifications, but working-class respondents continued to doubt their academic selves and did not see it legitimate for them to receive a university education, still

1 INTRODUCTION 

25

feeling anxious about being seen as not deserving a place at university even when they succeeded in getting transferred. This exploration, then, provides an analysis of a mechanism for the reproduction of class inequality through education in the domain of emotion. As well as summarising this study’s major findings and their policy implications, Chap. 8 will make suggestions for further research on community college education in Hong Kong in particular and on higher education in general. As community college in Hong Kong as a research area has been under-researched, empirically speaking, this book then fills a specific gap in studies in higher education in Hong Kong. Theoretically, this book also offers insights into making sense of a particular puzzling issue of the persistence of a class gap despite a continuous expansion of education, and bettering our understanding of the operation of class in higher education more generally.

References Abada, T., & Tenkorang, E. Y. (2009). Pursuit of University Education among the Children of Immigrants in Canada: The Roles of Parental Human Capital and Social Capital. Journal of Youth Studies, 12(2), 185–207. Alfonso, M. (2006). The Impact of Community College Attendance on Baccalaureate Attainment. Research in Higher Education, 47(8), 873–903. Anyon, J. (1980). Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. Journal of Education, 162(1), 67–92. Apple, M. (1988). Teachers and Text. Routledge. Apple, M. (1995). Education and Power (2nd ed.). Routledge. Apple, M. (1999). Power, Meaning, and Identity: Essays in Critical Educational Studies. Peter Lang. Apple, M. (2000). Official Knowledge. Routledge. Apple, M. (2009). Ideology and Curriculum (3rd ed.). Routledge. Archer, L., & Hutchings, M. (2000). Bettering Yourself? Discourses of Risk, Cost and Benefit in Ethnically Diverse, Young Working-Class Non-participants’ Constructions of Higher Education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21(4), 555–574. Aries, E., & Seider, M. (2005). The Interactive Relationship between Class Identity and the College Experience: The Case of Lower Income Students. Qualitative Sociology, 28(4), 419–443. Aries, E., & Seider, M. (2007). The Role of Social Class in the Formation of Identity: A Study of Public and Elite Private College Students. Journal of Social Psychology, 147(2), 137–157.

26 

Y.-L. WONG

Baert, S., & Cockx, B. (2013). Pure Ethnic Gaps in Educational Attainment and School to Work Transitions: When Do They Arise? Economics of Education Review, 36, 276–294. Bahr, P. (2008). Cooling Out in the Community College: What is the Effect of Academic Advising on Students’ Chances of Success? Research in Higher Education, 49(8), 704–732. Ball, S. (2003). Class Strategies and the Educational Market: The Middle Classes and Social Advantage. RoutledgeFalmer. Ball, S., Davies, J., David, M., & Reay, D. (2002). “Classification” and “Judgement”: Social Class and the “Cognitive Structure” of Choice of Higher Education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(1), 51–72. Ball, S., Maguire, M., & Macrae, S. (2000). Choice, Pathways and Transitions Post-16: New Youth, New Economies in the Global City. RoutledgeFalmer. Ball, S., & Vincent, C. (2001). New Class Relations in Education: The Strategies of the “Fearful” Middle Classes. In J. Demaine (Ed.), Sociology of Education Today. Palgrave. Barbalet, J. (1998). Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach. Cambridge University Press. Barry, L. M., Hudley, C., Kelly, M., & Cho, S. (2009). Differences in Self-reported Disclosure of College Experiences by First-Generation College Student Status. Adolescence, 44, 55–68. Barton, L., Meighan, R., & Walker, S. (Eds.). ([1980] 2012). Schooling, Ideology, and the Curriculum. Routledge. Bathmaker, A.-M., Ingram, N., & Waller, R. (2013). Higher Education, Social Class and the Mobilisation of Capitals: Recognising and Playing the Game. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(5–6), 723–743. Baxter, A., & Britton, C. (2001). Risk, Identity and Change: Becoming a Mature Student. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 11(1), 87–102. Becker, R., & Hecken, A. E. (2009). Why are Working-Class Children Diverted from Universities?—An Empirical Assessment of the Diversion Thesis. European Sociological Review, 25(2), 233–250. Bernstein, B. (1973). Knowledge, Education, and Cultural Change (1st ed.). Routledge. Bolton, S. (2005). Emotion Management in the Workplace. Palgrave Macmillan. Bottrell, D. (2009). Dealing with Disadvantage: Resilience and the Social Capital of Young People’s Networks. Youth and Society, 40(4), 476–501. Boudon, R. (1974). Education, Opportunity and Social Inequality. John Wiley. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction. Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice (R. Nice, Trans.). Polity Press. Bourdieu, P. (1997). The Forms of Capital. In A. H. Halsey, H. Lauder, P. Brown, & A.  S. Wells (Eds.), Education: Culture, Economy, and Society. Oxford University Press.

1 INTRODUCTION 

27

Breen, R., & Goldthorpe, J.  H. (1997). Explaining Educational Differentials: Towards a Formal Rational Action Theory. Rationality and Society, 9(3), 275–305. Breen, R., Van de Werfhorst, H.  G., & Jaeger, M.  M. (2014). Deciding under Doubt: A Theory of Risk Aversion, Time Discounting Preferences, and Educational Decision-making. European Sociological Review, 30(2), 258–270. Brint, S. (2006). Schools and Societies (2nd ed.). Stanford University Press. Britton, C., & Baxter, A. (1999). Becoming a Mature Student: Gendered Narratives of the Self. Gender and Education, 11(2), 179–193. Brown, P. (1990). The “Third Wave”: Education and the Ideology of Parentocracy. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(1), 65–85. Brown, P., Lauder, H., & Ashton, D. (2010). The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Rewards. Oxford University Press. Buchmann, C., DiPrete, T.  A., & McDaniel, A. (2008). Gender Inequalities in Education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 319–337. Christie, H. (2009). Emotional Journeys: Young People and Transitions to University. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(2), 123–136. Christie, H., Munro, M., & Fisher, T. (2004). Leaving University Early: Exploring the Differences between Continuing and Non-continuing Students. Studies in Higher Education, 29(5), 617–636. Christie, H., Tett, L., Cree, V. E., Hounsell, J., & McCune, V. (2008). A Real Rollercoaster of Confidence and Emotions: Learning to be a University Student. Studies in Higher Education, 33(5), 567–581. Cloonan, M. (2004). Notions of Flexibility in UK Higher Education: Core and Periphery Re-visited? Higher Education Quarterly, 58(2/3), 176–197. Cohen, A. M., & Brawer, F. (2003). The American Community College. Jossey-Bass. Coleman, J. (1990). Equality and Achievement in Education. Westview Press. Collins, R. (1990). Stratification, Emotional Energy, and the Transient Emotions. In T.  D. Kemper (Ed.), Research Agendas in the Sociology of Emotion. State University of New York Press. Cottingham, M.  D. (2016). Theorizing Emotional Capital. Theory and Society, 45(5), 451–470. Crosnoe, R. (2004). Social Capital and the Interplay of Families and Schools. Journal of Marriage and Family, 66(2), 267–280. Dakhi, M., & De Clercq, D. (2004). Human Capital, Social Capital and Innovation: A Multi-country Study. Entrepreneurship and Regional Development, 16, 107–128. De Graaf, N. D., De Graaf, P. M., & Kraaykamp, G. (2000). Parental Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment in the Netherlands: A Refinement of the Cultural Capital Perspective. Sociology of Education, 73(Apr.), 92–111.

28 

Y.-L. WONG

Delvin, M. (2013). Bridging Socio-cultural Incongruity: Conceptualising the Success of Students from Low Socio-economic Status Backgrounds in Australia Higher Education. Studies in Higher Education, 38(6), 939–949. Dennis, J.  M., Calvillo, E., & Gonzalez, A. (2008). The Role of Psychosocial Variables in Understanding the Achievement and Retention of Transfer Students at an Ethnically Diverse Urban University. Journal of College Student Development, 49(6), 535–550. Education Commission Report. (2000). Learning for Life, Learning through Life, Reform Proposals for the Education System in Hong Kong. Edwards, R., & Alldred, P. (2000). A Typology of Parental Involvement in Education Centring on Children and Young People: Negotiating Familialisation, Institutionalisation and Individualisation. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21(3), 435–455. Fergusson, D. M., Horwood, L. J., & Boden, J. M. (2008). The Transmission of Social Inequality: Examination of the Linkages between Family Socioeconomic Status in Childhood and Educational Achievement in Young Adulthood. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 26, 277–295. Ferrara, M.  M. (2015). Parental Involvement Facilitators: Unlocking Social Capital Wealth. School Community Journal, 25(1), 29–51. Field, J. (2005). Social Capital and Lifelong Learning. Policy Press. Field, J. (2010). Social Capital (2nd ed.). Routledge. Fingerman, K. L., Cheng, Y., Kim, K., Fung, H. H., Han, G., Lang, F. R., Lee, W., & Wagner, J. (2014). Parental Involvement with College Students in Germany, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States. Journal of Family Issues. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X14541444 Flaga, C. T. (2006). The Process of Transition for Community College Transfer Students. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 30(1), 3–19. Friedman, S. (2014). The Price of the Ticket: Rethinking the Experience of Social Mobility. Sociology, 48(2), 352–368. Friedman, S. (2016). Habitus Clive and the Emotional Imprint of Social Mobility. The Sociological Review, 64, 129–147. Froyum, C.  M. (2010). The Reproduction of Inequalities Through Emotional Capital: The Case of Socializing Low-income Black Girls. Qualitative Sociology, 33(1), 37–54. Gambetta, D. (1987). Were They Pushed or Did They Jump? Individual Decision Mechanisms in Education. Cambridge University Press. Gaztambide-Fernandez, R. (2009). The Best of the Best: Becoming Elite at an American Boarding School. Harvard University Press. Gerber, T. P., & Cheung, S. Y. (2008). Horizontal Stratification in Postsecondary Education: Forms, Explanations, and Implications. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 299–318.

1 INTRODUCTION 

29

Gillies, V. (2006). Working Class Mothers and School Life: Exploring the Role of Emotional Capital. Gender and Education, 18(3), 281–293. Giroux, H.  A. (1981). Ideology Culture and the Process of Schooling. The Falmer Press. Goldthorpe, J.  H. (2016). Sociology as a Population Science. Cambridge University Press. Granfield, R. (1991). Making it by Faking it: Working-Class Students in Elite Academic Environment. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 20(3), 331–351. Granovetter, M. (1995). Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Grites, T.  J. (2013). Successful Transitions from Two-Year to Four-Year Institutions. New Directions for Higher Education, 162, 61–68. Hammersley, M. (Ed.). (1999). Researching School Experience: Ethnographic Studies of Teaching and Learning. Falmer Press. Hammersley, M., & Hargreaves, A. (2012). Curriculum Practice: Some Sociological Case Studies. Routledge. Hammersley, M., & Woods, P. (Eds.). (1984). Life in Schools: The Sociology of Pupil Culture. Open University Press. Hargreaves, A. (1989). Curriculum and Assessment Reform. Open University Press. Harris, D., & Williams, J. (2012). The Association of Classroom Interactions, Year Group and Social Class. British Educational Research Journal, 38(3), 373–397. Hartas, D. (2012). Inequality and the Home Learning Environment: Predictions about Seven-Year-Olds’ Language and Literacy. British Educational Research Journal, 38(5), 859–879. Henderson, M. (2013). A Test of Parenting Strategies. Sociology, 47(3), 542–559. Hillmert, S., & Jacob, M. (2003). Social Inequality in Higher Education: Is Vocational Training a Pathway Leading to or Away from University? European Sociological Review, 19(3), 319–334. Hochschild, A.  R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (1961). Hong Kong 1961 Population Census Main Report. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (2016). Hong Kong 2016 Population By-Census Summary Results. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Horvat, E. M., Weininger, E. B., & Lareau, A. (2003). From Social Ties to Social Capital: Class Differences in the Relations between Schools and Parent Networks. American Educational Research Journal, 40(2), 319–351. Hout, M. (2006). Maximally Maintained Inequality and Essentially Maintained Inequality: Crossnational Comparisons. Sociological Theory and Methods, 21(2), 237–252.

30 

Y.-L. WONG

Hout, M., & DiPrete, T. A. (2006). What We have Learned: RC28’s Contributions to Knowledge about Social Stratification. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 24, 1–20. Howard, A., & Gaztambide-Fernandez, R. (2010). Educating Elites: Class Privilege and Educational Advantage. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Iszatt-White, M. (Ed.). (2012). Leadership as Emotional Labour: Management and the ‘Managed Heart’. Routledge. Jack, A. A. (2016). (No) Harm in Asking: Class Acquired Cultural Capital, and Academic Engagement at an Elite University. Sociology of Education, 89(1), 1–19. Jackson, B., & Marsden, D. (1962). Education and the Working Class. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Jackson, M. V. (Ed.). (2013). Determined to Succeed: Performance versus Choice in Educational Attainment. Stanford University Press. Jackson, P. W. (1990). Life in Classrooms. Teachers College, Columbia University. Kaufman, P., & Feldman, K.  A. (2004). Forming Identities in College: A Sociological Approach. Research in Higher Education, 45(5), 463–496. Kim, D.  H., & Schneider, B. (2005). Social Capital in Action: Alignment of Parental Support in Adolescents’ Transition to Postsecondary Education. Social Forces, 84(2), 1181–1206. Kohn, M. L. (1977). Class and Conformity: A Study in Values (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Labaree, D. (1986). Curriculum, Credentials, and the Middle Class: A Case Study of Nineteenth-Century High School. Sociology of Education, 59(Jan.), 42–57. Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal Childhood: The Importance of Social Class in Family Life. University of California Press. Lareau, A., & Weininger, E. B. (2003). Cultural Capital in Educational Research: A Critical Assessment. Theory and Society, 32, 567–606. Lawler, S. (1999). “Getting Out and Getting Away”: Women’s Narratives of Class Mobility. Feminist Review, 63(Autumn), 3–24. Leathwood, C., & O’Connell, P. (2003). “It’s a Struggle”: The Construction of the “New Student” in Higher Education. Journal of Education Policy, 18(6), 597–615. Lee, E. M., & Kramer, R. (2013). Out with the Old, In with the New? Habitus and Social Mobility at Selective Colleges. Sociology of Education, 86(1), 18–35. Levinson, B.  L., Foley, D.  E., & Holland, D.  C. (Eds.). (1996). The Cultural Production of the Educated Person: Critical Ethnographies of Schooling and Local Practice. State University of New York Press. Loveday, V. (2014). Working-Class Participation, Middle-class Aspiration? Value, Upward Mobility and Symbolic Indebtedness in Higher Education. The Sociological Review, 63, 570–588.

