The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education: Perspectives from Hong Kong [1st ed.] 9789811571862, 9789811571879

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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUC ATION

Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan · Flora Ka Yu Mak · Thomas Siu Ho Yau · Yutong Hu · Michael O’Sullivan · Eddie Tay

The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education Perspectives from Hong Kong

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Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan Flora Ka Yu Mak Thomas Siu Ho Yau Yutong Hu Michael O’Sullivan Eddie Tay •

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The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education Perspectives from Hong Kong

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Evelyn Tsz Yan Chan Department of English The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Flora Ka Yu Mak Department of English The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Thomas Siu Ho Yau Department of English The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Yutong Hu Department of English The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Michael O’Sullivan Department of English The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

Eddie Tay Department of English The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, NT, Hong Kong

ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic) SpringerBriefs in Education ISBN 978-981-15-7186-2 ISBN 978-981-15-7187-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7187-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 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 Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgements

We incurred many debts throughout the course of our work for this report, but the largest debt is owed to the humanities graduates who agreed to be interviewed by us. They did not only give us their valuable time, but often also helped us in our search for additional interviewees. To better ensure their anonymity, we cannot thank them by name here. However, this report would simply not have been possible without them, and we wish to express to them our deepest gratitude. We are also extremely grateful to the scholars who agreed to be interviewed by us: Stuart Christie, John Erni, David Faure, Ho Che Wah, Chris Hutton, Kwok-ying Lau, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Gordon Mathews, Peter Stambler, and Longxi Zhang. We would like to thank Derong Cao, Nicholas Chan, Natalia Delazari, Sandro Lau, Natalie Liu, Ophelia Tung, Reto Winckler, and Judy Wu for helping us transcribe the interviews. We also wish to thank the following people who helped us at crucial stages of the work for this report: Stuart Christie, Mandy Fu, Mike Ingham, Douglas Kerr, Lai Pan Chiu, Tracy Liang, Tony Tam, Eva Tsang, and Teresa Yeung. Staff at the following administrative units extended their kind help to us at various stages, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them: • The Census and Statistics Department, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. • At the Chinese University of Hong Kong: the Department of English, the Career Planning and Development Centre under the Office of Student Affairs, the Faculty of Arts, the Divinity School of Chung Chi College, and the Facebook group of the Department of Anthropology. • At the Hong Kong Baptist University: the Student Affairs Office, the Career Centre, and the alumni association of the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing. • At the Hong Kong Polytechnic University: the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies.

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Acknowledgements

• At the University of Hong Kong: the Centre of Development and Resources for Students, the School of English, the Department of Fine Arts, and the Department of Philosophy. • At the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology: the Division of Humanities. • At Lingnan University: the alumni association of the Department of Chinese. The interview with Leo Ou-fan Lee in Part III of this report was previously published in “A Short Conversation with Professor Leo Ou-fan Lee on the State of the Humanities in Hong Kong,” Hong Kong Studies 2(2). We wish to thank the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for giving us their permission to quote from parts of the interview in this report. The work described in this report was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (project number CUHK 14649416).

Introduction: The Values of a Humanities Higher Education in Hong Kong

The report is an extensive analysis of the multifaceted values that a higher education in the humanities offers individuals, the society, and the economy as explored in the context of Hong Kong. Using both qualitative interview data with past humanities graduates and with senior humanities scholars, and quantitative graduate employment survey data, the report provides a fuller picture of the “value” of humanities degrees in relation to both the personal and emotional needs of the individual and the social and economic needs of Hong Kong. It offers an in-depth exploration of the current condition of the humanities in higher education in Hong Kong, including the issues and problems they face and the contributions they make in the eyes of graduates and practitioners. Methodologically, the work on which this report is based was inspired by and partially modeled on a 2013 study by Philip Kreager of the Institute of Human Sciences at the University of Oxford entitled Humanities Graduates and the British Economy: The Hidden Impact (2013). This report (henceforth called the Oxford Report) uses empirical data to assess the impact of humanities education at the University of Oxford, and is divided, like our study, into quantitative and qualitative sections. The quantitative part shows Oxford graduates’ employment data and employment trends in key sectors of the British economy from 1960 to 1989. The qualitative part uses interviews with past Oxford humanities graduates to ask about career and life choices they made, and how their humanities education may or may not have influenced their life course. This part’s use of interview data with humanities graduates is based on the writers’ awareness that there is a need to “put students at the heart of the issue [by] documenting in depth graduates’ own views as to how and how well higher education has prepared them” (p. 52). This agenda makes the study unique among the plethora of existing studies, reports, articles, and books on the value of the humanities, which tend not to use empirical data systematically to represent students’ or graduates’ views. In emulating the methodology in our own report, we sought, to an even greater extent, to focus on elucidating the more individual values ascribed to humanities higher education expressed through graduates’ own narratives in their own voices, which, as will be seen, come

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Introduction: The Values of a Humanities Higher Education in Hong Kong

through in this report through numerous direct interview quotations even as we organized and summarized the interview data using thematic analysis. Our report’s qualitative data in Part I comprises interviews with 59 graduates who completed local humanities degree programs from 1995 to 2004. The focus for these is more on subjective constructions of value over the individual’s lifetime, including personal, social, or economic contributions made by the individual. The format of the semi-structured interview we used enabled graduates to set and elaborate on their own emphases in describing what qualities and aspects of their humanities education were most beneficial to them in their careers and their lives. The Oxford Report found specific skills that humanities graduates said they possessed due to their degree, and which had been useful to them in their careers over many years, including their competencies in “how to break things down,” “careful listening,” “recognising priorities among facts,” “being able quickly to articulate and make clear choices,” “thinking across different fields of knowledge,” “good communication skills,” “the ability to be creative with language on demand,” and the possession of “mobile knowledge skills” (pp. 38‒49). We also used the results of our interviews to assess what skills and what other benefits—directly instrumental to graduates’ career or otherwise—graduates gained from humanities degree programs in Hong Kong, and how advantageous or not these had been to them. These interviews were essential in providing a more multifaceted picture of the “value” of a humanities degree. Our report’s quantitative portion in Part II comprises graduate survey data collected by three public universities in Hong Kong from 1995 to 2015, which detail the major career field graduates entered. It evidences the direct contribution humanities graduates make to the economy through the jobs they go on to fill immediately upon graduation. Here, along the same lines as the Oxford Report, we compared labor data for humanities graduates’ job destinations with data on employment sectors for the Hong Kong economy as a whole to provide a picture of the contributions of humanities degrees to the economic needs and growth of Hong Kong in these two recent decades. We show what percentage of these humanities graduates went on to work in the major employment fields used by the government to categorize contributions to GDP. In addition, as a complement to the graduate interviews in Part I, we conducted a second series of interviews with ten senior humanities practitioners based in Hong Kong in the present or in the past, asking for their understandings of what the humanities are, and what values the humanities and an education steeped in the humanities have for society in their minds. Each academic interviewed had useful perspectives on the humanities to share based on their decades of experience, ones which at times corresponded to the views held by graduates in striking ways. However similar our methods, the Oxford Report, even in its analysis of the interviews, retains a very strong focus on economic benefits, while we sought expressly to look at a greater variety of values contributed by a humanities degree without necessarily translating all of them into economic benefits. In this aspect, the approach used in our study is in fact more similar to that of a recent, much longer, report, entitled the Humanities World Report 2015. Besides conducting an

Introduction: The Values of a Humanities Higher Education in Hong Kong

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extensive literature review on what has already been written about the value of the humanities in academic scholarship, the authors of this report interviewed 89 humanities scholars from 41 countries. Analyzing and integrating the data, they sought to concretize both the economic and non-economic values of the humanities. In terms of approach although not method, our study was closer to the Humanities World Report 2015, because although we make an economic argument for humanities education, we also greatly emphasize non-economic values from humanities graduates’ narratives. This study comes as numerous invaluable studies on the humanities in universities have been published in recent years by commentators, teachers, and academics who argue in different ways for the importance of the humanities, or who evaluate the significance of the humanities, primarily in the Anglo-American context (such as Belfiore and Upchurch, 2013; Small, 2013; Collini, 2012; Harpham, 2011; Nussbaum, 2010; and Menand, 2010). Such a need for a reconsideration of the humanities has come about because of changing educational conditions worldwide that have led to a much greater emphasis being placed on the instrumental or commercial benefits of higher education. The overall impact is that national educational departments and bureaus are increasingly concerned about the economic effects of government higher education policy. They pose fundamental questions about the benefits of higher education: how and what does higher education contribute to individuals’ lives professionally and personally? How can we understand and analyze the impact of higher education on people’s lives as a factor in national or regional economy and society? Should we continue to support the humanities as a social good when their practical contribution to the economy and the public good is less clear than is the contribution of other university sectors and faculties that are more explicitly career-oriented? Empirical research of the type undertaken in this study allows for the systematic analysis of the value and contributions of humanities degree holders in Hong Kong. This has several benefits. It fills a gap in existing research on the benefits of humanities education which tends, in line with the hermeneutical paradigm of many of its subjects, not to be based on data collection but on the writer’s perspectives. These are of course no less valid or important, but collecting and analyzing relevant data will help build a more rounded picture that can speak to both insiders and outsiders to the field. Empirical research can also support informed decision-making on the allocation of funding and resources by the government and other stakeholders in future. In addition, it can bridge the divide between the special emphasis in the humanities on individual growth and interpretative approaches (Parker, 2008, p. 87; Small, 2013, p. 57), and the more instrumental skills gained by graduates. Looking at how humanities graduates contribute to society allows us not to see these two sides as necessarily opposed. Indeed, what seems less immediately useful in humanities subjects may at various points of graduates’ lives prove to be demonstrably instrumental after all. As we will see, such circular hermeneutics of what constitutes usefulness also emerge from the interview data in this study.

