Last week, four of Hong Kong's universities were ranked by Times Higher Education among the world's top 50 young universities (under the age of 50), affirming once again Hong Kong's status as a higher education hub.
Indeed, Hong Kong possesses one of the strongest clusters of universities in the region. And, along with other rapidly growing universities on the mainland and in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Singapore, they constitute a booming East Asia belt that may well rival the greater Boston region someday.
The East Asian school systems, including Hong Kong's, have also been highly rated. Both the Pisa (the Programme of International Student Assessment) survey and the McKinsey studies of recent years have pointed to certain traits that seem to have made Asian students successful. The 2010 Pisa results even caused US Education Secretary Arne Duncan to warn that 'America needs to urgently accelerate student learning to remain competitive in the global economy of the 21st century'.
Amy Chua's 2011 best-selling book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, has also added force to arguments for adopting more Asian ways to turn the new generation into successful achievers. Many in Europe and the US are looking East to draw inspiration.
The rise of Asia has made the world view Asia differently, and pointed to an urgent need to rediscover its rich and diverse cultures and legacies. As Kishore Mahbubani, dean of Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, forecast in his provocative book, The New Asian Hemisphere, just as the rise of the West transformed the world in the past two centuries, the rise of Asia will bring about an equally significant transformation.
For a long time, many branches of knowledge developed in the process of Western civilisation have been recognised as 'universal' knowledge, whereas Asian knowledge and scholarship have mostly been treated as only Asia-specific. As the meeting point between East and West, Hong Kong's universities should be capable of bridging Eastern and Western scholarship, philosophies and discoveries. They should innovate and not just replicate Western knowledge, whether in science or the liberal arts.
What can Asia and Hong Kong offer to the world, and what kind of learning approach should be promoted in the new global age? It all depends on how we interpret the challenges of today's societies, and what we consider adequate preparation for a global citizen.