1 INTRODUCTION 

31

Lucas, S.  R. (2001). Effectively Maintained Inequality: Education Transitions, Track Mobility, and Social Background Effects. American Journal of Sociology, 106(6), 1642–1690. Lucey, H., & Reay, D. (2002). Carrying the Beacon of Excellence: Social Class Differentiation and Anxiety at a Time of Transition. Journal of Education Policy, 17(3), 321–336. Luttrell, W. (1997). Schoolsmart and Motherwise. Routledge. Lynch, K., & Moran, M. (2006). Markets, Schools and the Convertibility of Economic Capital: The Complex Dynamics of Class Choice. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(2), 221–235. Lynch, K., & O’Neill, C. (1994). The Colonisation of Social Class in Education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15(3), 307–324. Lynch, K., & O’Riordan, C. (1998). Inequality in Higher Education: A Study of Class Barriers. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 19(4), 445–478. Mallman, M. (2015). Not Entirely at Home: Upward Social Mobility and Early Family Life. Journal of Sociology, 53(1), 18–31. Mallman, M. (2017). The Perceived Inherent Vice of Working-Class University Students. The Sociological Review, 65(2), 235–250. Marshall, G., Swift, A., & Roberts, S. (1997). Against the Odds. Clarendon Press. McKay, J., & Delvin, M. (2014). “Uni has a Different Language…to the Real World”: Demystifying Academic Culture and Discourse for Students from Low Socioeconomic Backgrounds. Higher Education Research and Development, 33(5), 949–961. McLaren, P. (1998). Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education (3rd ed.). Longman. Meo, A. I. (2011). Zafar, So Good: Middle-class Students, School Habitus and Secondary Schooling in the City of Buenos Aires (Argentina). British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(3), 349–367. Moore, R. (2004). Education and Society: Issues and Explanations in the Sociology of Education. Polity Press. Nash, R. (2002). The Educated Habitus, Progress at School, and Real Knowledge. Interchange, 33(1), 27–48. Nash, R. (2003). Social Explanation and Socialization: On Bourdieu and the Structure, Disposition, Practice Scheme. The Sociological Review, 51(1), 43–62. Nash, R. (2006). Controlling for “Ability”: A Conceptual and Empirical Study of Primary and Secondary Effects. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(2), 157–172. Nowotny, H. (1981). Women in Public Life in Austria. In C.  F. Epstein & R. L. Coser (Eds.), Access to Power: Cross-national Studies of Women and Elites (pp. 147–156). George Allen & Unwin. O’Brien, M. (2008). Gendered Capital: Emotional Capital and Mothers’ Care Work in Education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29(2), 137–148.

32 

Y.-L. WONG

Oakes, J. (2005). Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality (2nd ed.). Yale University Press. Power, S., Edwards, T., Whitty, G., & Wigfall, V. (2003). Education and the Middle Class. Open University Press. Pugh, A.  J. (2009). Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture. University of California Press. Putnam, R. D. (1993). Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton University Press. Quinn, J. (2004). Understanding Working-Class “Drop-Out” from Higher Education through a Sociocultural Lens: Cultural Narratives and Local Contexts. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 14(1), 57–74. Raby, R.  L., & Valeau, E.  J. (Eds.). (2009). Community College Models: Globalization and Higher Education Reform. Springer. Raftery, A. E., & Hout, M. (1993). Maximally Maintained Inequality: Expansion, Reform, and Opportunity in Irish Education, 1921–75. Sociology of Education, 66(1), 41–62. Rata, E. (2012). The Politics of Knowledge in Education. British Educational Research Journal, 38(1), 103–124. Read, B., Archer, L., & Leathwood, C. (2003). Challenging Cultures? Student Conceptions of “Belonging” and “Isolation” at a Post-1992 University. Studies in Higher Education, 28(3), 261–277. Ream, R. K., & Palardy, G. J. (2008). Reexamining Social Class Differences in the Availability and the Educational Utility of Parental Social Capital. American Educational Research Journal, 45(2), 238–273. Reay, D. (1996). Contextualising Choice: Social Power and Parental Involvement. British Educational Research Journal, 22(5), 581–596. Reay, D. (1998). “Always Knowing” and “Never Being Sure”: Familial and Institutional Habituses and Higher Education Choice. Journal of Education Policy, 13(4), 519–529. Reay, D. (2000). A Useful Extension of Bourdieu’s Conceptual Framework?: Emotional Capital as a Way of Understanding Mothers’ Involvement in Their Children’s Education? The Sociological Review, 48(4), 568–585. Reay, D. (2005). Beyond Consciousness? The Psychic Landscape of Social Class. Sociology, 39(5), 911–928. Reay, D., & Ball, S.  J. (1997). “Spoilt for Choice”: The Working Classes and Educational Markets. Oxford Review of Education, 23(1), 89–101. Reay, D., Crozier, G., & Clayton, J. (2009). “Strangers in Paradise”? Working-­ Class Students in Elite Universities. Sociology, 43(6), 1103–1121. Reay, D., Crozier, G., & Clayton, J. (2010). “Fitting In” or “Standing Out”: Working-Class Students in UK Higher Education. British Educational Research Journal, 36(1), 107–124.

1 INTRODUCTION 

33

Reay, D., Davies, J., David, M., & Ball, S. (2001). Choices of Degree or Degree of Choice? Class, “Race” and the Higher Education Choice Process. Sociology, 35(4), 855–874. Reese, L. (2002). Parental Strategies in Contrasting Cultural Settings: Families in Mexico and “El Norte”. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 33(1), 30–59. Rothstein, R. (2004). Class and Schools. Teachers College Press. Saunders, M., & Serna, I. (2004). Making College Happen: The College Experiences of First-Generation Latino Students. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 3, 146–163. Savage, M., & Egerton, M. (1997). Social Mobility, Individual Ability and the Inheritance of Class Inequality. Sociology, 31(4), 645–672. Sayer, A. (2005). The Moral Significance of Class. Cambridge University Press. Schofer, E., & Meyer, J.  W. (2005). The Worldwide Expansion of Higher Education in the Twentieth Century. American Sociological Review, 70(Dec.), 898–920. Sennett, R., & Cobb, J. (1972). The Hidden Injuries of Class. Norton and Company. Spiegler, T., & Bednarek, A. (2013). First-Generation Students: What We Ask, What We Know and What it Means: An International Review of the State of Research. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 23(4), 318–337. Stahl, G. (2015). Identity, Neoliberalism and Aspiration: Educating White Working-Class Boys. Routledge. Stahl, G. (2018). Ethnography of a Neoliberal School: Building Cultures of Success. Routledge. Stevens, M. L., Armstrong, E. A., & Arum, R. (2008). Sieve, Incubator, Temple, Hub: Empirical and Theoretical Advances in the Sociology of Higher Education. Annual Review of Sociology, 34, 127–151. Sullivan, A. (2001). Cultural Capital and Educational Attainment. Sociology, 35(4), 893–912. Thompson, D.  W. (2008). Widening Participation and Higher Education. Students, Systems and Other Paradoxes. London Review of Education, 6(2), 137–147. Tinto, V. (1993). Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Tinto, V. (2012). Completing College: Rethinking Institutional Action. University of Chicago Press. Torres, C. A., & Antikainen, A. (Eds.). (2003). The International Handbook on the Sociology of Education: An International Assessment of New Research and Theory. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Townsend, B. K. (2001). Redefining the Community College Transfer Mission. Community College Review, 29(2), 29–42.

34 

Y.-L. WONG

Townsend, B. K., & Wilson, K. B. (2006). A Hand Hold for a Little Bit: Factors Facilitating the Success of Community College Transfer Students to a Large Research University. Journal of College Student Development, 47(4), 439–456. Turner, J.  H. (2010). The Stratification of Emotions: Some Preliminary Generalizations. Sociological Inquiry, 80(2), 168–199. Van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2009). Credential Inflation and Educational Strategies: A Comparison of the United States and the Netherlands. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 27, 269–284. Van de Werfhorst, H. G. (2010). Cultural Capital: Strengths, Weaknesses and Two Advancements. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31(2), 157–169. Van Galen, J. A., & Noblit, G. W. (Eds.). (2007). Late to Class: Social Class and Schooling in the New Economy. State University of New York Press. Voigt, K. (2007). Individual Choice and Unequal Participation in Higher Education. Theory and Research in Education, 5(1), 87–112. West, A., Noden, P., Edge, A., & David, M. (1998). Parental Involvement in Education In and Out of School. British Educational Research Journal, 24(4), 461–484. Wharton, A. S. (2009). The Sociology of Emotional Labour. Annual Review of Sociology, 35, 147–165. Wickersham, K. R. (2020). Where to Go from Here? Toward a Model of 2-Year College Students’ Postsecondary Pathway Selection. Community College Review, 48(2), 107–132. Wilder, S. (2014). Effects of Parental Involvement on Academic Achievement: A Meta-synthesis. Educational Review, 66(3), 377–397. Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press. Wong, Y.  L. (2005). Class and the Educational Attainment of Siblings: An Explanatory Model for Social Mobility. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 23, 129–151. Wong, Y. L. (2011). Social Mobility in Post-war Hong Kong Volume One: Getting Ahead. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Woolcock, M. (2001). The Place of Social Capital in Understanding Social and Economic Outcomes. Isuma: Canadian Journal of Policy Research, 2(1), 11–17. Zembylas, M. (2007). Emotional Capital and Education: Theoretical Insights from Bourdieu. British Journal of Educational Studies, 55(4), 443–463.

CHAPTER 2

The Development of Higher Education in Hong Kong: An Overview

The last few decades have witnessed a number of changes in the sector of higher education in Hong Kong, particularly its rapid expansion: an increasing number of degree-granting institutions—publicly or privately funded—and a boom in the sector of sub-degree programmes. Moreover, new routes to university have been created ever since the launch of the community college policy in 2000. Briefly, a bachelor’s degree has become more and more accessible to relevant-age students in Hong Kong. This chapter discusses the context within which respondents of this book decided to pursue a second chance in a community college, studied in the college with a variety of academic and coping strategies, made decisions at two critical stages in order to get transferred to a degree programme, and felt about their pursuit of this second chance. In what follows, I shall firstly describe the major characteristics of the education system in Hong Kong. Secondly, I shall report on significant changes in the sector of higher education over the last few decades, particularly those resulting from the implementation of the community college policy. Finally, I shall end this chapter by underscoring the implications of the community college policy for class inequality in higher education in Hong Kong.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Y.-L. Wong, Community College Students in Hong Kong, Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82461-7_2

35

36 

Y.-L. WONG

The Education System in Hong Kong Ever since 2018, basic education including pre-school nursery education has become freely available to every child; and, except for pre-school nursery education, education at all levels is basically provided by the Hong Kong government (cf. Post, 2003). The education system in Hong Kong is characterised by its selectivity and examination orientation, where students are encouraged to compete at the end of basic education in a common standardised examination so as to get into university. Despite the free provision of fifteen-year basic education from 2018 onwards, and despite an expansion in the sector of university education, only a certain number of students (the annual quota being set at 15,000 ever since 2012, as will be discussed below) could receive a place in a university funded by the University Grants Committee (UGC) in Hong Kong. Four Types of Schools and Three Academic Bandings At the time of the 2020–2021 school year, there are 504 secondary schools, 587 primary schools, and 61 special schools in Hong Kong. Four types of primary/secondary schools according to their management and funding sources could be distinguished: government, aided, private, and direct subsidy scheme schools. Most schools are aided schools; fewer than 10% are government schools (31 secondary schools and 34 primary schools), 71 are direct subsidy schools (50 secondary schools, 12 primary schools, and 9 primary-cum-secondary schools), and only very few are private schools (usually international schools) (the website of Hong Kong Education Bureau). Government schools are run and funded by the government; aided schools are run by their respective sponsoring bodies (e.g., churches and trade associations) but are fully subsidised by the government. Governmental monitoring is strictly imposed on government or aided schools. By contrast, private schools are run and funded by their sponsoring bodies. Direct subsidy scheme schools are partly similar to aided schools and partly similar to private schools. Like aided schools, direct subsidy scheme schools also receive subsides from the government; but such subsides are in the form of a block grant. Meanwhile, like private schools, direct subsidy scheme schools are allowed to charge their students tuition fees and enjoy autonomy in staffing and student recruitment; however, unlike private schools, they have to comply with more governmental restrictions on the setting of tuition fees.

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

37

Four types of schools in Hong Kong are fundamentally grammar or academically tracked schools; three academic bandings are distinguished according to the following practice. All primary students are ranked according to their academic performances at the end of primary education (around at the age of eleven) and divided into three academic bandings (the website of Hong Kong Education Bureau). Secondary schools previously assigned to take up most students ranked as the top third are named band-one schools; by contrast, their band-three counterparts are previously assigned to take up most students ranked as the bottom third. In order to be attractive to prospective students and their parents, primary schools seek to send as many of their graduates as possible to band-one secondary schools, and secondary schools seek both to recruit as many band-one students as possible and to send off as many of their graduates as possible to local or overseas top-ranking universities. Educational Pathways Figure 2.1 shows that, before the change of 2012, in order to stay on in education, students had to go through a number of centralised allocation schemes and public examinations. At present, apart from a three-year free pre-nursery education, a twelve-­ year basic education—six years of primary education and six years of secondary education—is free and compulsory to all students. Since 1983, all school-age students at the age of six have to join the centrally administered Primary One Admission Scheme (POAS) (e.g., Sweeting, 2004). Their parents are required to choose a certain number of primary schools at the beginning of the last year of pre-nursery education and school-age students are assigned through POAS to a primary school of their parents’ choice at the end of that school year. Then, at the end of primary education, every student at the age of eleven has to join the Secondary School Placement Allocation Scheme (SSPAS) so that they will get allocated to a secondary school. That is, at the beginning of the last school year of primary education all students are required to choose a certain number of secondary schools and are assigned through SSPAS to a secondary school of their choice at the end of that school year. In addition to joining the centralised POAS/SSPAS, students could privately apply for primary/secondary schools of their choice; primary/secondary school principals have some discretion to take a proportion of students into their schools not through POAS/SSPAS.

38 

Y.-L. WONG

Kindergarten (K1-K3; age: 3-5) POAS Primary Education (P1-P6; age: 6-11) SSPAS Secondary Education (S1-S5; age 12-16) technician/craft level courses HKCEE

project Yi Jin launched in 2000

Matriculation (S6-S7; age 17-18) sub-degree courses (primarily higher diploma programmes) HKALE

associate degree programmes begun in 2000

University or Tertiary Education

New path has become available since 2000 Keys: POAS – Primary One Allocation Scheme SSPAS – Secondary School Placement Allocation Scheme HKCEE – Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination HKALE – Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination P: primary form S: secondary form K: kindergarten form Fig. 2.1  The education system in Hong Kong before 2012. (Source: Wong (2015: Fig. 1))

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

39

Before 2012, at the end of a five-year secondary education, students had to sit for the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE), usually at the age of sixteen. The results of this public examination determined whether students could get a place in secondary form six; roughly about 40% of students received a place for a two-year course in preparation for the public examination usually taken at the age of eighteen: the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE). Given the annual quota set for UGC-funded universities, which was 14,500 before 2012, roughly about 50% of students who sat HKALE could get a place at a UGC-funded university. In short, at the time about 16–20% of relevant-­ age students (who passed both HKCEE and HKALE) could get into a UGC-funded university. From 2012 onwards, the system is changed from a model of five-year secondary education, two-year matriculation, and three-year university education to a model of three-year junior secondary education, three-year senior secondary education, and four-year university education. The two public examinations at the end of each of the two educational stages in the previous model—that is, HKCEE and HKALE—are replaced by one public examination at the end of basic education: the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE). Two Improvements Over the last five decades the provision of local education for the population has been improved in two significant ways. The first is that a basic education has become free and universal. The passage of the acts of free, universal, and compulsory six-year, nine-year, and then twelve-year education in 1971, 1978, and 2012 respectively makes basic education (six years of primary education, followed by three years of junior secondary education, extended to three years of senior secondary education) readily available to everyone (cf. Hambro, 1955). Furthermore, from 2018 onwards, a fifteen-year education (i.e., a twelve-year basic education and a three-­ year pre-school nursery education) has been freely available to all children. The second improvement is that the system of university education in Hong Kong, and its system of higher education more generally, has become less elitist. An increase in the number of local degree-granting institutions allows a greater proportion of students of the relevant age to receive a university education; this proportion has increased drastically from about 2% in the 1960s, to about 16–18% in the mid-1990s, and to

40 

Y.-L. WONG

about 25% now. Sweeting (2004) underscored that this proportion was increased greatly to 8% in 1990 and then even more drastically to 16–18% in 1995 because of the crisis of legitimacy facing the colonial British government in the late 1980s and the early 1990s when many Hong Kong people emigrated in order to seek political security in view of the handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 (Mok, 2012; cf. Faure, 2003). From 1995 onwards the number of first-year first-degree places at UGC-funded universities was set at a quota of 14,500 each year, finally increased to 15,000 in 2012 (approximately 22–25% of students of the relevant age, varying according to the yearly total number of relevant-­ age students). These two improvements can also be seen from general statistics. In 1961, nearly 80% of the population aged fifteen and above had at most a primary education (with about 30% having no education) whereas only about 4% had a tertiary education (including a non-degree education); in stark contrast, in 2016, only 20% of the population aged fifteen and above had primary education or below whereas over 70% had at least a secondary education (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001, 2006, 2011, 2016).