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The two types of data used imply two different approaches to addressing the central question of what value humanities education in universities have for Hong Kong society. With them, we seek to create multi-perspectival answers to this question: one by looking macroscopically at the proportional contribution of humanities graduates to economic sectors in Hong Kong using graduate employment survey data, and the other by looking microscopically at the contribution of a humanities degree to people’s careers and lives. The two types of data used will also be able to address each other’s shortcomings and limitations. The quantitative data captures only information on graduates’ first jobs and is not able to provide a longitudinal picture of the effects of studying a humanities degree, and works with a fixed notion of “value” as measurable contribution to Hong Kong’s economic growth and development. The qualitative data is able to address the enduring significance, over the span of more than a decade, that a humanities degree holds for individuals in Hong Kong (Kreager, 2013, pp. 6‒7). Although this is unable to be measured using a survey with fixed questions and categories, this is a vitally crucial aspect to the “value” of a humanities degree, which any study on this topic cannot afford to ignore. However, the interview data does not provide the objective, macroscopic picture that the survey data does. Far from obscuring the stark differences between these two types of data, or the challenges in consolidating their different natures in one study, we wish to emphasize and make use of these differences as able to address “value” using divergent epistemological frameworks. “Value” is not an objective term with a given set of criteria, and only by using these two approaches do we do sufficient justice to the complexity of the term. Therefore, although not even the two ways of addressing this term in this study are exhaustive, they will allow a sufficiently rounded view to speak to the two conceptions of “value” that this study works with, which will appeal to different stakeholders and parties in society. Our study is relatively unique among existing studies on the value of the humanities in two distinct ways. The first one is obvious: none of the existing studies on the value of the humanities specifically discuss humanities education in Hong Kong. We do not wish to argue that the Hong Kong context does not share any commonalities with other places, and that studies elsewhere do not apply here —far from it, since our report’s results at times resonate with findings from studies elsewhere, and we make reference to them in our report. However, Hong Kong is of course distinctive enough economically and culturally to deserve its own study, and it has a large enough higher education sector and student body to warrant one. 1,927 students took arts and humanities subjects (12%) out of a total publicly funded undergraduate student intake for the 1994/95 academic year of 15,738. Out of a total publicly funded undergraduate student intake of 17,965 for the 2014/15 academic year, 2,392 took arts and humanities subjects (13%).1 The percentages for humanities undergraduates in Hong Kong have therefore remained quite stable in Hong Kong across the twenty-year period while they have fallen elsewhere in the 1

Such numbers are available from the University Grants Committee statistics website at .

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world. But also, more importantly, with the exception of the Oxford Report—which is a very short report focusing on one university—and the Humanities World Report 2015, no book-length studies, as far as we could discover, conducted such extensive interviews with graduates as we did, and allowed their voices to be heard to the extent that our report, in its frequent use of quotes from the interviews, does; most of them were written from the perspectives of humanities educators. We see this as the core strength and uniqueness of this report. It may well be true that what humanities educators say about the value of the humanities is very accurate, but even if graduates largely agree on what they say about the benefits of a humanities education (which our study partially confirms), their own descriptions, in their own words, of their post-graduation life journeys reveal certain aspects that humanities educators are not fully in the know about and aspects that could usefully inform how they conduct humanities education. This is indeed something the report will discuss later, after presenting the results: how we can use what the graduates said in their interviews to shape parts of the education humanities practitioners provide.

References Belfiore, E., & Upchurch, A. (2013). Humanities in the twenty-first century: Beyond utility and markets. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Collini, (2012). What are universities for? London: Penguin. Harpham, G. G. (2011). The humanities and the dream of America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Kreager, P. (2013). Humanities graduates and the British economy: The hidden impact. University of Oxford: Institute of Human Sciences. Menand, L. (2010). The marketplace of ideas: Reform and resistance in the American University. New York: WW Norton. Nussbaum, (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton. NJ: Princeton University Press. Parker, J. (2008). What have the humanities to offer 21st-century Europe? Reflections of a note taker. Arts and humanities in higher education, 7(1), 83‒96. Small, H. (2013). The value of the humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contents

1 Interviews with Humanities Graduates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 Background of the Interviewees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.2 Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.3 Interview Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.4 Data Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Results: Graduate Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.1 Individual Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.2 Characteristics of Career Development Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.3 Characteristics of Humanities Pedagogy . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2.4 Characteristics of Humanities Education Narratives . . . 1.2.5 The Essential Contributions of Humanities Education to Hong Kong Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Further Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.1 Recommendations on Pedagogical Interventions Based on the Graduate Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3.2 Hong Kong’s Economic Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Graduate Employment Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Results: Graduate Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 GDP by Government-Defined Sectors . 2.2.2 University Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Further Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Conversations with Senior Humanities Scholars . . . . . . . . . 3.1 The Humanities as Both Broadly and Personally Defined 3.2 The Humanities as Engaging with and Contributing to (Hong Kong) Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Current State of the Humanities in Hong Kong Universities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Works Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

Chapter 1

Interviews with Humanities Graduates

Abstract This chapter describes the results of the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted with 59 graduates who completed humanities degree programmes in Hong Kong from 1995 to 2004. The focus for these interviews was on subjective constructions of “value” over the individual’s lifetime, including personal, social, or economic contributions made by the individual. The list of themes derived from the interviews show that humanities higher education endows graduates with useful skills for the economy; but importantly, the interview data also show that it does not only achieve this, but proves life-changing and (trans)formative for the individual in positive ways. In addition, humanities higher education is seen by graduates themselves as crucial in significant ways to Hong Kong not just as an economy, but as a society. It adds to the vibrancy, energy, variety, and heterogeneity of the city. This chapter’s extensive quotations from the interviews with humanities graduates mean that humanities graduates’ narratives are expressed not just in impersonal themes, but also in their own voices. Keywords Semi-structured interviews · Humanities graduates · Thematic analysis · Skills · Subjective value · Transformative value · Humanities higher education · Hong Kong · Economy · Society This chapter represents and explains the results of the thematic analysis of interviews with 59 graduates who completed humanities degree programmes in Hong Kong from 1995 to 2004. The results show what values graduates themselves ascribed to their humanities education over their lifetimes. These values are therefore interpretative ones, with our emphasis not on evaluating their veracity or accuracy, but rather on representing interviewees’ views as comprehensively and faithfully as possible. This precludes active critiquing of interviewees’ claims, although we discuss the implications arising from some of the themes. For instance, it would not be part of our method or goal to assess the validity of interviewees’ belief that a humanities education contributed to their desire to discover deeper meaning in their lives, in comparison with education in disciplines outside of the humanities.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. T. Y. Chan et al., The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7187-9_1

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1 Interviews with Humanities Graduates

1.1 Methodology 1.1.1 Background of the Interviewees 59 graduates from bachelor’s and/or postgraduate humanities degree programmes in Hong Kong who completed their degrees between 1995 and 2004 were recruited as interviewees in the current study. We did not choose to interview more recent graduates because we wanted to provide a picture of the shifting significances and values of a humanities degree over a longer time period, and in relation to the career and life progression of humanities graduates—both aspects which survey data on the first job graduates take on cannot show (Kreager 2013, pp. 6–7). The scope of the “humanities” covered all the subjects categorized by the UGC (University Grants Committee) of Hong Kong as “Language studies” subjects, “Humanities” subjects, and “Arts, Design and Performing Arts” subjects under the greater rubric of “Arts and Humanities,” at both the undergraduate and the postgraduate level.1 These include the following degree programmes: Anthropology, Chinese, Chinese History, Comparative Literature, English, Fine Arts, History, Humanities, Japanese Studies, Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies, Music, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Theology, Translation, and Visual Communication. Figures 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 show the number and percentage proportion of interviewees for each subject, the number of interviewees from each year of graduation, the proportion of female versus male interviewees, and the job industries occupied by the interviewees.

1.1.2 Sampling Because there exist no official lists of graduates that are publicly accessible, and because the number of interviewees required for the study was sizeable and needed to represent a wide range of humanities disciplines, we employed the method of snowball sampling after initial strategies to recruit the first batch of participants using the four main methods described below. This meant that the process of recruiting participants was not entirely random, which could potentially influence the representativeness of the data (Lewis-Beck et al. 2003, p. 1044). However, in our study’s case, the primary criterion for representativeness was for there to be a wide range of disciplines, which as will be shown below we achieved precisely with the help of access to informal networks and snowball sampling. Due to the nature of data collection—the use of semi-structured interviews—identifying interviewees whose life experiences led to deeper insights into humanities higher education was also much more important for the quality of the data collected than ensuring absolute randomness in participant recruitment. 1 The

List of Academic Programme Categories is provided at the University Grants Committee Statistics website: https://cdcf.ugc.edu.hk/cdcf/statEntry.action?lang=EN.

1.1 Methodology

3

Fig. 1.1 The number and type of majors in the first local humanities degrees held by interviewees (Some interviewees graduated with double major concentrations for their first local humanities degree. In such cases both their majors were taken into account. Therefore, although there were only 59 interviewees, there are 64 counts for the major concentrations in this diagram)

Number of interviewees by year of graduation 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Fig. 1.2 The number of interviewees by their year of graduation from their humanities degrees

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1 Interviews with Humanities Graduates

Fig. 1.3 The number of female versus male interviewees

27 (45.8%)

32 (54.2%)

Male Female

The entire recruitment period lasted from June to November 2017. First, we contacted official organizations such as university alumni offices, and university departments and their alumni associations for interviewee referrals. Second, we circulated a recruitment notice on Facebook and other online platforms and websites to broaden our reach. Third, we contacted academics in humanities disciplines for individual recommendations for participants. Fourth, we identified and invited potential interviewees mentioned or featured in alumni magazines, newsletters and other relevant online sources. After each successful interview, we would ask the interviewee to refer us to people we could contact next.

