Fears that move will limit number of highly devoted social workers available to sector
SHIRLEY.ZHAO@SCMP.COM
UPDATED : Friday, 01 April, 2016, 7:00am
The main entrance to City University in Kowloon Tong. Photo: SCMP Pictures
A plan to scrap a popular part-time associate degree programme in social work from September has angered many students and social workers, who will today stage a protest against the decision.
Some claim it is one of the side-effects of City University handing the operation and governance of its Community College over to the University of Wollongong in Australia. They say this move has practically let the college loose to commercialise programmes and make more money.
Social welfare sector legislator Peter Cheung Kwok-che also worried that scrapping the programme would deprive the sector of a group of highly devoted future social workers.
Cheung said part-time associate degree programmes would usually attract those who, for various reasons, started work early without furthering their education but still held great passion in the programmes they chose.
He said once these students graduated and became social workers, they would probably be more devoted and to stick to the profession for life than full-time degree graduates. He added that the industry had seen a serious shortage of devoted social workers.
“We are very against and regretful of this decision,” said Cheung.
City University staff and council member Fung Wai-wah said the college decided to stop the self-financing part-time programme after the Social Workers Registration Board last year advised it to improve the programme’s teacher-student ratio, which had been below the board’s requested level.
Fung said the college, with a fiscal reserve of over HK$900 million, decided to give up on the programme, believing it would lose money by hiring more teachers.
“This shows the college is treating its associate degree programmes as a business,” said Fung. “When there’s a profit, it will open as many programmes as possible. When it’s no longer profitable, it will immediately stop running it.”
City University’s governing council approved in November 2014 the transfer of the college. The college has made it clear that, despite its partnership with Wollongong, the college will exclusively own its current reserve and any future surplus.
The college will have a five-year transitional period, during which it will continue to use its current name, Community College of City University, operate in its current two campuses in Kowloon Tong and Kowloon Bay, and award City University-accredited diplomas.
Fung said although Hong Kong College of Technology and Caritas Institute of Higher Education both offer similar part-time social work programmes, the one offered by the college was still more popular because of CityU’s brand name.
He said the part-time programme admitted around 70 students a year. The total tuition fee for the programme is HK$112,500. The programme’s website has stated that only the full-time mode will be admitting new students from the 2016-17 academic year.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1932744/degree-anger-hong-kong-students-and-social