Significant Changes in the Sector of Higher Education The education system of Hong Kong was rather elitist, especially before the 1990s; the number of places in post-secondary education, let alone university education, was limited. There was only one, public, university in Hong Kong (i.e., the University of Hong Kong) before the second university (i.e., the Chinese University of Hong Kong) was opened in 1963. But, the sector of university education has expanded ever since the third university (i.e., the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology) was established in 1992: from two public universities in 1963 to seven in the mid-1990s. Table 2.1 shows that there are now twenty-two degree-­ granting institutions. Out of twenty-two degree-granting institutions, eight public universities are funded by the UGC. Ever since the beginning of the new century the Hong Kong government has been seeking to expand the private sector of university education; over the last decade a number of private universities have been established. An expansion of the public and private sectors of university education then leads to an increasing proportion of the

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

41

Table 2.1  Twenty-two degree-granting institutions in Hong Kong, 2020 University Grants Committee-funded universities:  •  City University of Hong Kong  •  Hong Kong Baptist University  •  Lingnan University  •  The Chinese University of Hong Kong  •  The Education University of Hong Kong  •  The Hong Kong Polytechnic University  •  The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology  •  The University of Hong Kong  •  Caritas Institute of Higher Education  •  Centennial College  •  Chu Hai College of Higher Education  •  Gratia Christian College  •  HKCT Institute of Higher Education  •  Hong Kong Nang Yan College of Higher Education  •  Hong Kong Shue Yan University  • Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong, Vocational Training Council  •  The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong  •  The Open University of Hong Kong  •  Tung Wah College  •  UOW College of Hong Kong  •  Yew Chung College of Early Childhood Education Publicly funded institution:  •  Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts Source: The website of the Hong Kong Education Bureau, retrieved from https://www.edb.gov.hk/en/ edu-­system/postsecondary/local-­higher-­edu/institutions/index.html (consulted in 2020)

general population having a bachelor’s degree. Indeed, as shown in the census report in 2016, 22.2% of the population aged fifteen and above had a degree education (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2016). The Launch of the Community College Policy In view of the economic re-structuring of Hong Kong towards a so-called knowledge economy, the Hong Kong government intended to design corresponding human resources policies in order to improve the qualification and thus the overall competitiveness of the entire population. To this end, the government promoted the idea of life-long learning. With regards to school-age students, in the year of 2000, the government launched the community college policy and announced that it sought to increase the

42 

Y.-L. WONG

proportion of relevant-age students receiving a post-secondary education—actually a liberal-arts-oriented associate degree—from 34% in 1999 to 60% in ten years (Education Commission Report, 2000). But the government insisted that the quota of 14,500 places (at the time) at UGC-­ funded universities each year—that is, first-year first-degree places in UGC-funded universities—should remain the same. In other words, in addition to an existing system of higher diplomas (a form of sub-degree brought in from the UK), the Hong Kong government brought in the idea of community college from the USA and offered an associate degree as a terminal sub-degree from the year of 2000 onwards. Essentially, the Hong Kong government sought to rely on the self-­ financing sector of education to achieve the goal of the community college policy. By providing limited subsidies such as the Start-up Loan Scheme, the Land Grant Scheme, and the Accreditation Grant Scheme (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2008), the Hong Kong government encouraged educational institutions to set up self-financing sub-degree programmes so as to offer more people a post-secondary education. Meanwhile, despite stating that the associate degree is of a liberal-arts orientation, apart from some general guidelines (such as suggestions on the proportion of courses being assigned for general education), the Hong Kong government did not have strict requirements for educational institutions with regards to how they should design associate-degree programmes. Basically, tertiary institutions consider that a liberal-arts orientation refers to a critical approach to knowledge, a student-centred approach to teaching and learning, a focus on learning rather than scoring, and an emphasis on general education as an important component of its programme. Take the community college from which respondents are recruited for this study as an example. This institution promotes itself as a community college that offers a variety of liberal-arts-oriented subjects such as subjects in humanities and social sciences, relies on small-class teaching, and uses a student-centred approach and interactive methods for teaching; such a teaching orientation enables the college to provide students with quality teaching, especially through quality interaction with teachers. Furthermore, in view of its educational mission, for each course, in addition to one final pen-and-paper examination at the end of each semester, this community college adopts an assessment policy that gives priority to continuous assessment throughout the course of the entire semester and uses a variety of different assessment formats that capture students’ diverse aptitudes. In fact, this community college, in common

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

43

with many other community colleges, places an emphasis on these points in promoting themselves to prospective students. The Creation of New Routes to University Figure 2.1 above summarises the educational stages that students would go through within the education system before 2012. In competing for a place in a UGC-funded university, at the end of their basic education students had to sit two public examinations—HKCEE and HKALE—before 2012; this was the case for respondents of the study reported in this book. The major difference between Fig. 2.1 and the post-2012 situation is that instead of sitting the two public examinations in order to get into university students now have to sit only one examination: HKDSE. Yet such changes do not alter the fact that in order to get into university students have to obtain some minimum score in the required public examination(s). Put simply, as indicated in Fig.  2.1, there was only one route to university/tertiary education before 2000. Failing to get into university, students at best could do a sub-degree, usually a higher diploma; but it was a terminal degree and could not lead students back to UGC-funded degree programmes. What this situation meant was that a second chance for students failing their first attempt at getting into university was to re-sit the required examinations (HKCEE and then HKALE at the time). Since the launch of the community college policy in year 2000 some new routes to university/tertiary education have been created through the introduction of two-year associate-degree programmes (because of the transfer function of an associate degree) together with the Project Yi Jin. The Project Yi Jin was launched by the Hong Kong government in 2000; it sought to provide an alternative pathway for school leavers after secondary form five (as well as mature students) and a successful completion was equivalent to the qualification of five passes in HKCEE before 2012. For those failing HKALE, apart from the only route in the past, two new routes have become available. The first route is rather straightforward: taking a new sub-degree programme—an associate-degree programme— in the hope that students could achieve a transfer to university. The second route is taking an old sub-degree programme—a higher-diploma programme—but it could now bridge them to an associate-degree programme and could even serve the function of transfer in some cases. And for those failing HKCEE, in the past students could only take some courses of a technician/craft level or sub-degree courses; but they

44 

Y.-L. WONG

could by no means get into university without sitting HKALE. By contrast, now there are three new routes that could eventually lead students to university education or tertiary education more generally. First, students could enrol in a one-year pre-associate-degree programme that would then lead to a two-year associate-degree programme. Second, students could take a higher diploma and then get bridged to an associate-­ degree programme or even achieve a transfer in some cases. And third, even if students fail all subjects in HKCEE, they could now join the Project Yi Jin; a successful completion provides them with the minimum requirement for enrolling in a one-year pre-associate-degree programme that would then lead to an associate-degree programme. Ever since 2012, those failing HKDSE could opt for associate-degree or higher-diploma programmes. Or else, they could join the Project Yi Jin; a successful completion becomes an equivalence of five passes in HKDSE. In short, we could say that the introduction of an associate degree, together with the Project Yi Jin, offers more options for students who fail the public examination(s) with respect to either obtaining a post-secondary qualification (i.e., a sub-degree qualification) or getting into university. Availability of a New, Expensive, Risky, and Second-Rate Second Chance The idea of community college is borrowed from the USA. Beginning in 1901, it was initially meant to offer courses equivalent to the lower section (the first two years) of a four-year degree programme at a cheaper level of tuition and only capable students would transfer to university to do the higher section (the last two years) of the programme (Beach, 2011). Over time the goals that community college in the USA has sought to achieve are rather different, if not contradictory, viz. offering specific courses for individuals who seek personal development, academic courses for the ambitious who want to get transferred, remedial courses for previous school dropouts, and vocational courses for everyone who wants a job (e.g., Dougherty, 1994). Regardless of its multi-function nature, in evaluating whether a community college is doing a good job, the focus is invariably on its role of transfer. Where transfer is concerned, some argue that community college is meant to ‘cool out’ students, discouraging them from doing academic courses for a transfer but channelling them to do vocational courses and take an associate degree as a final degree (e.g., Clark, 1960; Brint & Karabel, 1989; cf. Bailey & Morest, 2006; Levin,

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

45

2007). In contrast, others argue that community college could be seen as ‘warming up’ students, giving a chance of pursuing studies to those who would have never dreamed of returning to formal education (e.g., Rosenbaum et al., 2006). All in all, community college in the USA is an inexpensive multi-function tertiary institution open to all (the website of American Association of Community Colleges). When comparing with the case of the USA, community college in Hong Kong is different in all the three aspects of tuition, admission, and function; moreover, the particular concern about transfers has also turned community college to play a more specific role vis-à-vis its US counterpart. Put simply, community college is taken in Hong Kong as a new, expensive, risky, and second-rate second chance. Prior to the year of 2000, there were also sub-degree programmes in Hong Kong. But they were primarily higher-diploma programmes, mostly offered by publicly funded post-secondary institutions at the time, geared towards meeting the human resources requirements of specific industries and thus were largely vocationally oriented and profession-specific (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2008). Students who wanted to study further did not find a higher diploma particularly attractive. The US model of community college was brought in perhaps because of the multiple functions of an associate degree by contrast with a higher diploma. In addition to serving as a final degree providing students with para-­ professional or vocational training or personal development, a newly available associate degree could serve as a bridge to a degree programme for some selected talents, and thus a second chance of getting a university place. Community colleges in Hong Kong as a self-financing institution have to rely on tuition fees to balance their finances. In contrast to inexpensive community colleges in the USA, it is very expensive to study at community college in Hong Kong. The annual tuition charged by a community college is usually higher than that of doing a first degree at UGC-funded university, frozen at HK$42,100 (US $1 = HK$7.8) ever since the academic year of 1997/98, and ranges between HK$46,000 and HK$100,000 (the website of the Hong Kong Education Bureau). Such tuition fees are not affordable to everyone in Hong Kong, where the reported median monthly household income for 2006—around the time when this research project started—is only about HK$20,900, even falling to HK$20,200 in 2011, and the latest reported figure is about HK$25,200 (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2006, 2011, 2016). Community

46 

Y.-L. WONG

colleges as self-financing institutions also have more room to regulate their annual tuition fees. For example, one community college charged HK$50,000 for the year of 2005/06 and announced in late 2006 that it intended to increase the tuition fee to HK$70,000 for the year of 2006/07 and to HK$80,000 for the year of 2007/08 (Ming Pao News 8 December 2006). Community colleges or institutions offering associate-degree programmes in Hong Kong are encouraged to adopt the principle of ‘lenient entry and stringent exit’ for student recruitment. But, it has been a policy that no entry requirements are set for mature students (students aged above 25). Regardless, in contrast to the open access policy of the US model of community college, community college in Hong Kong is supposedly not open to all but has set minimum entry requirements. Despite that there were supposedly some minimum entry requirements, given their self-financing nature, some community colleges still set no entry requirements for student admission and charged very high tuition fees. These community colleges were then accused of caring not about academic standards but student enrolments and of abusing the principle of ‘lenient entry and stringent exit’ as an excuse for selling diplomas (e.g., Ming Pao News 1 November 2007). The quality of associate-degree programmes then became an issue of public concern in the early years of the community college policy. The government was urged to monitor more closely the entry requirements and tuition fees set by each institution offering associate-degree programmes so as to assure the quality of such programmes (Hong Kong Federations of Students, 2007). As self-financing institutions, community colleges have to rely on student enrolments for their survival. However, given the newness of community college, and thus a lack of social recognition for the associate degrees that community colleges offer, it was rather difficult for community colleges to attract students. Therefore, despite the initial goal of the community college policy, community colleges all promoted, and still do, the transfer function of an associate degree to university as a major selling point to compete for students. Meanwhile, given such a high tuition fee, it is unsurprising that many people do not opt for studying at community college for vocational training, let alone for personal development. Consequently, associate-degree programmes in Hong Kong are not taken as a final degree but are basically seen as a bridge for further studies at university, local or overseas. Whereas community college in the USA is seen as a multi-function tertiary institution and is used by a variety of

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

47

people, community college in Hong Kong is essentially used as a more expensive alternative route to university. Indeed, nearly all community-­ college students in Hong Kong are students who want to achieve a transfer to a UGC-funded university (Ng & Cheng, 2001). While the transfer function was emphasised as an important selling point by community colleges or institutions offering associate-degree programmes, there was no articulation between communities and universities. Given the initial goal set by the government, only a limited number of senior-year places in UGC-funded universities were reserved for the transfer of associate-degree graduates. At the time, the understanding of a transfer was getting transferred to the senior year of a degree programme, but in actuality students could at best get transferred to the first year. Given the rapid rise in the number of associate-degree graduates, what was of concern was how many associate-degree holders could really get transferred to UGC-funded universities and what additional measures the government should take further in order to address the issue (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2006). Under great social pressure—also partly because some community-­ college students committed suicide after failing to get transferred in the early 2000s—the government finally added 840 senior-year places for the transfer of associate-degree graduates to UGC-funded degree programmes in 2005/06 and then increased the number to 1680 from 2006/07 onwards (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2008). But such a small number of senior-year places simply could not cope with the demand, which involved over 6000 associate-degree graduates from the self-­ financing sector alone in 2006/07 (see Table 2.3 below). In 2007, it was estimated by an interest group that only less than 3% of community-­ college students had successfully got transferred to a UGC-funded programme (e.g., Ming Pao News 5 July 2007). It was no wonder why the option of community college—for its transfer function—was seen as a risky second chance. In the USA, community college could be taken as an inexpensive tertiary institution offering a feasible but cheaper means of getting a bachelor’s degree through a transfer. But, community colleges are generally seen as inferior to four-year colleges in the USA. There is a league table— using various criteria—for four-year colleges, but community college is seen as a place for those who fail to get into a four-year college (Cohen & Brawer, 2003). Perhaps community college in Hong Kong could be viewed in a similar manner. Community colleges, together with other