1.1.3 Interview Format Interviews were conducted concurrent to our continued employment of recruitment strategies, from June to November 2017. The interviews were semi-structured, with a set of four compulsory, open-ended questions shown below, and individual follow-up questions based on interviewees’ responses and the progression of the conversation. In order to give interviewees more time to recollect their experience in their humanities education, we sent the list of set questions to the interviewees before the interview together with the consent form. The questions were: 1. Could you talk about how your career has developed after you graduated from university? 2. Have your studies been relevant to your career? If so, how? 3. Have your studies been meaningful in your life? If so, how? 4. What value if any do you think studies in your discipline have (had) on Hong Kong society in particular? The use of the semi-structured interview format was crucial in achieving the goals of this part of the study, which are to explore the individual meaning and value of humanities higher education across a person’s lifetime in a way that would allow

1.1 Methodology

Types of Industry

5

No. of Interviewees

Commerce and Industry Finance / Banking Telecommunications

27 1 1

Trading, Import & Export Retailing / Wholesaling

2 3

Transportation Engineering / Information Technology Services Public Relations / Mass Communication Art and Design House

1 1 5 13

Education Tertiary Institution Others

24 16 8

Government

4

Social & Public Organisations Charity Organisation Social Services Agency

4 1 3

Fig. 1.4 Job industries occupied by interviewees at the time of the interview (The classification in this table is based on the job types used by the graduate employment surveys published by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Actual examples of the jobs the graduates held at the time of the interview include: teacher/lecturer/academic; pastor; firefighter; administrative staff; artist; designer; musician; curator; filmmaker; social worker; textbook editor; bookstore owner; employee of large business corporations in a variety of capacities; and entrepreneur in design, event management, publicity, or marketing and media)

for the person’s own voice and views to come through, and at the same time, allow for comparison between narratives. At one end of the extreme, the structured interview format would have been too rigid to accommodate individual specificity (Elliott 2005, p. 21). The individualized and unstructured follow-up questions based on interviewees’ responses created the space for interviewees to further elaborate on distinct points of interest in their narratives. At the other end of the extreme, unstructured, fully narrative interviews where the participant is completely free to develop the interview narrative (Hollway and Jefferson 2000, p. 31) would make it difficult to assess the specific research questions on the value of humanities education and allow comparison across all 59 interviews. The standardized questions fixed the agenda

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and provided the necessary format and thus crucial points of reference between different interview narratives that could anchor subsequent analysis. The resulting evolving conversation between interviewer and interviewee thus did justice to the specificity and creativity of individual accounts, while also ensuring that the structure would enable meaningful thematic analysis across narratives later on. In this sense, our methodology differed from the two main reports referenced earlier, the Oxford report and the Humanities World Report 2015, which used long, detailed lists of questions. Interviews were conducted either in English or Cantonese depending on interviewees’ personal preference. All interviews were recorded with a timer preset at one hour. Upon reaching the one-hour mark, interviewees were asked if they preferred to continue or conclude the interview. On average the interviews lasted for one hour and twenty minutes, with the shortest being 43 minutes and the longest being three hours. Our method of using a one-hour timer was, like the use of semi-structured interviews, again intended to balance between standardization and flexibility.

1.1.4 Data Analysis After transcribing the interviews, thematic analysis was conducted in four stages. First, themes were assigned to sections of interview transcripts. Shared prominent themes were then identified from multiple readings of the transcripts, and a preliminary list of themes was produced. Second, the transcripts were reviewed again and further additions and adjustments were made to the themes. The preliminary themes were then entered into NVivo 12. Third, the list of preliminary themes in NVivo was reviewed, and the reliability of themes was checked while semantically duplicate ones were combined. Finally, with reference to the statistics on the prevalence of the themes generated by NVivo, the representativeness of the thematic codes across the interview data was further checked, and final adjustments were made to the coding scheme for additional review. By the time this stage had been completed, all transcripts had been repetitively read and analyzed by at least two coders, which ensured the optimization of themes and the minimization of data left undescribed by the themes. At the next stage, the thematic diagram arrived at was further evaluated by a third reviewer, and the structure of the individual themes was reorganized into five main sections: individual benefits, characteristics of career development narratives, characteristics of humanities pedagogy, characteristics of humanities education narratives, and the essential contributions of the humanities to Hong Kong society. Second, some of the themes were further redefined, renamed and recategorized to ensure both the uniqueness of each theme, and the relevance of the themes to the study’s specific research questions. Finally, all the interview data used to support the categories and themes was reread to check the validity of the themes, which led to further restructuring of the thematic diagram, and the redescription of themes into the final version shown in the next section.

1.1 Methodology

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Statistics on the number of interviewees mentioning the various themes on the benefits that humanities higher education brings the individual and Hong Kong society (Sects. 1 and 5 of the list of themes) are shown in the Appendix to this report.

1.2 Results: Graduate Interviews The following sections provide explanations of each theme, which include: (1) a brief summary and definition of the theme, with the boundaries around the theme explained; and (2) where relevant and useful, representative direct quotations from the interview data that do not merely exemplify the theme, but also demonstrate, justify and explain the emergence of the theme. Importantly, these quotations were incorporated in order to create the space for interviewees’ voices to come through in their own words. These direct narratives add a vividness to the themes that cannot be commonly found in other reports on the value of the humanities (Figs. 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 and 1.9). In our use of direction quotations from the interviews, we usually mention what subject interviewees majored in in their first humanities degree obtained in Hong Kong, without, however, including information on subsequent (humanities) degrees that interviewees might have attained. We do not mention interviewees’ majors, however, where we thought that such information might lead them to be able to be identified based on other details in the report, including in their interview quotations. We only mention one of the interviewees’ majors when they took on double majors for their undergraduate degrees in order to better ensure anonymity. We removed any explicit identity markers, and use the female pronoun throughout to describe all interviewees. Where the quotations were originally in Cantonese, they have been translated into English, and the note “CAN” has been added at the end of the quote to mark this.

1. Individual benefits

2. Characteristics of career development narratives

4. Characteristics of humanities education narratives

3. Characteristics of humanities pedagogy

5. The essential contributions of humanities education to Hong Kong society

Fig. 1.5 The five main sections categorizing all themes

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1.1 Skills and abilities • Good language and communication skills • Critical and independent thinking • Multiperspectival thinking • Adaptability and flexibility • Advanced research and textual analysis skills • Creativity • Capacity for life-long learning

1.2 The formation of personality, values, and vision • Enhanced self-knowledge • Enhanced sensibility • Meaning in life • Moral integrity • Open-mindedness • Intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm • Emotional and spiritual fortification • Empathy and care for fellow humans • A sense of mission to spread humanities knowledge

Fig. 1.6 The two subsections and themes under Sect. 1.2.1, “Individual Benefits”

2. Characteristics of career development narratives • A great variety of career paths among graduates • Initial disorientation followed by gradual career establishment • Interest and meaning as career priorities • Distinct competitiveness brought about by individual benefits • Challenges to career development • Education as the dominant industry • The volatility of a creative career • Barriers to entry into specialized humanities jobs • Lack of specific training for the general job market • Difficulty convincing others of the use of humanities education • Clash between humanities values and commercial values

Fig. 1.7 The themes and subthemes under Sect. 1.2.2, “Characteristics of Career Development Narratives”

Quotations originally in English have also been marked with the note “ENG.” In our quotations from the interviews, if interviewees used English words or phrases in an interview that was otherwise in Cantonese, we put the English words in quotation marks and have added the note “ENG” behind the words. We use ellipses enclosed within square brackets in interview quotations to indicate where words have been elided, to distinguish between elision and points where interviewees paused and trailed off, which are indicated with an ellipsis without square brackets.

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3. Characteristics of humanities pedagogy

4. Characteristics of humanities education narratives

• Teachers as role models and mentors • Individualized learning methods: tutorial discussions and dissertations • Insightful major texts

• Upon entering university: passion for the subject • During university study: formative education • Upon graduation and after: the lasting influence of wisdom derived from education • The intangibility of the values of humanities education

Fig. 1.8 The themes under Sect. 1.2.3, “Characteristics of Humanities Pedagogy,” and Sect. 1.2.4, “Characteristics of Humanities Education Narratives”

5. The essential contributions of humanities education to Hong Kong society • The maintenance of language standards • Contributions to quality education • Emotional and spiritual nourishment • Synergy with business values that underpin economy and society • Creating a rich and dynamic cultural landscape • Preserving and transmitting Hong Kong culture • The arts as social and community service • Promoting cultural sensitivity, awareness, and diversity • Tempering excessive materialism and instrumentalism • Promoting civic engagement • The challenging socio-economic climate in Hong Kong limiting potential contributions

Fig. 1.9 The themes under Sect. 1.2.5, “The Essential Contributions of Humanities Education to Hong Kong Society”

1.2.1 Individual Benefits This section lists the positive influence of a humanities education at the higher education level on an individual’s personality and intellectual development. We do not go into the self-explanatory benefits of having gained specific subject knowledge. For each theme in this large section, we include both summative statements in order to enhance our definition of the themes and direct quotations from the interviews. We separated this main section into the subsections of “skills and abilities” and “the formation of personality, values, and vision” not without careful deliberation, since from just the names of these two subsections, one can already see that there is potential overlap between them. For the themes under the first subsection, interviewees tended to elaborate on the “use” of these skills, often but not necessarily

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in terms of the workplace. Themes under the second subsection emphasize personal values that are not primarily pragmatic. For instance, the themes of “moral integrity” and “meaningful self-actualization” attest to the deeper, character-forming changes brought about by humanities education, which are primarily non-economic and not directly instrumental. Again, however, even themes such as “empathy” could be considered abilities relevant to the workplace (for example in the hospitality industry), although we judged “empathy” as more strongly part of a person’s deeper core personality. That does not mean, however, that themes under the first subsection connect to careers while those under the second do not. Some of the themes were explicitly linked by the interviewees to their careers. For instance, the theme of “Good Language and Communication Skills” (see the section below) is obviously useful in any career, and was seen by interviewees as such. Other themes could be connected to careerbuilding, but in a much more complex way. “Meaning in Life” (see the section below), for instance, refers to how interviewees expressed that their humanities education led them to ask questions about the meaning of human existence, the purpose of life, and what social responsibilities they held, causing them to prioritize living their lives in a meaningful way rather than being merely a gratification of material desires. This then influenced their career choices. A useful way to think about the two subsections, therefore, is that the first one is oriented more towards pragmatic skills and career benefits and less towards personality development, while for the second subsection, the opposite holds.

1.2.1.1

Skills and Abilities

This subsection lists the skills and abilities that graduates identified from their humanities studies. These refer to the more readily practical and pragmatic, and are thus distinguished from the items categorized under the second section of “the formation of personality, values, and vision,” which pertain to the more personal advantages endowed by humanities education. This, however, as we have just explained, is not a rigid distinction, as skills and abilities can also pertain to the personal, and personal values and vision can and do also have practical applications. The individual skills identified are distinct and well-justified enough for us to separate them, often with the interviewees using the very keyword in the theme themselves, yet they are also readily relatable to each other. One way to conceptualize them would be to think of each theme as a circle with its own defined boundary, but with the circles overlapping at the edges. Adaptability and flexibility, for instance, are not the same as, but are obviously related to, creativity, as possessing one skill readily leads to the other skill (Fig. 1.10).

1.2 Results: Graduate Interviews Fig. 1.10 An illustration of the partial overlapping of themes

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Adaptability and flexibility

Creativity

Good Language and Communication Skills Graduates often referred in the interviews to the language proficiency they had gained through their studies in Chinese, English and other languages such as Japanese and French. Some also mentioned their ability to understand people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, and in expressing and communicating their ideas effectively in a variety of formats, such as in writing, speaking, and using presentations. An English graduate, for instance, explained that having been exposed to a wide variety of English-language accents used in different registers and contexts throughout her studies, she could both much better understand a wider scope of English varieties on diverse topics, as well as communicate with people from a wider range of cultural backgrounds: [In my education] I was exposed to the different accents spoken by different foreign professors, so [people at work] allocated me to take minutes at meetings, because even colleagues more senior than me might not be able to fully understand everything being said, or might not be familiar with some academic jargon […]. So I think this is a distinct advantage: when no one else can understand what is being said, and you can […]; when the majority of local Hong Kong people understand less than 70%. […] When you can use English to interact with professors, this is very good practice [for] interacting with […] people from different nationalities. (CAN)

A philosophy graduate explained how her studies emphasized fostering better understanding and dialogue between different parties, and ways of thinking that minimized misunderstandings between people: the abilities philosophy trains you in include how to understand others’ requests and their communication with you. It leads you to be a bit more thoughtful in your understanding, because at times what we say does not clearly express what we think. […] This ability leads to less misunderstanding in people’s cooperation with each other, […] and at work can lead to less time wasted due to mutual misunderstanding. (CAN)

These abilities in communication extend also to the emotional and aesthetic. A Humanities graduate said that graduates of her subject were particularly adept at writing pieces—such as for media purposes, or for the purposes of marketing or public relations—that “pierce the heart” and “evoke emotions” (CAN) as compared to Journalism graduates. A Fine Arts graduate talked about being able to adapt writing to consider her audience’s viewpoint and emotions: “the most basic requirement for

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art is to be able to communicate with others, that is your audience. […] If others cannot receive your message, you’re just talking to yourself. So that type of really elaborate and detailed training in communication comes from studying art” (CAN). It could be argued that good language and communication skills in turn enable a mindset that values diversity in cultures and viewpoints—additional abilities that indeed appear in other themes such as “Multiperspectival Thinking” (see the section below) and Sect. 1.2.5.7 (“Promoting Cultural Sensitivity, Awareness, and Diversity”). Education in the liberal arts and humanities then “helps to fashion humane, well-rounded graduates who are able to interact in person with their fellow human beings, and thereby improve the quality of social life” (Chiu 2016, p. 74). These abilities are especially important in a multicultural society and international city like Hong Kong.

Critical and Independent Thinking Critical thinking is a systematic and rational refusal to take something at face value that leads to individualized or alternative evaluation. This “healthy scepticism regarding easy solutions by way of [the humanities’] demonstration that, when humankind is involved, things are usually more complicated than they first seem” (Bate 2011, p. 2) is an essential component of humanities education, serving as the foundation of intellectual enquiry. This mental ability, interviewees explained, allowed them to make good, reasoned judgments in different situations. A Philosophy graduate, now an owner of several businesses, said: What I regard as important is the training that Philosophy gave me, which was very good. It made me think differently. Different not as in deliberately standing out by being weird [but rather that] I would think about the nature of things. For example, my classmates—the brilliant ones—are first-rate in doing consulting work. […] I know many people who are in consulting, and I treasure those friends a lot, because they have great thinking skills—in analysis, expression […]. [T]hey are good, and they are very fit for doing decisive, cerebral work, and they have great cognitive ability, so they can be at the managerial level, and do such work. (CAN)

Another graduate named an example in her work as an educational administrator that illustrates the additional cognitive steps such type of thinking involves: For instance let’s say that a student comes into the office saying she wants to drop a course, but the add/drop period has passed. My solution for her might be this or that. However, I wouldn’t just be satisfied with solving her problem: I would ask, why has this happened? Was our information distribution inadequate? Or was it the student’s problem? Or is it a university-wide information distribution problem? Or did our office not do a good enough job? […] I would keep on thinking about this. I think my training in philosophy would lead me to think about the consequences of the student not knowing about the deadline. I wouldn’t be satisfied with just solving the problem, that is, just the superficial issue in front of me. I would think further and further about the issue. (CAN)

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A Music graduate said: I think that for university education, especially in this day and age, knowledge itself has already become unimportant, because so much knowledge already exists that you will never be able to possess it all. The type of thinking, however, where you make decisions about what type of knowledge to choose, which can simply speaking be called ‘critical thinking’ [ENG], is the most important at university: to learn how to think. (CAN)

The words of a Theology graduate perhaps sum up this theme best, in terms that also show how this ability has deep relevance for the personal aspect of graduates’ lives: “We are allowed to think critically, to challenge, to deconstruct and to ask ourselves what we really believe in” (CAN). The above statements affirm what both the Humanities World Report 2015 and the Oxford Report state. The former says that “although all disciplines thrive on critical thinking, the humanities epitomise it” (Holm et al., p. 33). The latter calls critical thinking one of several “core elements of Humanities degree programmes” sought after by employers (Kreager, p. 5).

Multiperspectival Thinking This theme is again linked to the two themes that have gone before, with the emphasis here on the multiple perspectives graduates stated they became endowed with as a result of their wide exposure to the various branches of knowledge their subject discipline linked to, which they might then subsequently apply after individual evaluation. In a Fine Arts graduate’s words, this skill is that of not possessing merely “a single way of thinking” (CAN). Another Fine Arts graduate described the study of art as teaching students that “one plus one can equal fifty things,” and that “those fifty things can have a hundred interpretations” (CAN). A Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies graduate described being able to “bring various alternative perspectives to her boss” when “brainstorming” ideas because of her studies. A Theology graduate explained how “in church circles, there is a relatively unitary way of viewing homosexuality. But for those of us trained at [the name of a tertiary institution in Hong Kong], the atmosphere or discussion there differs from mainstream church views, so although we do not necessarily accept their views, we will try to understand them or their concerns, to see from their viewpoint, understand their demands” (CAN).

Adaptability and Flexibility A high degree of adaptability and flexibility in thinking and working style was a strong recurrent theme in graduates’ description of their skills. As a Humanities graduate commented, this was what employers wanted from them—not highly specialized or professional abilities, but a variety of skills and knowledge sources: “Our great flexibility is our selling point. When you work, unless you are [looking for] a highly

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specialized professional such as a doctor or a lawyer, you’d want someone who has a wide variety of abilities, for instance not someone who only knows English but not Chinese, only knows about literature but not about art” (CAN). Another Humanities graduate pointed out the “diversified” abilities in people who had received a humanities education. A third Humanities graduate explained how their ability to think outside of existing frameworks allowed them to “move forward” instead of being “stuck in the same place,” and how their realization of the sheer vastness of knowledge led to a sense of “humility” that instilled in them the need to never stop learning, allowing them to “keep moving” and so keep up with changing times and trends (CAN). The wide range of subject knowledge students were exposed to in their studies, a Fine Arts graduate explained, led to “flexibility” and encouraged further reflection and “thinking from different angles” (CAN). An English graduate pointed out the applicability of humanities graduates’ skills in a wide variety of areas, and their ability to “understand books from a wide range of disciplines” (CAN). This flexibility is a useful skill in a rapidly changing world with constantly emerging technologies, as a Translation graduate pointed out: for instance, when creating commercials, “we have no restrictive frameworks to bind us [as compared to Marketing or Public Relations graduates]. This industry is ever-changing, and so must you” (CAN). Another Fine Arts graduate shared how she and her team turned the lack of a fixed exhibition venue into the constructive plan of launching a mobile exhibition truck that toured different neighbourhoods: if you have a museum in West Kowloon, it would be too far for the inhabitants of Tin Shui Wai to come over. But now that we don’t have a museum, why don’t we deliver “take-aways”? That’s why I told you we made a truck, a tow-truck, of a container, and today I could tow it to Tin Shui Wai, and tomorrow to Wanchai or to Sham Shui Po’s schools, and this allows me to go to different places every day. And because I have no museum, you can think of it as a bad thing, or like me, you can think that, yes, this means I don’t have any baggage, and can have pop-up events anywhere. (CAN)

It also allows graduates to develop more than one area of expertise or work, for instance in the form of a succession of different career areas. A Philosophy graduate said she was “doing things that are not supposed to be done by me,” and “could jump into different fields […] quickly.” She continued: I worked in the [jewellery] business for around nine years, and in those golden ten years right after I graduated, trade [and] export […] were hot in the market. But you know that companies like Alibaba, Taobao, and so on, e-commerce and all that, they become old once the trend is over, and so you have to keep changing. […] And I had to work on things that align with the trends, and so I moved onto making apps, and even AI, as I am doing now. And going back to what you asked about the relation, Philosophy has trained my brain in having stronger analytical skills, and secondly, in having a different mindset […] in terms of being more daring to try different things. (CAN).

1.2 Results: Graduate Interviews

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Advanced Research and Textual Analysis Skills Numerous graduates explicitly used the keyword “research” to describe one of the abilities they gained. Good research skills make up a composite skill set that combines some aspects of abilities gained that have been mentioned before, such as “Critical and Independent Thinking” (see the section above) and “Multiperspectival Thinking” (see the section above), without being equivalent to these, pertaining to the more technical skills involved in processing and distilling large amounts of information. Here, interviewees emphasized their advanced skills in reading and analyzing texts derived from their course readings and assignments, giving rise to a mental agility that enabled them to organize and make use of existing information in creating and establishing unique and new viewpoints. For instance, an English graduate explained how her training in “textual analysis and contextual analysis” enabled her to not “just look at the text but also [do] work about the subtext, the cultural context” in her work (ENG). A History graduate talked about having to sift through large amounts of information on a wide variety of topics to write—without any one reference guide— the “story” of one’s essay assignments: “There are no textbooks. You go to the library yourself to find information to compile the ‘story’ [ENG]. This is a very ‘intensive’ [ENG] step. […] It’s the same as for research: you try to connect the information in a horizontal way, in a vertical way, in order to get something more out of it” (CAN). Another History graduate said of the process: “The biggest skill needed in studying History is how to find information. After finding the information you have to ask yourself how accurate the information is, how it was formed and shaped into the knowledge it is. This is a type of ‘critical thinking’ [ENG]. And then when you organize this information you will put into shape a type of thinking that you need to express in language, so your language skills must be good. I think this skill set is ‘research’ [ENG]. You organize different perspectives, and you tell that thing again to others in a new way” (CAN). Another English graduate pointed out the importance of “research skills” (CAN) in creating advertisements. Although technical skills were important, the most important aspect was still the content, which needed to convince: “How to use communication skills, or some research skills, to increase your sales: these are the things needed for copywriting and advertisements. The content in advertisements needs to be written. Of course there is a technical aspect to shooting advertisements, but in the end as to whether the content and your way of thinking is alright or not: people who have specific ways of thinking tend to come from humanities disciplines” (CAN).