48 

Y.-L. WONG

post-secondary institutions, are seen as inferior to local universities. But, the transfer function of an associate degree distinguishes community colleges from other post-secondary institutions in Hong Kong. Whereas some of their US counterparts deliberately take the option of community college as an inexpensive alternative route to university, nearly all community-­college students in Hong Kong take the option of community college as a second chance: taking this option only when they fail in their attempt at getting into university through the public examination(s). As community colleges in Hong Kong are essentially taken as a place for students who fail the public examinations, community colleges are somehow seen as a second-rate institution; as will be discussed in the empirical chapters, perhaps that is why respondents of this book express a sense of inferiority about studying at community college. An Expansion of the Sub-degree Sector of Higher Education By policy design in Hong Kong (i.e., the annual set quota of 14,500 first-­ year first-degree places in UGC-funded universities set in 1995 and then increased to 15,000 in 2012), about 80% of students of the relevant age are bound to fail to get into a UGC-funded university; they are now, however, encouraged to get a higher qualification, at least a sub-degree qualification. This very fact means that there will be a huge market for sub-degree programmes. Apart from the existing publicly funded sub-­ degree programmes, the self-financing arms of a few UGC-funded universities took the lead in launching the first community colleges in Hong Kong in 2000, offering a variety of new associate-degree programmes. In addition, some institutions offering higher-diploma programmes restructured their existing higher-diploma programmes and also designed new higher-diploma programmes. Indeed, ever since the community college policy was announced in 2000, the sector of sub-degree programmes has expanded rapidly. Table 2.2 indicates that from 2000 to 2019 the number of institutions offering sub-degree programmes increases from 4 to 29, peaking at 30 in 2012/13, and the number of sub-degree programmes increases from 20 to 278, peaking at 327 in 2014/15. The expansion of sub-degree programmes is true not only of associate-degree programmes but also of higher-diploma programmes. The number of associate-degree programmes increased rapidly from 16 in 2001/02 to 169 in 2009/10 but then slowly decreased to 127 in 2018/19. By comparison, the number of

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

49

Table 2.2  Figures on the full-time self-financing sector of sub-degree programmes, 2000–2019 Academic year

2000/2001 2001/2002 2002/2003 2003/2004 2004/2005 2005/2006 2006/2007 2007/2008 2008/2009 2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013 2013/2014 2014/2015 2015/2016 2016/2017 2017/2018 2018/2019

Number of institutions

4 11 16 20 20 20 20 22 23 23 22 26 30 28 28 29 29 29 29

Number of sub-degree programmes (a)+(b) 20 38 77 112 173 233 261 279 289 306 315 311 315 325 327 299 299 286 278

Number of associate-degree programmes (a)

Number of higher-diploma programmes (b)

– 16 46 74 92 128 148 158 161 169 156 157 140 142 145 124 125 125 127

– 22 31 38 81 105 113 121 128 137 159 154 175 183 182 175 174 161 151

Sources: The website of the Hong Kong Education Bureau, retrieved from http://www.ipass.gov.hk/edb/index.php/ch/home/statheader/stat/stat_pg_index 2007, 2013, and 2017)

(consulted

in

http://www.ipass.gov.hk/edb/index.php/ch/home/statheader/stat/stat_gd_index 2007, 2013, and 2017)

(consulted

in

https://www.cspe.edu.hk/en/Statistics.page#! (consulted in 2019)

higher-diploma programmes increased more steadily over most of the 2001–2014 period, from 22 to 183, albeit with fluctuations; the level of its rise and its total number have even exceeded those of associate-degree programmes since 2012/13, although the number of higher-diploma programmes has gradually decreased over the last few years and to 151 in 2018/19. Despite the fluctuations, and also different rates of increases, a greater number of students obtain a sub-degree qualification. Correspondingly, Table 2.3 shows that the number of enrolled students for sub-degree programmes (i.e., the sum of the second and third columns

50 

Y.-L. WONG

Table 2.3  Numbers of student enrolments and graduates in full-time self-­ financing sub-degree programmes, 2001–2019 Academic year 2001/2002 2002/2003 2003/2004 2004/2005 2005/2006 2006/2007 2007/2008 2008/2009 2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013 2013/2014 2014/2015 2015/2016 2016/2017 2017/2018 2018/2019

Student enrolments in associate-degree programmes 3732 6921 9670 13,876 17,103 18,787 20,558 20,118 23,019 27,506 27,822 31,093 26,575 20,475 20,047 20,743 21,367 21,629

Student enrolments in higher-diploma programmes

Number of Number of associate-degree higher-diploma graduates graduates

5163 6206 6580 10,911 16,173 19,302 22,714 23,584 24,303 24,648 23,974 27,601 25,471 19,214 17,960 16,265 14,664 14,163

349 1654 2949 3609 5763 6373 7159 7211 7303 8026 9468 10,541 13,035 9061 7962 8246 8460 –

719 1048 2494 2997 3572 4040 6372 7459 8097 7167 7669 9271 13,620 8387 7983 6986 6382 –

Sources: The website of the Hong Kong Education Bureau, retrieved from http://www.ipass.gov.hk/edb/index.php/ch/home/statheader/stat/stat_el_index (consulted in 2007, 2013, and 2017) http://www.ipass.gov.hk/edb/index.php/ch/home/statheader/stat/stat_gd_index 2007, 2013, and 2017)

(consulted

in

https://www.cspe.edu.hk/en/Statistics.page#! (consulted in 2019)

of Table 2.3) has been on the rise from 8895 in 2001/02 to 35,792 in 2018/19, peaking at 58,694 in 2012/13. The same is true of the total number of graduates from sub-degree programmes (i.e., the sum of the fourth and fifth columns of Table  2.3), which increases from 1068  in 2001/02 to 14,842 in 2017/18, peaking at 26,655 in 2013/14. With fluctuations, the numbers of students enrolling in and graduating from associate-degree programmes have been decreasing since 2012/13 and 2013/14 respectively, although they have increased a little steadily over the last few years. By contrast, the numbers of students enrolling in and graduating from higher-diploma programmes have decreased steadily since 2012/13 and 2013/14 respectively.

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

51

In view of an increasing number of associate-degree graduates, the government has been under social pressure to get them transferred and has indeed increased the number of places—first-year and senior-year intakes—for transfers over the last decade. The second and third columns of Table  2.4 show that every year there are about 5600–8500 transfer students (i.e., first-year and senior-year intakes). The last column of Table 2.4 shows further that the number of approved senior-year places has been on a steady rise over the last decade. The target announced in 2014 was to increase the number of senior-year places gradually to 5000 (Hong Kong Policy Address, 2014), and this target was finally achieved in 2018/19, as indicated in Table 2.4. Consequently, transfer students have become a significant minority in some UGC-funded universities. Even when the number of relevant-age students has been in decline over the last few years, the enrolments in associate-degree programmes do not decrease drastically. In fact, Table 2.3 shows that there was even an increase in student enrolments in associate-degree programmes since 2015/16. Perhaps this is because the chance of getting transferred to UGC-funded universities has been greatly improved, especially over the last few years. In other words, contrary to an anticipation that students Table 2.4  Numbers of transfer students and approved senior-year places of UGC-funded programmes, 2012–2019 Academic year 2012/2013 2013/2014 2014/2015 2015/2016 2016/2017 2017/2018 2018/2019

(Estimated)a number of transfer students to first year

The total number of transfer students to senior year

The number of approved senior-year places

3400 2300 2500 2600 3000 3300 3500

2700 3300 4300 4600 5000 4900 5000

2487 2987 4000 4265 4600 4800 5000

Sources: The website of Hong Kong Education Bureau, retrieved from https://www.cspe.edu.hk/en/Statistics.page#! (consulted in 2019) https://www.cspe.edu.hk/resources/pdf/tc/postsec_keystat.pdf (consulted in 2019) a The estimated number of transfer students to first year is a deduction of the annual set quota 15,000 from the figure reported for that year on first-year intakes from the file of https://www.cspe.edu.hk/resources/ pdf/tc/postsec_keystat.pdf; and, the deduction is 30,000 for the year 2012/2013 because of the double cohorts (i.e., the last batch of students taking HKALE and the first batch of students taking HKDSE)

52 

Y.-L. WONG

would prefer enrolling in a private or non-UGC-funded university to studying for an associate degree towards the goal of transfer, students seem to prefer a second chance of getting into a UGC-funded university to a degree awarded by a private or non-UGC-funded university. But what still makes the pursuit of an associate degree risky is that it remains uncertain whether an associate degree, if a transfer fails, will be recognised by prospective employers (most being suspicious about an associate degree as a terminal sub-degree), rendering in doubt the instrumental worth of an associate degree in the labour market apart from its transfer function. An Expansion of the Sector of University Education and the Emergence of a New Hierarchy A rising number of associate-degree graduates aspiring to a bachelor’s degree constitute a new market for degree programmes (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2006). In response to such a rising demand for degree programmes, many local and overseas tertiary institutions, including UGC-funded universities, have designed a variety of self-financing and then top-up degree programmes, both full-time and part-time, specifically targeting associate-degree holders. Self-financing and top-up degree programmes are both degree programmes not funded by the government—that is, not UGC-funded degree programmes. Some UGC-funded universities design self-financing degree programmes with the same curriculum as their corresponding UGC-funded degree programmes taught by an extra team of part-time teaching staff, or even by the same team of teaching staff in some cases, but charge students for such programmes at a much higher tuition fee. Compared with degree programmes, self-financing or not, the duration of top-up degree programmes is much shorter (because they usually give students more course exemptions), but they charge students at much higher tuition fees. Most top-up degree programmes are jointly run by an overseas institution and a local institution (usually the self-financing arms of UGC-funded universities), meaning that there are fewer supporting facilities (such as campus and libraries) than there are in the case of self-­ financing programmes. But what should be noted is that over the last few years, some UGC-funded universities have also designed top-up degree programmes. Given the campus and facilities support, together with the social recognition of those UGC-funded universities, these top-up programmes are regarded as more desirable than the top-up programmes

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

53

previously discussed. In addition, the existing schemes of financial assistance provided by the government for students pursuing a degree somehow do not apply to those doing self-financing or top-up degree programmes. Because of such characteristics, self-financing and top-up degree programmes—especially at the time when the respondents of this study were interviewed in 2009 and 2010—are generally seen as inferior to UGC-­ funded degree programmes, in terms of their academic calibre and social recognition (including a lack of recognition from the government in provision of financial assistance) (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2008). In short, because of their very high tuition fees and very low entry requirements, and because of their limited support for students (in terms of academic or non-academic facilities and financial assistance), top-up degree programmes—especially those jointly awarded by overseas institutions and local tertiary institutions—are in general regarded as expensive but leading to a qualification without much social recognition. In brief, the boom of the sub-degree sector subsequently led to an expansion of the degree sector. An increasing demand for degree programmes by associate-degree graduates, given the annual set quota policy, led to a variety of new self-financing and top-up degree programmes offered by many tertiary local and overseas institutions (including some new local private universities), albeit with lesser prestige in the eyes of many students. Table 2.5 indicates that the number of degree programmes from the self-financing sector and the number of students enrolling in such programmes and the number of bachelor’s degree holders from this sector have been on a steady rise. In particular, the numbers of self-­ financing and top-up programmes have increased steadily from 3  in 2001/02 to 176 in 2018/19 and from 55 in 2008/09 to 315 in 2018/19 respectively. The numbers of students enrolling in such self-financing and top-up programmes have increased—albeit with fluctuations—from 268 in 2001/02 to 23,868 in 2018/19 and from 3342 in 2008/09 to 13,375  in 2018/19 respectively. And, the number of degree graduates from this self-financing sector has increased from 35  in 2002/03 to 12,715  in 2017/18, peaking at 14,212  in 2015/16. All these changes meant that there was a drastic increase in the transfer rate over the years: from less than 3% in 2007 (Ming Pao News 5 July 2007) then to around 25–35% in 2012 (Ming Pao News 27 March 2012) and even to about 90% recently reported by some community college (e.g., the website of HKU SPACE Community College). But the meaning of a transfer was then

54 

Y.-L. WONG

Table 2.5  Figures on the full-time self-financing sector of degree programmes, 2001–2019 Academic year

2001/2002 2002/2003 2003/2004 2004/2005 2005/2006 2006/2007 2007/2008 2008/2009 2009/2010 2010/2011 2011/2012 2012/2013 2013/2014 2014/2015 2015/2016 2016/2017 2017/2018 2018/2019

Number of self-financing programmes

3 7 11 26 40 41 52 58 57 57 72 97 106 125 135 153 164 176

Number of top-up programmes

NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 55 59 64 70 120 129 175 199 228 310 315

Number of student enrolments in self-financing programmes

Number of student enrolments in top-up programmes

268 754 1569 2509 3646 5127 6856 8584 9814 10,799 12,003 15,870 18,509 21,893 24,499 24,258 24,195 23,868

NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 3342 4647 6220 7177 9593 12,023 15,219 15,128 13,350 13,075 13,375

Number of degree graduates

0 35 105 365 411 1176 1558 2065 4226 5217 5918 7696 9706 11,054 14,212 13,187 12,715 –

Sources: The website of the Hong Kong Education Bureau, retrieved from http://www.ipass.gov.hk/edb/index.php/ch/home/statheader/stat/stat_pg_index 2007, 2013, and 2017)

(consulted

in

http://www.ipass.gov.hk/edb/index.php/ch/home/statheader/stat/stat_el_index (consulted in 2007, 2013, and 2017) http://www.ipass.gov.hk/edb/index.php/ch/home/statheader/stat/stat_gd_index 2007, 2013, and 2017)

(consulted

in

https://www.cspe.edu.hk/en/Statistics.page#! (consulted in 2019)

changed to a transfer to any degree programme rather than to (the senior year of) a UGC-funded programme. Meanwhile, such an increase in supply of bachelor’s degrees has created a new hierarchy in university education in Hong Kong where a bachelor’s degree is ranked by university, by subject, and also by programme type (Brown et al., 2010; cf. Brown & Scase, 1994). In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the two universities were basically the pinnacles of the education

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

55

system; a degree was the most privileged qualification. In the mid- and late 1990s, when the number of universities increased from two to seven and then to ten, there was a hierarchy where a bachelor’s degree was ranked by university and also by subject. In view of the recent surge of degree programmes, a new hierarchy in university education is now emerging. According to public perception, the eight UGC-funded universities are ranked higher than non-UGC-funded universities, although the eight UGC-funded universities are ranked further whereby the University of Hong Kong, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology are perceived as the top three universities, higher than the other five UGC-funded universities. A degree is further differentiated by subject and by programme type. Degrees in law and medicine are ranked higher than degrees in education and humanities; UGC-funded programmes are ranked at the top and top-up programmes at the bottom with self-financing programmes in the middle. But it should be noted that the most prestigious programmes such as medicine and law never accept applications for transfers; this practice reinforces the perception that the route to university through community college is a second-­rate option. And yet it is not clear that which dimension of the ranking—by university or by subject or by programme type—should come first, although it is usually assumed that returns to bachelor’s degrees vary according to their perceived rankings in all these three dimensions taken altogether.

The Implications of the Community College Policy for Class Inequality in Higher Education Despite an increase in accessibility to university, students of high-income families are still much more advantaged than their low-income family counterparts (e.g., Post, 2004). In addition, the most recent data show that students of the top 10% wealthiest families are 3.7 times more likely than those living under the poverty line to get into university (Chou, 2013). Whether this situation has changed ever since the launch of the community college policy could be examined further. At first glance, the community college policy is well-meaning; it is claimed that the policy injects diversity, if not vibrancy, into the post-­secondary sector of education by offering relevant-age students a liberal-­arts education for personal development on one hand, and the policy seeks to provide relevant-age students with a sub-degree qualification for meeting new

56 

Y.-L. WONG

challenges in the future labour market in a new era on the other. It remains unclear whether the community college policy lives up to its promises (Tang et al., 2018; cf. Mok, 2012). In view of the promotion of the Hong Kong government of getting a higher qualification for meeting the needs of economic reconstruction—or a proclaimed emerging knowledge economy—in a new century, students in Hong Kong—who have been taking education instrumentally—are getting even more instrumental: it is widely believed that a higher qualification does not necessarily guarantee a high-paid job but without such qualification one is doomed to get a low-paid job. Given students’ instrumentalism towards education in Hong Kong, in contrast to the ‘cooling out’ function of community college in the USA argued by Clark (1960), it is observed that the option of community college in Hong Kong—because of its transfer function—serves to boost the educational aspiration of its students who would have left the education system in the existing quota system; this ‘warming up’ function of community college suggested by Rosenbaum and associates (2006) could arguably be reflected in the abovementioned boom of self-financing community colleges since the launch of the community college policy. Perhaps against its policy intention, the community college policy, because of the transfer function of an associate degree, provides students with a newly available alternative route to university. And yet, given the implementation of the community college policy by the self-financing sector of post-­secondary education, the tuition fees are left to be set by self-financing community colleges and there are limited places at UGC-funded universities for transfers; these situations make this newly second chance an expensive and risky one. Moreover, since the option of community college is mostly taken up by students failing the public examination(s), it has been seen as a second-rate option: more accurately, a second-rate second chance. Consequently, what community college offers is a new, expensive, risky, and second-rate second chance for students who fail to get straight into university. An emerging literature on community colleges in Hong Kong initially casts doubts on the prospects of transfer (Kember, 2010; Tang et  al., 2018; Wright & Horta, 2018). If this second chance is to be better grasped by working-class students than by their middle-class counterparts, we may then argue that community colleges are playing a role of equaliser in higher education. Even though members of the middle class are found to be more likely than members of the working class to take advantage of new opportunities resulting from an expansion of the sector of university education of getting straight into university, working-class students perhaps could at least be better able than middle-class students to rectify their

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

57

educational failure and subsequently get into university; this could still lead to a discussion about whether there is a stratification of routes into university whereby middle-class students are dominant in getting into university in their first attempt and working-class students are dominant in getting into university in their second attempt. Nevertheless, the option of community college is taken as an expensive and risky second chance. An expensive option is supposedly more likely to be taken up by middle-class students than by working-class students, given the middle and working classes usually differ in their capital available for pursuing education (cf. Chap. 4). Similarly, middle-class students are also presumably more likely than working-class students to take a risky option because the former could afford to take risk but the latter usually could not (cf. Chap. 6). These two points seem to suggest that middle-class students would be more likely than working-class students to take up this second chance, however second-rate it may seem. Whether it is really the case that middle-class students are more likely than working-class students to take up the option of community college and whether middle-class students are also more likely than working-class students to succeed in getting transferred should be examined further through statistical data collected from a representative sample of community-college students, which is beyond the scope of this study. Despite this lack of data on the general pattern of whether the middle class are more successful than the working class in taking advantage of this second chance, this book refers to a longitudinal qualitative study of a specific group of middle-class and working-class community-college students who decided to seek the very same second chance started in academic year 2005–2006 to examine class differences in four domains—parental assistance, academic and coping strategies, educational decisions, and emotion—in relation to seeking this second chance. The next chapter reports on how this study was designed and implemented.

References Beach, J. M. (2011). Gateway to Opportunity? A History of the Community College in the United States. Stylus Publishing, Inc. Brint, S., & Karabel, J. (1989). The Diverted Dreams: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900–1985. Oxford University Press. Brown, P., Lauder, H., & Ashton, D. (2010). The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Rewards. Oxford University Press.

58 

Y.-L. WONG

Brown, P., & Scase, R. (1994). Higher Education and Corporate Realities: Class, Culture and the Decline of Graduate Careers. UCL Press. Chou, K.  L. (2013). Study by the Hong Kong Institute of Education—Widening Disparity in Higher Education between the Rich and the Poor. Retrieved March 25, 2019, from https://www.eduhk.hk/aps/news/hkied-­s tudy-­ disparity-­in-­higher-­education-­attainment-­is-­widening-­between-­rich-­and-­poor-­ by-­prof-­chou-­kee-­lee/ Clark, B. (1960). The Open Door College. McGraw-Hill. Cohen, A. M., & Brawer, F. (2003). The American Community College. Jossey-Bass. Dougherty, K. (1994). The Contradictory College: The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and the Futures of the Community College. State University of New York Press. Education and Manpower Bureau. (2006). Review of the Post Secondary Education Sector 2006. Hong Kong: Education Bureau. Education and Manpower Bureau. (2008). Report of the Phase Two Review of the Post Secondary Education 2008. Hong Kong: Education Bureau. Education Commission Report. (2000). Learning for Life, Learning through Life, Reform Proposals for the Education System in Hong Kong. Faure, D. (2003). Colonialism and the Hong Kong Mentality. Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong. Hambro, E. (1955). The Problems of Chinese Refugees in Hong Kong. Sijthoff. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (1961). Hong Kong 1961 Population Census Main Report. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (1971). Hong Kong 1971 Population Census Main Report. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (1981). Hong Kong 1981 Population Census Main Report. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (1991). Hong Kong 1991 Population Census Main Report. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (2001). Hong Kong 2001 Population Census Main Report. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (2006). Hong Kong 2006 Population By-Census Summary Results. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (2011). Hong Kong 2011 Population Census Main Report. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department. (2016). Hong Kong 2016 Population By-Census Summary Results. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government Press. Hong Kong Federations of Students, Union Concerned about the Sub-degree. (2007). The Second Phase of Post-secondary Sector Review Report Submitted to the Legislative Council Panel on Education Submissions, 25 November 2007. http://www.hkfs.org.hk/sdp

2  THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION IN HONG KONG… 

59

Hong Kong Policy Address. (2014). Education: Increasing the Funding for Higher Education. https://www.policyaddress.gov.hk/2014/eng/p96a.html (consulted on 20 April 2021). Kember, D. (2010). Opening Up the Road to Nowhere: Problems with the Path to Mass Higher Education in Hong Kong. Higher Education, 59(2), 167–179. Levin, J. (2007). Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges: The Conflict of Justice and Neoliberalism. Palgrave Macmillan. Ming Pao News. (2006, December 8). Soaring Tuition Fees of a Community College for the Coming Two Years (a Local Newspaper) (in Chinese). Ming Pao News. (2007, November 1). Lenient Entrance Requirements of Community Colleges (a Local Newspaper) (in Chinese). Ming Pao News. (2012, March 27). The Transfer Rate of Some Community Colleges are as Low as 7–8% (a Local Newspaper) (in Chinese). Ming Pao Newspaper Editorial. (2007, July 5). The Prospects for Transfer of Associate Degree Exaggerated (a Local Newspaper) (in Chinese). Mok, K.  H. (2012). After the Changeover: Challenges for Social Development and Policy Responses in Hong Kong and Macau. Social Policy Review, 3, 131–152. Ng, J., & Cheng, K. Y. (2001). Transfer of Associate Degree Students in Hong Kong: What Can We Learn from the US Model?, mimeo, Hong Kong: A conference on Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning. Post, D. (2003). Hong Kong Higher Education, 1981–2001: Public Policy and Re-emergent Social Stratification. Oxford Review of Education, 29(4), 545–570. Post, D. (2004). Family Resources, Gender, and Immigration: Changing Sources of Hong Kong Educational Inequality, 1971–2001. Social Science Quarterly, 85(5), 1238–1258. Rosenbaum, J. E., Deil-Amen, R., & Person, A. E. (2006). After Admission: From College Access to College Success. The Russell Sage Foundation. Sweeting, A. (2004). Education in Hong Kong, 1941 to 2001: Visions and Revisions. Hong Kong University Press. Tang, H.  H. H., Tsui, C.  P. G., & Chau, C.  F. W. (2018). Sustainability of Massification in East Asia Higher Education: Community Colleges in Hong Kong in Retrospect and Prospects. In R. L. Raby & E. Valeau (Eds.), Handbook of Comparative Studies on Community Colleges and Global Counterparts (pp. 63–82). Springer Publishers. Wong, Y. L. (2015). The Community College Policy in Hong Kong: Intention, Practices, and Consequence. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 39(8), 754–771. Wright, E., & Horta, H. (2018). Higher Education Participation in “High-­ income” Universal Higher Education System: “Survivalism” in the Risk Society. Asian Education and Development Studies, 7(2), 184–204.

CHAPTER 3

A Longitudinal Qualitative Study of Community-College Students in Hong Kong: Research Design and Process, Methodological Concerns, and Reflections

This longitudinal qualitative study is different from the original project from which it emerged. Its origins involve a project that started as an exploratory study of community-college students; over more than a decade ever since, the research has undergone evolution. This project was begun in academic year 2005–2006, then continued in academic year 2008–2009, followed up on in academic year 2009–2010, and extended in academic year 2010–2011. More accurately, this study reported in this book was not initially designed in response to some specific research questions set at the outset but was meant to be a research project exploring a new topic of community college and its students in Hong Kong at the time—although eventually part of that project addressed a number of issues in class inequality in education. This chapter reports on the process of designing, implementing, and modifying that project on community-college students and explains the variety of research questions posed over time. I shall firstly describe how this project has been conducted, including how it was initially designed and subsequently modified as well as extended. Secondly, I shall discuss the management of data collected. Thirdly, I shall discus the study’s methodological issues, recognising its limitations and underscoring its potential strengths. Fourthly, I shall provide my reflections on the entire process of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Y.-L. Wong, Community College Students in Hong Kong, Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82461-7_3

61

62 

Y.-L. WONG

research. Finally, I shall provide the demographic profiles of respondents for the study reported in this book.

Research Design and Research Process This project started out of my curiosity; it was made possible because of my proximity to a community college. In academic year 2005–2006, I was teaching as a part-time lecturer in that community college; at the time, community colleges were new to Hong Kong, and I was wondering if community colleges lived up to the promise stated in the Education Commission Report (2000) that they offered students a liberal-arts education and if students really took an associate degree as a terminal degree. I started an exploratory study in order to explore the following three areas: first, the learning of community-college students and their college lives; second, the reasons why they decided to take a programme in a community college leading to an associate degree; and third, their future plans after completion of an associate degree. In fact, I first taught in this community college in academic year 2001–2002, when I was asked to teach the course ‘Introduction to Sociology’ for the first batch of twelve associate-degree students. I considered that all twelve students were devoted, industrious, and academically capable, and that they were so unlucky that they had marginally failed to obtain the minimum requirement to achieve entry to university after school. They were all determined to get transferred to university. But when I taught again in the community college in academic year 2005–2006, its student enrolments had increased dramatically: I was asked to teach the course ‘Introduction to Sociology’ to four large classes of students (more than 200 in total!). It was my vague observation that the student body had become more diverse, and in particular that a considerable number of students—apparently from a well-off background—did not seem to care much about their studies. In view of this observation, I sought to explore— in addition to the above-mentioned three areas—if there were any class differences in the experiences of community-college students. Meanwhile, as will be discussed shortly below, I realised that many community-college students seemed to feel bad about themselves, with a sense of inferiority about studying at community college. I could not help wondering whether this sense of inferiority was related to their failure in the public examinations (i.e., HKCEE and HKALE at the time). I was also curious to find out in what ways their sense of inferiority had an impact on their views about education, equality, and fairness. Consequently, I decided to include for examination in this project the parental support that

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

63

community-­college students had received throughout the course of their education and also their self-evaluations as well as their views on education, educational inequality, and social fairness in Hong Kong. In brief, interviews roughly included five areas: educational aspiration and plans, college life and previous educational experiences, parental support, self-evaluation, and beliefs about education and equality and fairness. The interview schedule was not designed in such a way that it sought to answer some specific research questions; rather, I just had some general research concerns, which remained unasked in the field of community college or higher education in Hong Kong. The project, moreover, sought to let community-college students tell their stories, so that such narratives would allow me to make sense of their experiences from their own perspectives. Recruitment and Preliminary Analyses Taking advantage of the physical proximity to this community college, I started the exploratory study by using a convenience sampling to recruit students—from first or second year of associate-degree programmes and from all domains—of the community college to be my respondents. More accurately, my targets were students from the four large classes who took the course ‘Introduction to Sociology’ taught by me. My initial goal was to recruit 20–30 respondents—a number large enough, within the context of an exploratory study, to see some themes. Meanwhile, being aware of power imbalance, I did not want students of my classes to feel pressurised to join this project. Therefore, I made an announcement of recruitment at the end of the last lecture of my course in the first semester of academic year 2005–2006: I invited interested students to leave their contact information and their Christian names or English names (in the context of Hong Kong) (instead of the full names in English that appeared on the class list), so that I could not identify who they were, and announced that I would not contact them until our professional relationships ended (i.e., after their grades were released in early January 2006). I successfully recruited 31 students and then interviewed them in February and March 2006. I made clear to each of them right before the interviews that I did this project not for the community college but simply out of my research curiosity and perhaps obligation to academia. The interviews took place in cafés close to the two campuses of the community college at the time. Although I did not have a research panel to report to, I did everything in alignment with common practices in the research

64 

Y.-L. WONG

community: I explained to each respondent the rationale behind the project, the rights of respondents to remain anonymous and refuse to answer any question or even quit the project at any stage of this study, and my obligation to use their material only for academic and teaching purposes in the future; and after all this explanation, I asked each respondent to sign a letter of consent (see Appendix A). I then repeated the same practice with another four large classes of students taking ‘Introduction to Sociology’ taught by me in the second semester of academic year 2005–2006. Although a larger sample recruited with a convenience sampling would not make it statistically representative, it permitted to see whether there was a saturation, so to speak, of themes by providing some more stories for analysis. Because of other professional commitments, my post-semester schedule was tight; and although more than 30 students left their contact information, I could manage to interview only 21 of them in the time available to me in early June 2006. Right after each interview, I took notes to summarise major points and to highlight key observations. During the interviews, I was struck in particular that some respondents were overwhelmed by a sense of inferiority about studying at community college, manifested by harsh and even self-­ defeating comments that they made about themselves more specifically, as well as about community-college students more generally. I discussed this observation with a colleague at community college; the colleague shared with me her similar observations on the theme of inferiority. Meanwhile, I recalled some teaching scenarios where my students at community college were not confident at all and took my questions in response to their presentations as criticisms rather than compliments or questions for further thought. I was thinking if such scenarios could also be seen as manifestations of their sense of inferiority. In addition, during the interviews, I was shocked to see how anxious some of my respondents were about the prospect of failing to achieve transfer to university, fearing that they would have wasted their parents’ money and that they would have disappointed their parents again; some even burst into tears. While noticing such emotions, I had no intention to delve into the research area of emotion at the time. Despite my shock, I felt obliged to act as if I were their counsellor rather than a researcher on such occasions. After our interviews ended, I usually spent another hour to comfort these respondents. At the time, I had not put all these observations—during the interviews and in my own classes—in perspective. Over the following years, when I was working away from Hong Kong, I finally had the time to think and do

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

65

some preliminary analyses, especially after I completed the transcription of 52 interviews (i.e., 31 respondents from the first semester of academic year 2005–2006 and 21 respondents from the second semester). Then I noticed in black and white from the transcripts that some respondents called themselves ‘losers,’ and that many respondents were very emotional, expressing their feelings of shame about failing the public examination(s) and guilt about disappointing their parents; all these confirmed my on-the-spot observations during the interviews. In brief, at that time I treated this project as a qualitative study of in-­ depth interviews with 52 community-college students. I then presented some of its findings on a number of academic occasions between 2007 and 2008. At a conference on educational inequality, my presentation on emotion and education with reference to community-college students’ experiences was very well received; the presentation led to a book chapter, which did not discuss theory much but signified the beginning of investigations into emotion with regards to educational inequality (Wong, 2010b). Two conference participants, moreover, suggested that I should examine how ‘winners’ of the Hong Kong education system (i.e., those getting straight into a top-ranking university) would tell their stories of educational experiences, and that I should compare them with those of the so-called losers. I was not sure how this line of inquiry was related to the existing design of the project. Perhaps what distinguishes qualitative from quantitative studies is the openness and flexibility of the former, which would allow me to incorporate new issues emerging at different stages of research. A Continuation, a Follow-Up, and an Extension After two years away, I returned to Hong Kong and was again hired to teach, on a part-time basis, the same course in the same community college, which had already moved to a new campus. There it had its own small library and student common rooms; the community college had also hired counsellors to take care of students’ mental and psychological well-­ being as well as their career planning. I then planned to continue and expand this project in academic year 2008–2009, wanting to recruit respondents in order to see if there was any cohort effect—thus examining whether the experiences of community-college students in academic year 2005–2006 were different from their counterparts in academic year 2008–2009. However, I was then teaching only two small classes of students (30 students in total) and recruited only 8 students, all in the second