Creativity Graduates often stated in the interviews that they were less rigid about established frameworks and practices, and tended to come up with new ways of problem-solving and decision-making. Considering that humanities disciplines include subjects for which creativity is central, such as Fine Arts and Music, this is perhaps not surprising.

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For instance, a Fine Arts graduate thought her education encouraged “creat[ing] your own style”: “you are not just copying but you understand how to develop an idea” (CAN). But this benefit was not just limited to graduates of the creative arts; a Humanities graduate, for instance, said that when challenged by an internship boss who wanted to retain her as an employee on what she could realistically do after graduation, she responded: “Yes, there is nothing specific a Humanities graduate can do, but we can do anything.” She continued: “That is, conversely, we have undergone training that allows us to think in different directions, or perhaps our creativity is relatively. . . that is, for years now my employers have told me that my creativity, my analysis of issues, is more multi-faceted than that of others” (CAN). This value again has obvious benefits for both the individual and for society, promoting, as the Humanities World Report 2015 states, “a culture of innovation” (p. 13).

Capacity for Life-Long Learning Interviewees often expressed a passion for learning derived from their humanities education, and an eagerness and aptitude for continued learning after graduation, aided by the emphasis on self-learning in their humanities education. A Philosophy graduate exemplified this theme when she described how the realization from her studies that human beings were not always rational and only possessed finite knowledge explained her endless desire to renew her knowledge: after studying philosophy I would think that, even when agreeing with A, I would still want to hear what a person other than A would say. It is possible that he/she is right, and I am wrong. Of course I wouldn’t be as extreme to believe the person other than A the next day. But after listening carefully to this other person, maybe I would be able to make adjustments or corrections to the basic tenets of A, creating A’. This can be advantageous to me, because the training in philosophy has led me to believe that human beings are just too finite, that human reason is prone to mistakes, and that human beings cannot be all-knowing. (CAN)

Another Philosophy graduate said that her education had taught her that learning was not confined to schools, and that learning opportunities could be found everywhere in life: Up to this day, I still learn lots of things on a daily basis. […] Without philosophy, there wouldn’t have been the subsequent […] life-long learning. I think philosophy has nurtured this type of thinking in me: learning does not just take place in school; there are lots of opportunities to learn in life after school, in your own life. This is in fact the most important [for learning], because three years of university, even with the time spent doing postgraduate studies added, actually constitutes very little” (CAN).

An English graduate said: The training the humanities give you lead to a ‘transferable skill’ [ENG]: they taught me how to do life-long learning, more than that after they’ve taught you one thing, it’s all finished. Everything I know I’ve learned myself, but without that foundation, you wouldn’t have the ability to self-learn. I think this is something the humanities are especially strong in, leading students to be better at ‘active learning’ [ENG], or to be better at life-long learning (CAN).

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This ability presents clear potential benefits for career development, as indicated by the theme of “Further Studies for Specific Career Needs” (Sect. 1.2.2.5) under the section of “Characteristics of Career Development Narratives.” It also has clear long-term benefits for the economy as a whole. This will be elaborated on later in this study.

1.2.1.2

The Formation of Personality, Values, and Vision

This subsection distinguishes itself from the previous one of “skills and abilities” by being more oriented towards deeper personality transformations brought about by humanities education, although as mentioned, the border between the two subsections is not a rigid one. The creation of this separate subsection is justified by the interview data, and makes an important distinction that speaks to the very core of a humanities education: to lay a foundation for graduates’ personality, value judgment and life vision that is essential and beneficial to their self-development. To distinguish them from skills, however, is not to argue that the themes under this subsection are not socially or economically useful: very often, interviewees expressed that they were, as will be shown below. This is in spite of how the pursuit of some of the goals expressed by the following themes could potentially come at the cost of more tangible profit. So two of our interviewees, graduates of Humanities and of History, used a Chinese saying to express the importance of adhering to one’s own personality, values and vision: “Not bending over for a small salary (‘不為五斗米折腰’),” that is, not to forfeit crucial aspects of the self for material gain.

Enhanced Self-knowledge Although our interviewees had different backgrounds and life experiences, the selfknowledge that graduates obtained through their humanities education enabled them to position themselves better in an ever-changing world while maintaining their own beliefs and life purpose. As a History graduate said, “Hong Kong society and people may laugh, thinking you’re very stupid and won’t be able to make money, thinking you’re useless, but you are happy doing what you’re doing” (CAN). An English graduate mentioned the importance of major questions in her life that commonly arise in humanities studies, such as: “What kind of person am I? What am I? What meaning does this world hold for me, and what do I want to do here?” (CAN). Studying religion and philosophy, a graduate in Religious Studies pointed out, “one is even more clear about one’s core values” (CAN). For another graduate of English, “literary and cultural studies” “makes me really have a clear understanding of myself, culture and myself” (ENG). Such better self-knowledge allowed graduates to develop and pursue their own understanding of their identities in citizenship, culture, gender, and religion, to use examples arising from the interviews.

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Enhanced Sensibility Many humanities graduates reported the benefit of increased perceptiveness in various respects, such as enhanced linguistic, cultural, emotional and aesthetic sensitivity. Better abilities in appreciating the intricacies of language and other expressive media then extended to a greater appreciation of the nuanced aspects of phenomena and people in their lives, and deeper social, emotional and spiritual connections with others and their surroundings. For instance, a Chinese graduate talked about enhanced emotional receptivity after reading and studying literary works: “A more desirable mode of living is when you can find things in life you can admire, and you can receive happiness from this admiration. This way of thinking I’m expressing is related to the literary works that I read in the past. Literary appreciation, apart from being about admiring the beauty of language, also contains the insights others derive from their lives and experiences, and these are exactly the things that are worthy of admiration in life. […] I have this desire to […] carefully explore what things are worthy of admiration around me. […] And these things worthy of admiration I learn about through reading literary works” (CAN). A Music graduate talked about how listening to music enabled her not only to perceive the beauty of the music, but also of the world: “Because when you listen to really beautiful music, that type of listening […] requires you to view the whole experience holistically before you can realize the beauty of the music. […] [S]uddenly you hear a ‘ding,’ and you can feel the inner part of your soul, a place that regular materials cannot access” (CAN). A Fine Arts graduate said: “I think art leads you to understand beauty, which in turn leads to happiness. More broadly speaking, maybe you experience the things around you with your soul, whether this is nature, or something created by someone. Then you will be even more proactive and optimistic, or it becomes easier to attain joy. When you see something beautiful, you’ll feel happiness” (CAN). Such increased sensibility is not just aesthetically and existentially meaningful, but can also be useful for work. A Fine Arts graduate talked about how, when creating new designs, she did not only focus on social function, “but also considered how the design can […] move and touch people’s hearts [...]. The final goal is spiritual connection” (CAN).

Meaning in Life Interviewees often talked about their aim to lead a meaningful and fruitful life. Graduates thought that their desire to explore and discover the meaning to their lives was one of the outcomes of their education. A Humanities graduate asked: “what path should I take? How can I find the meaning of my life? If you only work, you will neglect many things. […] Being human means being able to find the value of one’s existence, not just making money. What use is just making money? A life just about making money to sustain yourself […] is too superficial” (CAN). A Chinese graduate said that her studies led to a querying of “the meaning of life or what one should do, and not just being content at only considering instrumental values” (CAN). An English graduate said: “I go off the beaten path, and I try to do things my way to

1.2 Results: Graduate Interviews

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find my answer,” and that “it’s not only about [your] career, it’s about how you see your life, how you want to live your life” (ENG). A Fine Arts graduate said: “I think studying art really changed my life. It changes my personal philosophy generally, including the way I see family, marriage, […] and life pursuits. It inspires me to meditate and reflect more upon life. […] Anyhow, it has given me my passion. If I didn’t study art in the first place, I doubt whether this fire within me would ever exist” (CAN). Such types of self-actualization were at times contrasted with mere conformity to social norms and market needs. Another Fine Arts graduate asserted that “choosing to pursue what you love will take you the furthest,” and that without this, in the long term, one’s work is “deadening” and “one’s life can be extremely bad” (CAN). Another Chinese graduate thought that “although I cannot say my life is perfect, I can at least say I am content, […] because I have this sense of […] appreciation for things around me” (CAN). A Humanities graduate explained how the humanities could help people develop a set of personal values “and not just the values that the world transmits to you,” so that graduates could “find their own values in this utilitarian and pragmatic world,” which was essential because “one’s personal values can endure, but utilitarian values last only for a fixed period of time” (CAN).

Moral Integrity In what can be seen as a related value to the previous one, 27 interviewees reported having developed morally through humanities education. They believed that humanities education helped individuals establish a value system, enabling them to make well-considered judgments when facing various life and workplace problems or social issues. They also linked personal actions and conduct to larger implications for community and society, such as civic duty and social justice. A Chinese graduate explained how reading literary texts underpinned by moral values could allow one to become a moral person. “[Chinese literary texts] all encourage good deeds and discourage evil. […] Then in theory once you’ve finished studying at the Chinese Department you will become a moral person” (CAN). An English graduate said: “I think the humanities, to me, […] it gets down to the ethics part. When I develop something, it’s a moral struggle within me. Especially working commercially, whether you have to do something directly or whether there is a more subtle way to do things” (ENG). A History graduate said that the humanities were about “shaping a person’s temperament, or nurturing a person’s ethics” (CAN).