66 

Y.-L. WONG

year. I therefore turned to my colleagues teaching the same course for recruitment; however, only six graduates (i.e., students who had been taught by a colleague in this community college but had now graduated) were recruited as a result of this outreach. Later on, that colleague referred another 19 graduates to me for this project. Regardless, there were still not enough respondents from the latest cohort to make a cohort comparison. Consequently, I simply continued this qualitative study to include a greater number of respondents; 14 respondents (i.e., 8 students of mine and 6 graduates referred to me by a colleague) were interviewed in January and February 2009 and another 19 respondents (i.e., graduates referred by that colleague) in July 2010. Interviews with my students were conducted on the campus of the community college and those with graduates were conducted in coffee shops or places convenient to them. Two types of respondents were distinguished: some were studying at community college but others had already graduated. During 2009–2010 I initiated a follow-up study (supported by Start-up Fund 2010) to trace the 52 respondents interviewed in 2006 as well as the 8 respondents interviewed in 2009, to see if they achieved transfer to university and, if so, to which programmes. Of these 60 respondents, I successfully contacted 47, but 8 refused to participate, telling me that they did not get transferred and did not want to talk about community college any more. I then conducted 39 follow-up interviews between August and December 2010—all in coffee shops convenient to the respondents. In regards to a comparison with ‘winners’ of the education system, I sought help from a former colleague, then working at the University of Hong Kong, to recruit students who got straight into this top-ranking university in Hong Kong. Because all respondents of this project took the course ‘Introduction to Sociology,’ I asked my colleague to recruit students who took ‘Introduction to Sociology’ at university for such a comparison, although this may not necessarily be a methodological concern; after all, this is an exploratory study with a small and self-selected sample. But I still did not want to introduce another variable (of disciplinary differences), wherever I sought to explain observed differences, if any, between community-college students and university students. From the University of Hong Kong 18 students were recruited and were interviewed in January and February 2011. The material derived from the interviews with them will not be presented in this book. From 2013 onwards, I was finally able to do the analysis for this project and then started to write up the project’s findings on several themes. In

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

67

sum, initially, this project of community-college students was just for an exploration, but it was continued, followed up on, and extended at different stages. Finally, based on part of the data from this project, this book reports on a longitudinal qualitative study of community-college students in Hong Kong (2006–2011). Community-college respondents were recruited for this project at different stages; in total there are 85 respondents: at the time of interviews 60 being students studying at community college and 25 graduates. Interviews Before an interview, each respondent was asked about their demographic background and performances in the public examination(s); I would fill out such information on my sheet for each respondent, as shown in Appendix B. I then started to tape the interviews and asked respondents to talk about their experiences of taking the option of community college and of their college life. Specifically, as outlined in Appendix C, seven finalised domains were included in the taped part of the first interviews: their current situation at community college, their educational aspirations and future plans, their previous educational experiences, their parents’ aspirations and support for them and parent-child relationships, their self-­ evaluation, their views on education, and their views on equality and fairness in Hong Kong. At the end, I asked each respondent why he/she joined this project and whether he/she would be available for a follow-up study in the future. After switching off my tape-recorder, I asked respondents to rank the importance of ten factors in making a person a success in Hong Kong, as shown in Appendix D. In short, the first interviews were conducted with 60 respondents who were community-college students in 2006 and 2009. To reiterate, some respondents of the first two batches of 52 respondents called themselves ‘losers’ and expressed feelings of guilt and shame. I deliberately included questions in subsequent interviews on asking graduates and also respondents in the second interviews about whether they saw themselves as ‘losers’ or ‘winners’ and about how they felt about their taking up the option of community college. The interview schedule for 25 graduate respondents was essentially the same as that for the first interviews for community-college student respondents, as shown in Appendix E. But the 25 graduate respondents were asked further about whether and to which programme they were transferred and also their subsequent

68 

Y.-L. WONG

career development; they were also guided to evaluate their experiences at community college. At the end of the interviews, they were asked to rank the importance of ten factors in making a person a success in Hong Kong, and explain why they agreed to join this project. Out of the 60 respondents interviewed for the first time in 2006 and 2009, 39 were traced and interviewed for a second time in 2010. The interview schedule for the second interviews appears in Appendix F.  Respondents were guided to recall their educational trajectories after graduating from community college and also subsequent career development, and they were asked to evaluate their experiences at community college, to comment on their transfer as well as work experiences, and to talk about their future plans. At the end of their interviews, they were asked to rank again the importance of the ten factors for making a person a success in Hong Kong to see if they changed their views on this issue. In brief, out of all 85 respondents, information on the full educational trajectories is collected for 64 respondents: 25 are graduate respondents interviewed only once and 39 of them are community-college student respondents interviewed twice.

Data Management Most interviews—first or second—took about an hour, ranging from 45 minutes to three hours. All interviews—semi-structured—were taped and then transcribed and translated into English from Cantonese, the major local dialect in Hong Kong. Transcription is laborious work but I still consider that it is worth the time because the interview transcripts have been manually coded many times subsequently for a variety of analytical purposes. As I taught in the community college, my observations and my first-hand experiences with staff and students as an insider of the community college enabled me to make sense of the interview material collected; indeed, some interview material reported elsewhere was analysed with an ethnographic approach (Wong, accepted). Some elements of respondents’ demographic background could be quantified, as will be shown shortly below. It took quite some time to count and manage the quantifiable data, even with the help of Excel software. With such management, I successfully traced different educational pathways for 64 respondents who provided me with information on their entire educational trajectories. While I had some general concerns before the interviews (see the five domains of the interview schedule stated

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

69

above), most transcribed interviews were coded manually and analysed with reference to specific concepts so as to see if there were any emerging themes and if there were particular theoretical issues to be addressed. Three major themes emerged: class inequality, social legitimation, and the setup of community college. The field of class inequality in education usually directs attention to what parents of different classes do for their children’s education. I therefore follow this line of inquiry, examining class differences in getting parental assistance—of various kinds—in relation to seeking this second chance. In this examination, I refer to the general concept of capital and the specific concepts of cultural capital and social capital for my coding and analysis (Wong, 2017). Educational aspiration is another common concern in this field. I then make use of Boudon’s concept of secondary effect of social stratification (as well as a rational choice approach) and Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and cultural capital (Wong, 2011, revised and resubmitted). Furthermore, referring to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus and field and cultural capital, I also apply them to a number of related issues in educational inequality such as coping strategies and adaptability in a post-secondary institution (Wong, 2015); this also leads to the discussion included in this book on whether community colleges could be seen as a middle-class institution. Since the theme of emotion had gradually become one important focus in my analysis of class inequality in education, I went back to different related literature on emotion, such as the history of emotion, the politics of emotion, the psychology of emotion, studies on specific emotions (e.g., guilt, shame, and anger), and the sociology of emotions to see if there would be any concepts that could be of use for my further coding. I manually coded further the transcripts in order to search for quotations that expressed feelings of shame, guilt, indignation, anxiety, and so on, and also sought to see whether there were any class differences in expressing such emotions; my analysis of the material on emotion was developed gradually, which could somehow be reflected in publications published in different years on the same theme, albeit with variation in focus (Wong, 2010b, 2015, 2017, 2019a, 2020a). The publications along the line of inquiry on class inequality become a foundation on which this book is based. The theme of inferiority could somehow be related to the ideas of self-­ evaluation and social legitimation. I then explored the literature of social psychology on self-evaluation and returned to the literature of sociology on social legitimation so as to see how to make sense of the interview

70 

Y.-L. WONG

material. Indeed, I referred to the theories of self-evaluation and self-­ explanation, as well as the concepts of achievement ideology and hegemony, to analyse further respondents’ narratives in relation to the issue of social legitimation. The issue of social legitimation is not discussed in this book but elsewhere (Wong, 2016, 2019b; Wong & Tse, 2017). The issue of the nature of community college setup came up at a later stage when I did some writing on the issues of class inequality and social legitimation. Specifically, this writing made me realise that perhaps the experiences of community-college students could be situated against a wider social context of neoliberalism. I therefore sought to review scholarly contributions in a number of related areas, such as the literature on alienation and learning and also on higher education under neoliberalism. This reviewing process then led me to code again the transcripts with fresh eyes and interpret the same interview material from a rather different angle. Questions relating to the setup of community college are not included in this book, but in part elsewhere (Wong, 2021, accepted). The process of doing the literature review, coding, analysis, and writing up is not necessarily linear; instead, taking advantage of the flexibility of the qualitative nature of this project, I go back and forth to locate new themes as well as dig deep into some emerging themes. That is, deductively, I derive ideas and concepts from relevant literature reviews for coding and analysis on one hand; meanwhile, inductively, I generate themes from coding and analysing the interview transcripts as well as from some writing up, and then I check what literature should be reviewed further on the other. This is an endless and mutually informing process. I seek to consolidate and integrate all the material on class inequality—published in various places—in this book. That is, this book is a study of class inequality in education by referring to the narratives of students on how they sought a second chance of getting into university in a community college.

Methodological Issues of This Study The analysis undertaken in the study reported in this book is structured thematically—four themes along the line of class inequality in education— and substantiated with some selected quotations of respondents (in fictitious names). Some methodological issues are worthy of note (Denzin & Lincoln, 2013). In particular, the empirical findings of this book are derived from this small-scale study of self-selected community-college students (recruited through a convenience sampling); the generalisability of

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

71

the findings could be challenged, perhaps mostly by positivists or quantitative researchers. Moreover, the reliability and validity of such findings could also be an issue. Statistical Representativeness The statistical representativeness of the study reported in this book could be challenged because this study involved only a small number of community-­college students. Most importantly, these students were not recruited randomly but by a convenience sampling, involving a degree of self-selection. At the end of each interview, I asked my respondents why they joined this study. I included this question mainly because I considered that their motivation might offer further insights into understanding their accounts. Differences were noted between respondents who were former students of mine and respondents who were graduates referred to me by my colleague in their reasons for joining this study. Amongst respondents who were former students of mine, there were four major reasons for joining this study. First, my former students took my course and understood that I was critical of educational inequality, and they saw themselves as victims of the education system in Hong Kong; so they wanted me to present their educational experiences and their views on education. Second, they wanted to help me. Third, out of curiosity they wanted to see what an interview was like. And fourth, they wanted to have a chat with me, though realised that during the interviews they were the one who did the talking. Amongst respondents who were graduates referred to me by a colleague, there were three major reasons for joining this study. First, the graduates—who all achieved a transfer to university—wanted to share their successful experiences. Second, they wanted to know what an interview was like. And third, they wanted to help out, in a general sense rather than a specific sense of helping a particular person. In other words, one could argue that this small sample basically included most respondents of the following three types: those who wanted to help out; those who felt they were disadvantaged by the education system; and those who had finally succeeded in achieving a transfer to university. To reiterate, amongst my former students who were asked to join the follow­up study, eight of them refused and they were community-college student respondents failing to get transferred. As a result, among respondents for whom the entire educational trajectory has been studied, most of them are

72 

Y.-L. WONG

likely to have achieved a university transfer; indeed, as will be discussed in Chap. 6, the successful rate of transfer of this study is much higher than rates reported in 2007—as mentioned in Chap. 2—for community-­college students as a whole. Reliability and Validity To explore parental assistance that respondents had received throughout the course of their educational careers, to explore their parents’ opinions about the decisions that respondents made at two particular stages, to explore parental advice about their studies at community college, and to explore the emotional support provided by their parents (and their parents’ emotional response to their studies), I did not interview their parents as cross-references. It was, instead, respondents who told me what their parents had done for them, how their parents commented on their educational decisions and advised on their educational matters, how their parents advised on their studies at community college and commented on their performances there, and how their parents felt about their pursuit at different stages. Doubts could be cast on the reliability and validity of the narratives of respondents in recalling and even interpreting what their parents did and how their parents thought and felt about their pursuits; doubts could even be cast further on the validity and reliability of my re-­ interpretation of the respondents’ interpretations. Moreover, in sharing with me their educational experiences and articulating their thoughts throughout the course of their educational pursuits, as well as expressing or describing their emotions, respondents were asked to look back what they had done, thought, and felt; their recollections of such actions, thoughts, and emotions were no different from re-­ constructing their experiences. My analysis of their educational experiences—especially emotional struggles—was unavoidably a re-presentation of their re-constructions and an interpretation of their experiences as well as their expressed or described emotions; the validity of my analysis could surely be challenged. Recognising the Limitations of This Study I should make clear here that I do not seek to make statistical generalisations, on the basis of my respondents’ experiences, about the experiences of other students of the same community college, let alone the experiences

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

73

of other community-college students in Hong Kong (or even in other countries). Perhaps the experiences of my respondents are not necessarily statistically representative; but they could well be theoretically representative, in that their experiences are used to illustrate the operation of many relevant concepts in making sense of how class reproduction through education is possible. Respondents’ accounts are valid for their own sake for they are offered from the respondents’ perspectives. Furthermore, my angle derived from being an insider of the community college, I believe, enables me to offer reliable and valid analyses of respondents’ educational experiences and emotional struggles. I am well aware of all those methodological concerns and I would not pretend that those concerns do not matter. What I could do is to convince readers to agree with my judgements underlying my re-­ presentation and interpretation of respondents’ accounts. The educational experiences of respondents would then constitute a solid empirical grounding on which further theoretical and empirical work on the area of community college in particular and the area of higher education in general could be based. In fact, four potential strengths of the quality of data collected for this study could be underscored. Respondents’ Own Perspectives The first potential strength of the quality of data for this study is that they offer respondents’ own perspectives to make sense of their experiences (cf. Geertz, 1988; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). As with many sociologists, I would offer critical analyses of respondents’ experiences and their reported or narrated accounts. In this study, I analysed what parents of respondents did for them in objective terms (although this was still reported by the respondents) and also what respondents did at community college, but I also took into consideration respondents’ perceived parental assistance and thus emotional support in subjective terms and their perceived life at community college. Respondents’ perceptions as well as perspectives matter in themselves; they offered me their own understanding of their situations as well as the issues concerned. I shall do my best to underscore differences between sociological analyses and respondents’ own analyses and also seek to offer explanations whenever contradictions or discrepancies arose. This would, I believe, provide an additional dimension to understand the issues raised in this book.

74 

Y.-L. WONG

Richness and Thickness The second potential strength of the quality of data for this study was their richness and thickness (Geertz, 1973). Qualitative studies usually take pride of their rich data in comparison to quantitative studies; such richness is not only about its comprehensiveness but also its depth or thickness. As in many qualitative studies, respondents in this study did not simply tell me their stories superficially but went into details of their stories. In telling me their past experiences at school and their present experiences at community college, respondents were sharing details about what they did and what they thought, and also why they did and/or thought that way and how they did it. This richness and thickness were reflected in respondents’ comprehensive reports on what their parents had been doing for them and what their parents’ concerns were in regards to their decision on seeking such an expensive and risky second chance (in Chap. 4); respondents’ detailed descriptions of how they survived at community college in meeting the academic demands posed by the college on a variety of assignments and in dealing with their classmates and teachers in order to get their assignments done (in Chap. 5); respondents’ subtle concerns, messiness, contradictions, and even arbitrariness involved in making educational decisions at two stages (in Chap. 6); and respondents’ vivid descriptions of their own feelings as well as reports on their parents’ feelings involved in their pursuit of this second chance (in Chap. 7). But for this richness and thickness, it would have been impossible for me to address a number of issues, albeit not directly related, or for me to analyse the material with different layers and even analyse the same material with a number of angles, let alone to theorise them further. Particularly, I argue that the richness and thickness of respondents’ narratives of this qualitative study are of significance to the theorisation of emotional capital in class reproduction, which perhaps opens up a totally new line of inquiry in understanding the operation of class in education. Authenticity The third strength of the quality of data for this study was their authenticity (Van Maanen, 1997; cf. Van Maanen, 1983; Fivush & Hade, 2003; Fisher & Goblirsch, 2006). What is usually valued in qualitative research is the authenticity of its data whereby the data are collected through personal relationships in natural rather than artificial laboratory settings.

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

75

Specifically, the data of this study capture the genuine views of respondents and their authentic feelings (such as their anxiety about the future and guilty feelings towards their parents) because of their trust in me as their former teacher. Although I did not teach the twenty-five graduate respondents and I actually never met them before the interviews, they saw me as a community-college teacher who could understand them and also their educational experiences there. Perhaps, one may suggest that my former students felt freer than the graduates to express their feelings. I would admit that it was the case. At least, students of mine, as mentioned above, would not mind showing me their true feelings. Moreover, many of them also felt closer to me, in that they would stay to chat with me for another hour after our interviews ended. Briefly, many respondents—my former students or the graduates—expressed openly at the end of the interviews that they felt I could understand them and they could freely be themselves with me. Some may argue that I should not take such expressions at face value. But I did not see why the respondents should deliberately express some particular views if they did not genuinely think that way, when such views were at times contradictory to their other views and even not necessarily socially desirable. Neither did I see why the respondents should deliberately display such feelings if they did not feel that way, when such displays would not necessarily make them look good. I simply did not see why I should see respondents’ feelings as contrived. A Longitudinal Dimension The fourth potential strength of the quality of the data for this study was their longitudinal dimension. To repeat, this study was derived from a project started as an exploratory study; I did not plan in advance that this project would become a longitudinal study. If it is rare to collect longitudinal data, then it would be even rarer to have longitudinal qualitative data. Given this rarity, especially so in the areas concerned in the existing literature, my data were valuable in providing a time perspective on students’ concerns about making educational choices at two stages, on their views on equality and fairness in Hong Kong, as well as on their emotions involved throughout the course of their pursuit of this second chance, particularly with regards to estimating the potential long-lasting impact of class on one’s consideration in making an educational choice, on one’s

76 

Y.-L. WONG

legitimation beliefs, and also on one’s emotions at different stages of this pursuit. It was true that I interviewed the 25 graduate respondents only once and asked them to look back. And yet there were 39 community-college student respondents who were interviewed twice; I relied on their accounts to examine the potential long-lasting class effect, as it was reported elsewhere (Wong, 2020a, 2020b, 2021). In particular, a longitudinal perspective on respondents’ narratives of this qualitative study—together with their richness—are arguably of great significance to the theorisation of emotional capital in class reproduction.

Reflections Every research project is influenced by the background, values, and preferences of its researcher, from the very beginning of the choice of a topic, to the selection of material, to analysis, and to final presentations (e.g., Denzin & Lincoln, 2013). The same applies to this study. By training, I am a sociologist; I have been interested in and researching into social inequality and social mobility. This research interest is closely related to the fact that my background is humble in terms of class and social status. Perhaps because of this background and my upbringing, I am sensitive to issues related to social class, value an egalitarian approach to life more than elitism, feel sympathy towards the underdog, and take a humanistic orientation to understanding issues about social inequality. This humanistic orientation, I suppose, also leads me to take interest in stories of flesh and blood and to prefer rich narratives rather than aggregate statistics. Becoming Interested in Education and Educational Inequality This project on community-college students would have been impossible if I had not worked in Eastern Europe for three years and if I had not taught in the community college of the project. Following my first spell working at this community (in 2001–2002), I spent two years in Minsk, Belarus, and then one year in Lviv, Ukraine, as a visiting fellow for the Belarus-Ukraine-Moldova country programme of the Civic Education Project—a non-governmental organisation (NGO)—that sought to bring educational reform to post-Soviet countries. During this time I also contributed teaching to an intensive one-month summer school (twice in Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan, and once in Istanbul, Turkey), which prepared

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

77

students from post-Soviet countries for undertaking master’s studies in the USA. I was expected to teach local students how to think ‘critically,’ and to teach local faculty members how to conduct ‘proper’ research and write ‘proper’ academic essays. The details of the practices and my criticisms of such practices are reported elsewhere (Wong, 2008). This working experience and exposure not only encouraged me to challenge the work of NGOs (Wong, 2008, 2009, 2010a) but also made me think more seriously about the philosophy of education and become interested in issues related to educational inequality. At the time, I was critical of the NGO in question, accusing it of not offering the education that the students needed. Such criticisms raise questions about what education should be provided to students. Given my interest in Hong Kong, a place where I was born and grew up, how is Hong Kong doing in this aspect? On my return to Hong Kong, I was again hired to teach as a part-time lecturer for the same community college in academic year 2005–2006. At the time, there was heated discussion in Hong Kong over the practices of community colleges but not much scholarly research had been done on community college. It seemed to me a good idea to start a project on community college education, although it was from more of a sociological perspective than a philosophical perspective. Given the newness of community college as a research topic and given my proximity to a community college, I finally decided to begin a project on community-college students. I did not plan in a very detailed manner; instead, to repeat, I was just curious to find out whether community colleges in Hong Kong offered a liberal-arts education and how far community-­college students enjoyed their learning at college. Given my research interests in social inequality, I naturally adopted a class perspective to make sense of respondents’ educational experiences and their concerns. Nevertheless, instead of starting a project with specific research questions after having conducted an extensive literature review, I began with some general concerns; meanwhile, I kept on reading the literature relevant to understandings of the sociology of education and of learning in community college. Doing Interviews Before Reviewing Literature During the interviews, I let respondents talk; but, after switching off my tape-recorder, I would casually chat with my former students (after the first interviews) or catch up with them (after the second interviews) and

78 

Y.-L. WONG

we shared what we had been up to, and I would talk with graduates referred to me more about their time spent in the community college and about their subsequent studies and/or work. I see myself as a friendly teacher and a good listener. I had no difficulties in getting respondents— my former students or the graduates—to talk or to probe further wherever necessary. I just followed the flow of the conversations and asked further questions naturally. Basically, the respondents were sharing their views as much as possible with me. They would also show their feelings; at times they could get critical or even angry, but at times they would also be grateful and guilty. As noted, probably because they saw me as someone from the same community college, they felt they could trust me and considered that I would understand their feelings. Moreover, I also shared with a colleague from the community college to whom I felt particularly close part of my preliminary analyses right after interviews; she would then share her observations with me and thus provide me with more insights into understanding my respondents. In doing this project I became more concerned about community-­ college students’ mental and psychological well-being. I kept wondering whether it was the Hong Kong education system that made our students so stressed and anxious—its selectivity and competitiveness. This concern about community-college students was perhaps the reason for my being sensitive to the theme of students’ feelings of inferiority. Probably out of my sympathy with the underdog, I could not help thinking if their sense of inferiority resulted from the fact that community-college students were the victims of the Hong Kong education system. My suspicion about the damage done to students by the education system led me to the literature on neoliberalism and the commodification of education, which took me to an even wider context to make sense of the experiences of this project’s respondents. Meanwhile, literature, albeit in rather different areas, not only enabled me to understand my respondents’ experiences better but also allowed me to modify the project, such as changing its focuses at different stages. Initially, I just explored everything possible, looking into respondents’ educational aspiration and plans for the future. Subsequently, as previously noted, what struck me was their own self-evaluations, especially the way in which they called themselves ‘losers’ of the education system, and their negative feelings about themselves, particularly a sense of inferiority. Until then, I still did not plan much for the writing up; I simply wanted to

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

79

document the experiences of this group of community-college students. While the ‘cooling out’ function of community college (Clark, 1960) was raised and discussed in the literature on community college, there was no discussion on such negative feelings among community-college students in the USA; again I wondered if such negative feelings were related to any specificities of the Hong Kong context against which the community college policy was implemented. I also realised that the ways in which community-college students expressed this sense of inferiority and their educational experiences were somehow influenced by their class background; middle-class respondents seemed to put a greater stress on feeling inferior about studying in a community college. I then returned to the related literature to see if there were any concepts used to understand self-esteem and educational inequality that could be applied to the setting of community college. In particular, I sought to look into the operation of class in emotion; it took me a long time to figure out what my focus should be in theorising the emotional aspect of respondents’ educational experiences. In writing journal articles emerging from the project as well as this book, I realised that the presentation in such publications would make the research process of the project look more organised and logically planned than it actually was. Readers may well expect me to start with some research questions and then to design an appropriate study so as to collect the required material to answer such research questions, as many research methodology textbooks encourage. The truth is much more complicated than this, as all researchers know very well. My experience of doing this project demonstrates the openness and flexibility of qualitative research, and lends empirical support to the view that the research process is not necessarily linear. In fact, I remain open to the possibility of contacting my respondents again and doing another follow-­up interview with them, but perhaps I have to decide the focus of such a follow-up study before implementing it. It would have been more efficient to do a research project in a more systematic manner, in that it would have taken a shorter time to complete such a project. Indeed, it took me more than a decade to reach the end of this project. But, if the focus is not on research efficiency but on learning, then I could still be proud of what I have learned from this project about theories and concepts and students’ experiences in relation to community college.

80 

Y.-L. WONG

An Insider Perspective Working in this community college, although only teaching part-time, provided me with an insider perspective on the operation of the community college and thus the learning experiences of community-college students. It seems to me, on the basis of my first-hand interaction and also observations, some community-college students were determined to get a high GPA so as to get transferred to a university, preferably a local UGC-­funded one, but they could be strategic or even manipulative precisely because of their determination. For example, this determination would make community-college students anxious about getting as much consultation with me or other colleagues as possible and even manipulative in complaining to me about their groupmates. These observations were consistent with what my respondents told me about what they did. Meanwhile, to repeat, apparently some community-college students from a well-off family background did not care much about their studies, and they just came for a good time before going abroad to study further; these students probably would not join this project. My insider perspective, undoubtedly, made it easier for me to understand the interview material. It also made me sympathetic towards respondents and yet also critical of them. The more I understood the operation of community college as well as the process of transfer, the more I was sympathetic with what respondents did at community college and why they were taking an instrumental approach to their studies. But this did not mean that I agreed with what they did; neither did this make me less critical of such an approach. Instead, I did my best to put their educational experiences in perspective and to make sense of them against the context of existing education system in Hong Kong, and a wider neoliberal context more generally. This sense of instrumentalism was not only specific to my respondents. Rather, this sense of instrumentalism is part of the general atmosphere at community college; at least it is still true of the same community college. I have been an external examiner in social sciences for the community college ever since 2016 and I have been invited to attend every academic meeting scheduled and join the meetings of programme review. On the basis of what the teaching staff (the coordinators of different programmes) comment on their programmes and report on the performances of their students as well as the students’ concerns, it is clear that most of the staff are being instrumental in advising their students on how

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

81

to get a high GPA—such as advising them on taking ‘lenient’ courses— and some staff are boastful of their students being transferred to prestigious degree programmes. My Emotional Struggle Being sympathetic and critical, I could not help wondering how my respondents would read my publications derived from this project and thus my re-presentations of them. As previously noted, most respondents were helpful in trying to assist me to complete one of the first research studies on community-college students at the time. But what I did in return for their help may not be of particular use to my respondents. Rather, I would even get critical of them. Of course, I would like to say that this project would have policy implications, and that policy-makers would perhaps take account of my suggestions derived from the project in formulating relevant educational policies in the future. But it remains uncertain if this project could have such an impact on educational policies. Moreover, the basic assumption of this aspiration is that my analyses are valid and do justice to my respondents’ experiences. Specifically, I am concerned if I have managed to offer a valid re-presentation of my respondents’ own presentations of their educational experiences, and if I have treated their narratives fairly in my analyses and re-presentations. This worry is more than simply a common researcher’s concern. For I am a former teacher of many respondents, I feel obliged to do better than the best in re-presenting their narratives to the public. But I am also concerned about how they would respond to critical re-presentations. Furthermore, perhaps out of my humanistic orientation, I am concerned about hurting my respondents’ feelings by analysing their narratives so critically. For example, I sent off to the first recruited 52 respondents a book chapter (Wong, 2010b) where I used ‘losers’ as the chapter title, and some respondents replied to me saying sarcastically that the use of ‘losers’ was so accurate and that they were indeed ‘losers.’ I was uneasy about these replies and reconsidered if I had used the right word. How can a researcher hurt the feeling of respondents when the respondents are being so kind to help out? And yet, if feeling like a ‘loser’ was actually how respondents felt, however sarcastic it might sound, then what was wrong with re-presenting it as such? I finally overcame such uneasy feelings but I still struggled at times to find the right balance of re-presenting my respondents’ narratives authentically and avoiding hurting their feelings. As such,

82 

Y.-L. WONG

just as my respondents found their pursuit of this second chance an emotional struggle (Wong, 2021), so I also had to struggle emotionally in writing up their stories in as valid and authentic a manner as I could.