Open-Mindedness Open-mindedness here refers to being open and receptive to viewpoints and possibilities different from the ones one might have previously believed in, and is closely related to the themes of “Critical and Independent Thinking” (see the section above) and “Multiperspectival Thinking” (see the section above) in the subsection of “Skills

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and Abilities” (Sect. 1.2.1.1), being the nearest personality trait to these skills that humanities education was reported to promote. One Theology graduate summed up both this theme and these interrelated themes when she said: “If we tried to think less about functionality, humanities subjects would actually have much value. At least to me it offers a sense of freedom and space, something that makes us think further and dig deeper” (CAN). This theme mostly addresses examples where such a mindset—which includes a willingness to embrace novel perspectives, and to modify existing views and opinions—is seen as part of an interviewee’s personality or value system, rather than primarily seen as an ability to be applied in a more pragmatic way, although as for all personal qualities open-mindedness may also have its practical applications. A Fine Arts graduate said of her studies: “It’s a value system to me […] in terms of seeing things. And even when I have family members, children, your attitude towards them would be different as well. You will find that the world has infinite possibilities. So you wouldn’t think that you must do A to get B” (CAN). Another Fine Arts graduate said: “This openness is brought forth by art. It allows you to accept the unknown. You don’t have to fear it. I mean, what’s there to fear? That’s why I support art education. But I don’t advocate art education in a spoon-feeding manner—it is only the interactive types that I support. I think these interactions between people awaken our humanity and make us feel alive. This is what humanities studies mean. It’s all very free. You don’t have to set up any boundaries” (CAN). The multiple possible interpretations of texts encountered in one’s studies could lead one to “discover that there are many ways of looking at the world, and you start looking at yourself,” as a Humanities graduate stated. As she said: “I’ve become more ‘open-minded’ [ENG] throughout my personal development. This of course also influences your value system or world perspective” (CAN). A Philosophy graduate who is a teacher explained: “If I hear that a student has a different way of interpreting a question that makes even more sense, I will publicly admit this. I think this is a characteristic of people who study philosophy. They like to be rebutted by students. So maybe this is one thing that finds its application in my teaching, and a unique attitude in philosophy people” (CAN). She continued: “I expose myself constantly to different viewpoints, and use these to stimulate myself intellectually and emotionally, in order to help me examine myself. If I discover that there are holes in my value system, I should mend these” (CAN). Thus, she said, “I think life is a constant process of doubting, exploration, and improvement,” and that “this is perhaps the one deep effect that philosophy has had on me, to really develop such an open-mindedness” (CAN).

Intellectual Curiosity and Enthusiasm The counterpart to this theme under “Skills and Abilities” (Sect. 1.2.1.1) is “Capacity for Life-Long Learning” (see the section above), but here the instances again pertain more specifically to graduates’ personal lives and values, as exemplified by a Comparative Literature graduate’s statement: “I need to tell people I can’t be left behind,

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I need to ‘keep on producing knowledge’ [ENG] or ‘output’ [ENG]. This is also a personal interest. My boss will not force me to do this, I just do this for my own interest or to maintain my ‘language skills’ [ENG]” (CAN). Graduates here expressed the view that humanities education had triggered their passion and enthusiasm for knowledge. A History graduate said: “Everything I studied before has become part of what I enjoy about life. Because I enjoy both music and reading about history, it’s part of life, not just work” (CAN). A Philosophy graduate said that philosophy had given her “a quest to pursue knowledge or learning or life” (CAN). An Anthropology graduate said: “Even now I still buy books on ‘cultural studies’ (ENG) and ‘anthropology’ (ENG). Isn’t that extreme?” (CAN). A Humanities graduate’s continued cultural activities, such as going to museums “instead of going shopping or to outlets” (CAN), were described by her as “‘fulfilling’ [ENG]. Instead of just sitting there playing video games for a few hours, I’d perhaps rather turn on the radio to listen to [RTHK’s] ‘Free as the Wind’” (CAN).

Emotional and Spiritual Fortification Interviewees talked about how their humanities studies addressed their emotional and spiritual needs. For instance, they mentioned how texts helped them when they faced adversity in life, and how the arts proved sources to tap into for some measure of happiness and emotional resilience. A Chinese graduate said: Some ancient writers who cared deeply about humankind can help you face things in daily life. You would think, they faced the same things before, and they gave these ways of thinking for you to get through these tough times. This is helpful for oneself. So yes, you think, someone else has walked on the same path, or maybe they faced a situation many times worse before. […] We can learn from literature some wisdom about life through learning how they used their intelligence to overcome their adverse situations. […] Or thinking back to some of their famous lines, yes, it’s very meaningful. Yes, about what’s important in life […]. It will give you lots of energy, yes. (CAN)

Another Chinese graduate said: In theory if you can apply in your life what you’ve learned in the Chinese department, you should be able to become even happier reading a literary text when you’re happy, and when you’re unhappy, you can read literary works to see how people in the past dealt with their unhappiness. After reading you may be able to resolve your feelings, to become happier again. So I think that this way of resolving feelings for human beings is an important function of the humanities. It does not earn you a lot of money, but when you are undergoing emotional turmoil, it can help you a bit. (CAN)

“Reading books,” she continued, “can be an emotional outlet, and this is an important function” (CAN). A third Chinese graduate concurred: “Back when we studied in the Chinese department, apart from studying literary works, we took on their ideas or their attitudes towards life, or how to deal with life’s so-called good times or bad times.” She continued: “When you experience something personally, you will think

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back to literary works you’ve encountered before, and map those insights onto your own feelings” (CAN). A Philosophy graduate said that her studies meant a different way of looking at problems: “Difficulties: you wouldn’t see them as difficulties. You look at the world and you’ll ask, what isn’t difficult? And when you’ve developed such a broad mindset from an early stage, it will have an impact on you. You can have the motivation to start all over again, and it’s endless” (CAN). Another Philosophy graduate suggested a stoical attitude towards hardship bred from her studies: “Many people nowadays think that when one feels sufficiently pained, one’s pain is necessarily unreasonable. But having been influenced by studies in ethics, you would think that your pain compared to others’ pain should be accepted by you, that is, your pain is not more deserving of alleviation than others’ pain. […] The result is that I won’t be too selfcentred, that is, I won’t think that my pain is different from others’. Many people think their own pain is especially important, but after studying ethics, I would think that that my pain is indeed very important, but not more so than others’” (CAN). A Music graduate said: “when you listen to a concert, you will become calmer. Or say you encounter people who make you very annoyed, very angry—music can ‘calm you down’ [ENG], allow you to be more tranquil, allow your soul to be more ‘peaceful’ [ENG]. The effect is not to directly cause you not to be angry anymore, but you can become a bit more tranquil” (CAN). A total of 20 graduates also mentioned the strong emotional bond they had and were able to maintain with graduates from and teachers in their departments, creating a highly valued sense of community and belonging. Although this is of course not unique to humanities departments, the prevalence of graduates making this point means that it is a significant phenomenon here. For example, a Humanities graduate said: Our teachers are great. […] “Department head[s]” [ENG] come to our Saturday dinners. […] We have a gathering with teachers every year, and every few years, for example for our ten-year graduation anniversary, we organize our own “gathering” [ENG]. Or when the “department” [ENG] has activities, we go and support these. I think these things make us think back all the time of what a teacher may have said at some time, or what he/she chided us for. If such a teacher did not treat you well, you wouldn’t remember what he/she said. So I think […] my own experience after [graduation], and my good relationship with teachers, our frequent communication and sharing of views, […] led to things to stick with us instead of just sliding away like water off a duck’s back (“水過鴨背”). [CAN]

Empathy and Care for Fellow Humans 35 graduates said that, after studying the humanities, they became more empathetic and developed a greater sense of caring for others in society. Empathy can be defined as the ability to deeply understand others’ positions, emotions, needs, and suffering. For instance, an English graduate said: I discovered that studies in literature or anthropology could help me understand people, their minds, their lives, and so on, but I didn’t think I could really help others directly with this. We can see a lot of people feeling depressed these days, maybe even with suicidal tendencies,

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and we don’t know what to do about this, we feel helpless. The sense of humanistic caring I derived [from these observations] made me think about how to help people apart from what I studied or what I was already doing. So I took on a lot of voluntary work, work that had to do with social welfare and social enterprises. […] My humanities training led me to be able to think, to conclude, that there were such things that could help people. (CAN).

She called this “a type of ‘empathy’ [ENG]” demanding that she is “caring” (CAN). Another English graduate said: “You learn about those emotions, you learn about those things already. Maybe you can get to know yourself, or get to know other people in a better way, in a clearer way. Then in return you can care about them in a better way, then care about yourself in a better way” (ENG). A Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies graduate said: “Cultural studies for me is a type of caring about others. When you research cultures, you talk about ‘class’ [ENG], ‘gender’ [ENG], ‘ideology’ [ENG], these kinds of things. So when we observe all these power relations, then we necessarily care about the weaker parties. This will nurture humanistic caring” (CAN). She continued: “Graduates from the humanities do possess more humanistic caring” (CAN). A Music graduate said: “one of my motives in publishing books and giving talks is to draw attention to the relationship between music, history, and the composer. In this way, we can gain a deeper understanding of the significance of these classical works in their own time. […] History is a reflection of our everyday life. I think taking such a retrospective point of view increases our empathy” (CAN). Although neither empathy nor the actions that may result from it can be seen as somehow the unique result of only humanities education, the interviewees did share the links they saw between their education and the various ways in which they exercised their humanistic concern or pastoral care towards others. A History graduate said: “One of the things about the humanistic spirit is that you should have ‘empathy’ [ENG], understanding, communication with others. You should connect people. Because you know that others possess these ‘elements’ [ENG], you know about others’ needs, and you’ll find that you have to help them, because you see that these people are not treated fairly in society.” (CAN). A Chinese graduate said: “After studying literature, your emotional range becomes broader. Your perceptions become finer. When you see elderly people on the street you will feel sorry for them. This kind of sympathy doesn’t just come out of nowhere, but comes from literature” (CAN). A Fine Arts graduate said: “I think artists tend to. . . I should say possess an intention: we will create a work of art only when it helps the world” (CAN).

A Sense of Mission to Spread Humanities Knowledge Many interviewees said they wished to spread humanities knowledge and values to others. There is some overlap between the previous theme and this one, in that caring about others often underpins the motivation to extend what one considers beneficial to others, in this case values and knowledge derived from interviewees’ humanities education. Where for the previous theme we mainly used quotations that specifically referenced the keywords “empathy” and “caring” as feelings or qualities, here the

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prerequisite for a quotation to be included is instead reference to work done in society by interviewees to share the knowledge and values derived directly from their own humanities education and training. The following interview quotation exemplifies the shared dimension between the two themes, although it is at the same time clear that the two themes are distinct. A Visual Communication graduate said: I really want to do something to help people, that is to inspire people, so from a very young age even when I made a poster, or drew a painting, or when I grew up and made ads, any product design I did, what I wanted was for users, the audience, after using this thing […] [to think], ‘Oh, this thing is really good, so I’m going to join this industry,’ or ‘this thing is really good, I feel it’s made my life happier,’ or ‘this thing is really good […], oh, what a wonderful world, I’m not going to die anymore.’ You never know, you don’t know if that could happen. (CAN)

One major form through which this knowledge transfer took place was by direct work in education, with 24 of our 59 interviewees belonging to the teaching profession. Teacher-interviewees did not see themselves as mere facilitators of knowledge transfer, but as mentors who also taught values, and who assisted their students in making better decisions and developing independent judgment. For instance, a Chinese graduate said: “My thesis supervisor taught me that teaching is not just about teaching knowledge, but also about teaching the human being. […] Now that I am an educator, I very much understand this viewpoint” (CAN). Outside the classroom, interviewees promoted humanities subjects in various ways, with interviewees not generally seeing their humanities knowledge as only a means to earning money. A History graduate talked about working on Hong Kong history for her research studies: “I had a sense of mission. The [topic of research thesis] is something that can have some achievement in Hong Kong society” (CAN). A Fine Arts graduate said: “I am actually a writer myself. Indeed, my other part-time jobs are freelance writer and radio host. I like it and I do it for fun, as I don’t charge them any money. […] I think it’s a platform for the public to get in touch with art. I introduce some art works and artists every time. I treat it as a social contribution” (CAN). A Music graduate said: “Music is something that I’m good at. Regardless of whether I can make a living out of it, I’m very passionate about it. This passion also extends outwards: I hope more people would be as passionate about it as I am” (CAN). A graduate said of her bookstore: “Cultural and scholarly knowledge and understanding can improve our society. This type of further discussion and thinking is helpful, so we hope to realize this in society, which is why we had the idea to open a bookstore” (CAN). In the bookstore, she explained, “we organize many cultural and scholarly activities. We deliberately sell books that cannot be bought from many other places, giving them a place to be sold. I think these things can promote scholarly and cultural discussion, transmission, and cohesion” (CAN). She continued expounding on her vision to establish a community college: we wish to create a knowledge transmission platform, and from this create a knowledge community. […] This community college would be different from traditional colleges: we don’t want to copy a college amongst the populace, but to create space for community

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learning itself. What can this community learning achieve? It can break through existing colleges’ monopoly over knowledge, life, society. Deep thinking does not have to occur in colleges, but can happen among the people. (CAN)

A graduate who founded her own company in cultural management said: “Because I value […] these creations, these cultural works, I use different ways to let more people know or let people participate or appreciate these cultural productions, so that participating in these cultural activities is considered very common. That is my ultimate goal, my vision. I use my company and different ways to be part of this” (CAN).

1.2.2 Characteristics of Career Development Narratives In the interviews, we asked graduates to reflect on the relationship between their humanities education and career progression. We analyzed and compared their initial and subsequent career orientation, as well as eventual development. This resulted in the following broad narrative characteristics being identified in the career development of local humanities graduates. Since the titles of the narrative themes are largely self-explanatory, there are fewer direct interview quotations than in the last section. We use quotations here only where they contribute very strongly to the voicing of specific related issues by the interviewees.

1.2.2.1

A Great Variety of Career Paths Among Graduates

Contrary to the reductive impression—one that some interviewees mentioned people had of them—that humanities graduates tended only to become teachers, the interviewees in this study had taken up a wide spectrum of jobs. Although education remained a popular career option for them, ten to fifteen years after graduation, interviewees had also spread out into a wide variety of industries. These graduates developed a career outside of the education sector, such as by entering the government, the business or commercial sectors (for instance careers in financial planning, marketing, and the import/export business), or even by running their own business based on their strengths, usually closely related to their humanities studies such as art studios or work in music production. Nearly a quarter of our interviewees reported owning a business. A Philosophy graduate, who now runs multiple businesses all across the world, saw her experience and vision in doing business as very much influenced by her studies. She commented on characteristic ways of thinking in philosophy: Don’t think it’s useless, as it’s much needed in doing business, because business is not just about making money. Friends who have truly engaged in business work will know that business is not just about money—this is not what gives you the energy to keep doing it. What makes me enjoy doing business is that in the process it gives you an awakening, making

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1 Interviews with Humanities Graduates you feel free, just like giving you a big piece of paper to draw on. You are no longer a cog or someone who needs to listen to orders and adhere to plans; you have to plan everything. What supports you is that you must have a vision for your life [...]. I see this as a space for you to discover yourself. (CAN)

Therefore, she said: “if you ask me if there’s any relation [between philosophy and doing business], there must be a relation, because there are ups and downs in business, and there have to be low moments. And when that time comes, we have the mindset of thinking differently. This training is not just limited to Philosophy, but anyway, it helps. And this is, as compared with other professional training skills, better. You’ll break through your limits more easily, and think out of the box” (CAN).

1.2.2.2

Initial Disorientation Followed by Gradual Career Establishment

We asked our interviewees to describe their career development since graduation— that is, over the course of ten to fifteen years. From these longitudinal accounts we identified the pattern of career development of initial disorientation followed by gradual career establishment. Some of the graduates had had few problems developing stable career pathways directly related to their humanities subjects from early on, as in the case of teachers, lecturers and government administrators. On the other hand, it was common for graduates to experience a period of confusion and uncertainty in their initial stages of job hunting. For this generation of graduates, the experience was exacerbated by the adverse economic climate in 2003 caused by the outbreak of SARS. Because of this they were faced with more limited job choices, or had to change jobs frequently for better career prospects. While some graduates might have changed jobs regularly in the first few years after graduation in order to find their bearings, upon reflection they often considered it a fruitful transition period that allowed them to explore the kinds of jobs or environment that matched their interests the most. Graduates working in the creative industry at the time of the interview, such as in areas to do with art or music, reported yet another dynamic trajectory of career progression. Faced with a relatively undeveloped local art market upon graduation, they experienced a period of difficulties and financial insecurities at the beginning of their career. They needed to take up part-time jobs and actively try to create new job positions in order to overcome the tough times. Even if some of the interviewees did not start off too well when they entered the job market, they survived years of trials and experience and were eventually able to establish themselves in suitable industries that used their talent and fed into their interests and ambitions. Some interviewees reminded us that market demand for humanities graduates had remained relatively stable, unaffected by the ups and downs of certain industries. In addition, in view of widespread anxiety about the low bargaining power of humanities graduates in the job market, some interviewees reassured with their own experience

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that humanities graduates are capable of making a decent living in the long run. For instance, an English graduate said: “I look at my friends who graduated from English or Literature. They don’t have any problems, they were fine throughout, earned good money” (CAN). As another graduate said of her work in marketing: there is a market for that, for a video content producer. But I think a lot of those that exist in the market now can do good copy. They’re really good at filming, they have really good skills, but there’s a lack of story. My role at [the name of a major international firm] became the creative storyteller. It’s a very special role but I’m also at the same time quite senior. I don’t think that simply because you graduated from the humanities [that] that [means] you cannot get onto the social ladder. But it is also very important to equip yourself with very technical skills as well. (ENG)

1.2.2.3

Interest and Meaning as Career Priorities

Interest was one of the main factors in interviewees’ choice of job in the course of their career development. Some interviewees, in particular those within the creative sectors (for instance art, music and design), ended up building their entire career out of their main interest. It was common for graduates to first try different positions, especially in the early stages of their career, before settling down in a certain job sector that best suited their personal interest. Graduates also tended constantly to reflect on the meaning of their jobs to themselves or to society. 13 graduates took up part-time work or developed a secondary career in addition to their main one with their humanities knowledge so as to add to the meaning of their lives. A few examples include: a History graduate, who works as a language teacher, set up a blog on travel experiences; a Humanities graduate, who works as a flight attendant, writes columns on travelling; a Music graduate does administrative, educational and compositional work; a History graduate owns a music studio while teaching history; a Fine Arts graduate, who runs a design company, creates artworks and writes books; and a graduate who runs a bookstore set up an informal community college to promote academic discussion among the general public.

1.2.2.4

Distinct Competitiveness Brought About by Individual Benefits

Most of our graduates’ life stories demonstrate that humanities graduates have their own unique competitive edge in the job market. Their stories counter the common view that their skills are not competitive in the job market, a view which our interviewees reported as held by employers and even themselves, especially during the first few years after graduation. Humanities graduates’ competitive edge may not be as conspicuous on paper when compared to those who graduate with a professional or highly specialized degree, but when applied to their work, their knowledge, flexible skill sets, and vision enabled many of the graduates interviewed to thrive. Graduates in particular highlighted three aspects of competitiveness in their interview narratives, outlined below: good language ability; enhanced sensibility; and generalist

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competence. These map onto some of the skills and abilities they outlined in a more general sense in Sect. 1.2.1.1. As we have seen in Sect. 1.2.1.1, humanities graduates identified language competence as one of their strengths. This is also the popular impression or expectation held by employers and others. This is not limited to the mastery of Chinese, English or other languages; it also refers to the art of rhetoric and communication, and related strengths in creativity and expressiveness. As some of our interviewees’ career trajectories demonstrated, humanities graduates can do well with their enhanced sensibility in areas that appeal to people’s emotions, such as in mass media and creative industries, making an impact upon the community through the delivery of emotional experiences. Interviewees’ careers also showed that humanities graduates can be competent generalists who adapt to different working contexts and deliver creative and pragmatic solutions. One Fine Arts graduate used the metaphor of clay being moulded to illustrate how humanities graduates were capable of adapting and responding to a variety of social needs.

1.2.2.5

Further Studies for Specific Career Needs

The majority of graduates expressed that they engaged in further studies upon obtaining their humanities degree. This reflects the general desire for continuous learning and intellectual curiosity previously observed in both the Sects. of 1.2.1.1 and 1.2.1.2. In terms of continuous learning relevant to careers, there were several common paths that emerged from the interviews. First, the research interests of graduates who were in academia had naturally been stimulated by and nurtured during their undergraduate studies. Second, graduates who liked to teach studied for a professional education diploma or certificate. Third, there were also graduates who selected their subjects in relation to specific career needs. For instance, entry into some career sectors such as the performing arts, pastoral service or special education require additional professional training. Some interviewees found that completing another degree in a subject outside of the humanities was necessary for them to secure a job. Others pursued more optional social science and business qualifications to enhance their careers. Four interviewees also shared that they considered further studies as an effective measure to delay their entry into the work force, in view of their own personal sense of confusion after graduation or the bad economic conditions in Hong Kong at the time of their graduation.

1.2.2.6

Challenges to Career Development

This subcategory summarizes the common struggles of humanities graduates in Hong Kong. We did not pose a specific question on this topic but it was, perhaps understandably so, repeatedly raised by our interviewees when they recollected their life

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development upon graduation. The topic was largely directed at the monolithic job market, and social misconceptions about humanities degrees and their graduates. Our interviewees reported different problems in different career fields. Some of the points below may at first glance appear to contradict what we have stated in this section so far, but in fact they do not: our interviewees mostly found ways to overcome or circumvent the problems. However, such overcoming should at the same time not undermine the validity of graduates’ observations on the common difficulties posed by the harsh reality of the local job market. Although these struggles could be said to apply anywhere in the world for humanities graduates, Hong Kong’s prominent status as a financial hub profoundly influences Hong Kong’s social and cultural values, creating a materialism that is not so much exceptional in its nature as in its extent and degree, as is commented on by interviewees in the subtheme of “Clash Between the Humanities and Commercial Values” (see below section), and in Sect. 1.2.5. We will talk about these issues specifically pertaining to Hong Kong in the Further Discussion section. This overview also suggests that there may be aspects of the curriculum design of humanities education that can be modified in response to the conditions of the local market. We will expand on this in the Further Discussion section.