Profiles of Respondents This chapter seeks to provide an understanding of how respondents’ experiences, discussed in this book, are portrayed. It would be of use to offer an overview of respondents’ profiles. Amongst the 85 respondents, 32 are male and 53 female. They were about 21 years of age (at the time of interview), ranging between 18 and 24 years old. Of the respondents, 10 were born in China but 75 in Hong Kong. Nearly half of their parents were born in Hong Kong and had an education in Hong Kong; given the existing economic structure of Hong Kong, at the time none of them worked in the manufacturing sector and most of them worked in the service sector. All 85 respondents have 105 siblings in total; 18 respondents do not have siblings and they are the only child in their families. On average, respondents have one to two siblings, ranging from no siblings to four. Only 14 respondents have at least one sibling who is doing a post-­ secondary qualification or has already obtained such a qualification. Respondents decided to come to this community college because they failed to do well in either HKCEE or HKALE and thus failed to get straight into university through the route of sitting the public examinations. All 85 respondents sat HKCEE. In sitting HKCEE, students were required to take three core subjects—Chinese Language, English Language, and Mathematics—and at least two other subjects; but, if a student wanted to get a place in secondary form six, they had to take six subjects in total, including the three core subjects. A final score is the sum of the scores for those six subjects where a subject scores 5 for getting an ‘A,’ 4 for getting a ‘B,’ 3 for getting a ‘C,’ 2 for getting a ‘D,’ 1 for getting an ‘E,’ and no score for an ‘F’ or ‘Unclassified.’ On average the score of the respondents in HKCEE was 13.5, ranging from 3 to 22. Except for one respondent scoring 22 and another scoring 20, all respondents’ final scores are below 20. The score of 12 was the minimum for getting a place in secondary form six for a two-year course in preparation for HKALE and the score of 5 was the minimum requirement for getting most clerical jobs in the government as well as in private companies. While some

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

83

respondents did not do so well in HKCEE (i.e., the score of 4 respondents was less than 6 and the score of 18 respondents was between 6 and 11), 63 respondents scored 12 or above; this explained why many respondents received a place for preparing for HKALE. Among the respondents, 19 did not sit HKALE. In sitting HKALE, students were required to take two core subjects—Chinese Language and English Language—and three Advanced-Level (AL) subjects; some could take four subjects if two subjects were counted as a half AL subject; the minimum requirement for getting into university was to pass all AL subjects as well as the two core language subjects. Amongst the 66 respondents who sat HKALE, 11 failed all AL subjects and only passed the two core language subjects, 14 failed three subjects, 23 failed four subjects, and only 18 respondents passed all subjects and thus reached the minimum requirement. There were 22 respondents who retook HKCEE or HKALE. Amongst the 19 respondents who did not sit HKALE, 5 retook HKCEE. Amongst the 66 who sat both HKCEE and then HKALE, 10 retook HKCEE and 7 HKALE. There were basically three routes of getting into this community college; the first two were for those taking at least HKCEE—(i.e., they subsequently either sat HKALE or had a higher diploma)—and the last one was for those taking HKCEE only. For the former two routes, 62 respondents enrolled in the first year of an associate-degree programme (named as the AD route thereafter for the sake of convenience); and for the 7 respondents who had an ‘extraordinary’ score in HKALE (by the community college standard), they were enrolled in the second year of an associate-degree programme (named as the AD2 route thereafter). For the 16 respondents who only took HKCEE, they were required to enrol in a one-year pre-associate-degree programme (named as the pre-AD route thereafter) before they could read an associate degree. While debates over how we should define one’s class position remain, in this book I use the occupation of respondents’ parents as a proxy for indicating how advantaged the respondents are: for example, how much capital they would receive from their parents for their educational pursuits; what sort of advice they would obtain from their parents; and what sort of career aspiration their parents would have of them (Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1992). According to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, respondents of the working and middle classes would also differ in their upbringing and thus their predisposition, orientation, and value attached to education. In

84 

Y.-L. WONG

addition to all these, extending Bourdieu’s framework (see Chap. 7), I also suspect that their class background would somehow impact on how they feel about their educational failure and then their pursuit of a second chance. Referring to the class scheme designed by Erikson and Goldthorpe (1992), I divided 85 respondents into two classes: an advantaged middle class and a disadvantaged working class. There were 30 respondents from the middle class where their parents were large proprietors (i.e., running a business with more than 25 employees), professionals (e.g., engineers and teachers), managers (e.g., bank managers and estate property management managers), administrators (e.g., inspectors in the civil service and supervisors of an NGO project), clerks, or employers managing a small business (e.g., a printing company and a trading firm). They basically belong to Classes I and II (i.e., large proprietors, professionals, managers, and administrators), Class IIIa (e.g., clerks and white-collar secretarial or clerical workers), and Class IVa (i.e., employers running a small business with few employees) of Erikson and Goldthorpe’s class scheme. Middle-­ class parents were all making a steadily high salary; they were usually born in Hong Kong, as shown in the second and third columns of Table 3.1, and many of them had at least a secondary education and some even had a post-secondary qualification, which was advantaged vis-à-vis their contemporaries, as indicated in the second and third columns of Table 3.2. By contrast, 55 respondents were from the working class where their parents were manual workers (e.g., cleaners, bus drivers, security guards, plumbers, and construction workers) or self-employed (e.g., self-employed Table 3.1  Distribution of parents of respondents by their place of birth, by their class position, and by their gender Place of birth

Middle-class fathers

Middle-class mothers

Working-class fathers

Working-class mothers

Hong Kong China Other places Don’t know Total

18

20

22

21

8 1

7 1

30 2

31 2

3

2

1

1

30

30

55

55

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

85

Table 3.2  Distribution of parents of respondents by their formal qualification, by their class position, and by their gender Formal qualification Bachelor’s degree Post-secondary Senior secondary Junior secondary Primary or below Don’t know Total

Middle-class fathers

Middle-class mothers

Workingclass fathers

Workingclass mothers

1 5 12 6 4 2 30

0 1 19 7 3 0 30

1 0 12 13 28 1 55

0 1 12 16 22 4 55

technicians and taxi-drivers). They basically belong to Class IIIb (e.g., shop assistants and customer service workers), Class IVb (e.g., selfemployed artisans in various industries), and Classes VI and VIIa (i.e., skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled manual workers in various industries) of Erikson and Goldthorpe’s class scheme. Working-class parents were usually not paid well and some only earned unstable and meagre wages; more than half of them were born in China, as displayed in the fourth and fifth columns of Table 3.1. They had at most a secondary education; but, many had a primary education and some even did not complete a primary education, as reported in the fourth and fifth columns of Table 3.2. This then leads me to the four empirical chapters to see how class operates in my respondents’ educational experiences. And let us first go to the next chapter to examine and compare respondents of the middle and working classes with regards to parental assistance that they received so that they finally made the same decision of seeking a second chance at community college.

References Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (2000). Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research. John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Clark, B. (1960). The Open Door College. McGraw-Hill. Denzin, N.  K., & Lincoln, Y.  S. (Eds.). (2013). The Landscape of Qualitative Research (4th ed.). SAGE Publications. Education Commission Report. (2000). Learning for Life, Learning through Life, Reform Proposals for the Education System in Hong Kong.

86 

Y.-L. WONG

Erikson, R., & Goldthorpe, J. (1992). The Constant Flux: A Study of Class Mobility in Industrial Societies. Clarendon Press. Fisher, W., & Goblirsch, M. (2006). Biographical Structuring: Narrating and Reconstructing the Self in Research and Professional Practice. Narrative Inquiry, 16(1), 28–36. Fivush, R., & Hade, C.  A. (Eds.). (2003). Autobiographical Memory and the Construction of a Narrative Self: Developmental and Cultural Perspectives. Psychology Press. Geertz, C. (1973). Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (pp. 3–30). Basic Books. Geertz, C. (1988). Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford University Press. Van Maanen, J. (1983). Qualitative Methodology. Sage. Van Maanen, M. (1997). Research Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Althouse Press. Wong, Y.  L. (2008). Globalization, Imperialism, Social Development: Discoveries and Reflections of an Academic Journey in Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova. Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Wong, Y. L. (2009). Globalisation, Imperialism, Non-Governmental Organisations: An Illustration with the Country Programme Belarus-Ukraine-Moldova of Civic Education Project. International Journal of Social Inquiry, 2(1), 39–58. Wong, Y.  L. (2010a). The Civic Education Project in Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova: The Impact of Dependency. Development in Practice, 20(2), 240–250. Wong, Y. L. (2010b). Middle-class Losers?: The Role of Emotion in Educational Careers. In P.  Attewell & K.  Newman (Eds.), Growing Gaps: Educational Inequality around the World (pp. 162–184). Oxford University Press. Wong, Y.  L. (2011). Community College Students in Hong Kong: Class Differences in Various States of Cultural Capital and Their Conversion. Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, 1(2). http://www.sic-­journal. org/en/past-­i ssues/2/literature-­a nd-­c ulture/yi-­l ee-­w ong-­c ommunity­c o l l e g e -­s t u d e n t s -­i n -­h o n g -­k o n g -­c l a s s -­d i f f e r e n c e s -­i n -­v a r i o u s -­ states-­of-­cultural-­capital-­and-­their-­conversion Wong, Y.  L. (2015). Middle-class Students Studying in Community College in Hong Kong: A Mismatch between High-status Habitus and Low-status Field? Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation, 6(1). http://www.sic-­ journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=379 Wong, Y.  L. (2016). Self-explanation, Self-evaluation, Legitimation of Social Inequality: The Case of Community-College Students in Hong Kong. International Journal of Adolescence and Youth, 21(2), 252–266. Wong, Y. L. (2017). Class Differentials in Getting Parental Assistance for Seeking a Second Chance of Getting into University: An Illustration of Community-­ College Students in Hong Kong. Higher Education, 74(1), 163–178.

3  A LONGITUDINAL QUALITATIVE STUDY OF COMMUNITY-COLLEGE… 

87

Wong, Y. L. (2019a). Angels Falling from Grace? The Rectification Experiences of Middle-class Community-College Students in Hong Kong. Studies in Higher Education, 44(8), 1303–1315. Wong, Y.  L. (2019b). An Empirical Illustration of Social Legitimation through Hegemony: Narratives of Students from a Community College on Seeking a Transferal in Hong Kong. Community College Journal of Research and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2019.1680462, online in October 2019. Wong, Y.  L. (2020a). “Entitlement” and “Legitimacy” as Emotional Capital: Living Out Class through a Critical Educational Failure by Community-College Students in Hong Kong. Studies in Higher Education. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/03075079.2020.1776244, online 4 June 2020. Wong, Y. L. (2020b). Understanding Potential Dynamics between Transfer and Native Students in Top-Ranking Universities in Hong Kong: How Do They Make Sense of Their Transferal and Entrance Experiences? Community College Journal of Research and Practice. Wong, Y. L. (2021). An Emotive Operation of Neo-liberalism in Higher Education: Seeking a Second Chance in Hong Kong. Community College Review. Wong, Y.  L. (accepted). Student Alienation in Higher Education under Neo-­ liberalism and Global Capitalism: A Case of Community-College Students’ Instrumentalism in Hong Kong. Community College Review. Wong, Y.  L. (revised and resubmitted). The Limitations of Risk Aversion in Explaining Educational Inequality: An Illustration with Community-College Students’ Educational Choices in Hong Kong. Wong, Y.  L., & Tse, W.  S. (2017). An Illustration of the Operation of Social Legitimation for ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’: A Comparison of Accounts of University and Community-College Students in Hong Kong. Journal of Adult Development, 24(4), 277–286.

CHAPTER 4

Class Differentials in Parental Assistance: Deciding to Seek a Second Chance

As discussed in Chap. 1, it is generally believed that class shapes capital that is available to parents in supporting their children’s education; and, indeed, it is found that middle-class parents have more capital—of all kinds—than working-class parents, and that the former also use more of their capital than the latter in support of their children’s education (e.g., Treiman & Yip, 1989; cf. Demaine, 2001). Such analysis is consistent with the findings of this study, according to which parents of middle-class respondents were able to provide, and provided, more support to their children than parents of working-class respondents did. However, despite such parental support, all respondents still failed to get straight into university. This chapter seeks to examine how respondents’ parents of the two classes provided support for them so as to enable them to take the first step of rectifying this critical educational failure: reaching the decision on seeking a second chance in this community college. In what follows, I shall firstly provide a brief description of what parents of middle-class and working-class respondents did for them at previous educational stages and I shall compare the performances of the respondents of the two classes in the two public examinations—that is, HKCEE and HKALE—to see whether middle-class and working-class respondents were similarly academically (dis)advantaged in seeking this second chance. I shall then examine how parents of the two classes provided the respondents with support in three domains—academic and career advice, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 Y.-L. Wong, Community College Students in Hong Kong, Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82461-7_4

89

90 

Y.-L. WONG

financial assistance, and emotional support—so that all respondents finally came to decide to seek this second chance. Finally, I shall conclude that this very same second chance was the last resort for working-class respondents but just another opportunity for middle-class respondents.

Parental Support at Previous Educational Stages In using their capital of various kinds to work the education system so as to promote the educational success of respondents, more parents of middle-­ class respondents than parents of working-class respondents helped with the respondents’ homework, hired private tutors for them, or sent them to cram schools so as to improve their academic performances at school. Meanwhile, more parents of middle-class respondents than their working-class counterparts arranged for the respondents to undertake extracurricular activities that counted in the education system—such as attending foreign-language classes and/or lessons in music and sports—in order to make their portfolios competitive, because it was generally believed that such portfolios, together with extraordinary academic scores, would secure entry for them to an elite primary school, which in turn would take them to an elite secondary school, which eventually would get them straight into university, preferably a UGC-funded university. In short, most middle-class respondents were more advantaged than most working-class respondents, in that the former usually received an abundance of parental support of various kinds throughout the course of their educational careers but it was not necessarily true of the latter. This finding is consistent with what is found for Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Wong, 2005, 2011b) as well as in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Wong, 2004, 2007, 2012). What should be noted is their parents’ choice of primary school as well as secondary school for respondents of the two classes. As is mentioned in Chap. 2, schools of three academic bandings are distinguished, where band-one (primary/secondary) schools refer to schools having most students ranked as the top third. Further differentiation is, however, made between band-one schools: traditional elite schools (seen as the most prestigious) and district elite schools (usually seen as popular in a particular district). Many ambitious parents aim to send their children not simply to a band-one school but a traditional elite school. By elite schools here, many respondents, however, did not make this distinction but simply referred to whether they studied in a band-one primary/secondary school.

4  CLASS DIFFERENTIALS IN PARENTAL ASSISTANCE: DECIDING TO SEEK… 

91

Table 4.1  Types of primary and secondary schools that 85 respondents (the proportion %) attended by their class origin Attending elite Attending an Attending an primary and elite secondary elite primary secondary school only school only schools Middle-class respondents Working-class respondents Total

12 (40%) 10 (18%) 22 (26%)

 8 (27%) 14 (25%) 22 (26%)

6 (20%) 3 (5%) 9 (11%)

Attending neither elite primary nor secondary school

Total

 4 (13%) 28 (51%) 32 (38%)

30 (100%) 55 (99%)a 85 (101%)a

The sum is not 100% due to decimal rounding

a

Table 4.1 summarises the distribution of respondents attending the types of primary and secondary schools by their class origin. Given the abovementioned belief about elite primary schools, parents of 18 (out of 30) middle-class respondents and parents of 13 (out of 55) working-class respondents deliberately sent them to an elite primary school. Parents of the middle or working class who did not do so were reported by the respondents to be less instrumental about education at that educational stage, which was in line with some parents reported in Reay’s (2008) study who considered that it was more important for their children to enjoy a happy childhood than to become very competitive at such an earlier stage. Given the small size of this sample and its self-selected nature, and the fact that these views are reported by respondents on behalf of their parents rather than by their parents themselves, more scholarly work is required to disentangle whether middle-class parents are more instrumental than working-class parents with regards to their children’s education at the primary stage, and whether middle-class parents are uniformly instrumental or whether there is an intra-class divide in this regard (e.g., Irwin & Elley, 2011; cf. Ball, 2003). Table 4.1 shows further that 20 (out of 30) middle-class respondents and 24 (out of 55) working-class respondents successfully got allocated to an elite secondary school. Despite the above-mentioned belief that elite primary schools would be more likely to get respondents into an elite secondary school, many of these respondents—of the middle or working class—did not attend an elite primary school. In fact, Table 4.1 indicates

92 

Y.-L. WONG

that only 12 (out of 30) middle-class respondents and 10 (out of 55) working-class respondents studied in an elite primary school and then in an elite secondary school. This situation could perhaps be seen as a challenge to the beliefs that students studying in elite primary schools would get into an elite secondary school, and that students studying in elite secondary schools would get straight into university. However, whether the beliefs are really true should be examined empirically with a representative sample to see if students having attended elite primary schools and then elite secondary schools are more likely to get straight into university. Despite their parents’ strategies for them, particularly for the 12 extremely advantaged middle-class respondents who had received an abundance of parental support and studied in an elite primary school and then an elite secondary school, all respondents failed to do well in HKCEE or HKALE and thus failed to get straight into a UGC-funded university. This situation also implies that the success of parental strategies for their children’s education involves a measure of indeterminacy (Devine, 2004). Tables 4.2 and 4.3 summarise the performances of respondents in HKCEE and in HKALE respectively and compare the distribution of respondents when all 85 respondents are taken into account with the

Table 4.2  The performance of 85 respondents (the proportion %) and the 64 respondents providing full information on their entire educational trajectories (the proportion %) in HKCEE by their class origin 85 respondents Marks