Education as the Dominant Industry Eleven interviewees talked about how their university degrees appeared, at least initially upon graduation, to cater mainly for jobs in the education sector, such as teachers, tutors, and lecturers. It is true that statistically, education is the career field of choice for fresh humanities graduates in Hong Kong. Teaching is the most lucrative and stable option for humanities students immediately after graduation, and the education sector has the greatest market demand for humanities graduates. But for graduates who wanted to seek alternative careers (and there were 35 interviewees who were not working in the education sector for their main jobs), the crux of the problem seemed to be the exclusive association drawn between the humanities and the education field by others. This association, while it may be reflective of Hong Kong’s economic structure and market needs, can negatively impact the career vision of university students, who are in the stage of forming their interests and life goals. Interviewees mentioned that humanities students also circulated this reductive view among themselves. Interviewees’ diverse career paths, especially when a longer period is considered, demonstrated that education did not have to remain graduates’ main career field.

The Volatility of a Creative Career Careers in the creative industries, such as the production of music, art or visual design pieces, are tough paths for graduates to embark on because factors that work in favour of the flourishing of these fields can also work against graduates. The lack

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of specialization in these fields means a lack of definite benchmarks and career and salary points, and the lack of a well-defined market for many of the activities, for instance the uncertain market for the performing arts. A Music graduate described the unconventional nature of her career as an artist: “Our major had twenty odd graduates. The vast majority of these taught piano when they graduated, and still are. The vast majority. I think amongst the graduates there is one university professor, one working for the Customs and Excise Department, so about 15–20 people work as piano teachers. That’s it. I’m the only one doing creative work” (CAN). As mentioned by most Fine Arts graduates, the local art scene was not wellestablished when they entered university around fifteen years ago. The virtual absence of an art industry deterred graduates from aspirations to become artists. As a Fine Arts graduate said: “Being a creative artist, in my time, I would not have been able to make a living” (CAN). Since then, the local art scene has expanded and become more institutionalized. As another Fine Arts graduate stated: “There are more ‘institution[s]’ [ENG] now, [...] and more choices, so comparatively speaking, your position in society. . . some positions are clearer” (CAN). Even so, careers in the creative industries are difficult to navigate. Interviewees who were artists talked about the instability inherent within the creative career, including irregular commissions and income. Interviewees who wanted to become artists often needed part-time jobs to maintain financial security. Market conditions in the creative industries for both fresh and more experienced graduates are still harsh. Two interviewees who were designers remarked on the unchanged salaries for junior entrants of HK$8,000 per month. Social recognition of the value of such professions remain low. A Visual Communication graduate said: Designers earn about 11k or 12k. Even with four to five years experience they may only earn 15k or 16k. If they are very good, they will earn more, maybe 18k to 20k. […] While a water dispenser servicer earns 18k, a designer with a few years of experience with quite a heavy workload may not even earn this much. You understand how a designer would see the future prospect of the industry. Even a dishwasher nowadays earns in the 10ks. This industry requires education, some creative thinking, effort, diligence, brainpower, long hours, so why does it seem to have such a lowly position? (CAN)

This echoes the general problem of the lack of a more well-defined professional pathway. The same Music graduate just quoted, and a second Music graduate, mentioned that fresh graduates and outsiders had little idea how much they earned and how much they could actually earn. The second Music graduate suggested that “[t]his is why university education should educate us on how to deal with these situations. Otherwise, it will just be a waste of time” (CAN). We will address this recommendation in our Further Discussion section.

Barriers to Entry into Specialized Humanities Jobs At the other end of the spectrum are jobs with a high entry threshold not so much because of the lack of a clear career trajectory, but because of the esoteric nature of

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the jobs, leading to a lack of career opportunities. This, however, may result in the same problems as described in the previous theme, such as years of job insecurity and hardship as graduates attempt to establish their careers. The specialized professions associated with each humanities subject, such as historians, professors, professional writers, and concert musicians, belong to the highly specialized end of the general job spectrum, with only a limited number of positions supported in each society. They cannot be job options for most humanities graduates. As a History graduate said: “Honestly, I have many classmates who graduated with a PhD from the same cohort as me who struggled really hard to find work, because the field is very narrow. Especially if you graduate with a History PhD: you need to have new places opening up at institutions before you have a chance. If there are no new positions, what can you do?” (CAN).

Lack of Specific Training for the General Job Market The four pillar industries in Hong Kong are financial services, tourism, trading and logistics, and professional and producer services. A quarter of our interviewees said that they found themselves less competitive in the eyes of employers in these fields, in the sense that they lacked training in specialized practical skills in the business world. These included administrative, managerial, marketing and financial skills or knowledge, training in which is generally absent in the curriculum of the humanities. One Music graduate suggested that art administration courses should be given to prepare students for their career in a related field: Especially when I work as an administrator, subject knowledge is necessary. But to be frank, this knowledge is merely one part of my job. My work includes a variety of skills such as organisational skills and project management. Education in these matters is lacking in university. These skills are vital for musicians. There are in fact a lot of things involved in organising a music concert. I don’t think university education covers these skills. In terms of music as a business, my university program has provided me nothing whatsoever. […] They didn’t teach us how the market operates. I think this should be there. For instance, the production process of a work: for musicians, it would be how to publish your compositions; for painters, how to publish a painting; for writers, how to publish a book. They’re pretty much the same. You need to know what to pay attention to when you sign a contract with a publisher—the so-called legal arrangement. No one has taught us how to handle it. We are being pushed into the market. (CAN)

A compounding factor here is that many academics, having only done research and teaching work in their careers, may not be in the best position to advise on the industries revolving around their discipline. An educational model here could be internship programmes, as a History graduate and lecturer pointed out during the interviews: “Doing an internship is not to enrich their history knowledge, but so that they can apply their history knowledge onto work. […] The department would like students to find out if historical knowledge is applicable in a practical setting, especially work” (CAN). A Fine Arts graduate talked about the management skills required in her role as artist: “The department of Fine Arts cannot help me with this.

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These are extremely practical things that aren’t necessarily taught in the department. […] They arise because you have more and more different types of things to handle” (CAN).

Difficulty Convincing Others of the Use of Humanities Education The set interview question on whether graduates’ humanities degrees had been relevant to their careers produced complex responses. Some interviewees first answered in the negative while defending the significance of their education in anti-utilitarian terms. When we asked if their humanities education had been useful, five graduates responded that their discipline had not been directly useful. As a History graduate summed it up: “It really isn’t useful, to be honest. It was solely for my interest” (CAN). These graduates all expressed their passion for their subjects elsewhere in the interview. Finding it difficult to justify to others the utilitarian value of their degrees, many interviewees recounted certain points in their studies or career development when they thought they were at a disadvantage. An Anthropology graduate said: I naively thought that as a university graduate, I wouldn’t starve to death. I wasn’t thinking about comparing myself with others either. Having chosen Anthropology, you wouldn’t think to compare yourself to medical doctors. I didn’t. I knew what I had let myself in for. But I really hadn’t expected it to take so long to find a job. The whole process was an unhappy one; it was quite bad now that I think back of it. (CAN)

For the majority of respondents, however, this negativity was gradually overcome. A Fine Arts graduate said: “many people would find art useless. Many people have this thought, but I myself thought that the purpose of art. . . at first, that it had [only] non-instrumental use [the exact Chinese phrase used here is “無用之用,” used by Zhuangzi], but I later realised [it is] like a cup for containing water, and this is a practical use, but its use is limited, and doing Fine Arts, its biggest meaning, to me, in my life and career, is a little like a cup—about how to make a better world” (CAN). The interview narratives emphasized the struggle graduates faced in explaining to others, amidst general misconceptions about their studies, the positive influences of the humanities in a nutshell, because such positive influences tended to be multifold, integrative and intangible. When asked about the influence of the humanities on their lives, for instance, a Translation graduate said: Actually it’s really difficult to extract the influence of the humanities on my life for discussion with you. […] Looking back upon these ten odd years or so, the pursuit of beauty or how I dealt with ways of thinking or experiences, I can’t extract [such influence]. […] It’s very generic, or very common. […] The humanities are not profit-driven, so you can’t use the parameters of quantitative finance to measure them. The humanities are bound to lose if you do this. You can’t compete. [Quantitative finance] is about sums, the foundation of the whole thing is to quantify. […] But can life be quantified in this way? No. That’s why I have constantly emphasized life experiences or some more abstract aspects that appeal, such as aesthetic judgment, or ‘substance’ [ENG]. It’s because I deeply believe the nature of the humanities cannot be reduced to these numbers. (CAN).

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A Chinese graduate said: “I think Chinese culture is a comprehensive body of knowledge, that is, there have been so many philosophers, writers, ancients who put something in it that it has become like an enormous reservoir. When you go drink from it it’s difficult to distinguish who the water has come from, who put which drop of water in, what the composition is” (CAN). A Music graduate said of the influence of the study of music on her world views: “the influence is not direct, simply because there aren’t any intrinsic world views within music. It only affects me indirectly. […] It isn’t from the courses that I acquired my world views. No, it cannot be measured directly” (CAN). Around eleven interviewees said that they were commonly thought to possess restricted fields of knowledge and skills that were not immediately desirable to employers of the pillar industries in Hong Kong. Ten interviewees commented that their humanities education did not focus on occupational skills. Two of them remarked that their employers usually did not care about their humanities background, while also acknowledging the competitive edge the humanities could endow graduates, and its potential pragmatic aspects.

Clash Between the Humanities and Commercial Values 27 interviewees acknowledged the value of humanities education while holding a pessimistic view towards its status in Hong Kong. They thought that either humanities graduates needed to be market-driven in career development, or needed to lead a tough and lonesome path in pursuing non-mainstream career options. Six interviewees said that humanities graduates and the business sector may not be the best match. A Humanities graduate said: “Why can so many humanities people not do business jobs? There really is a bit of an incompatibility there. Just now I said we [humanities graduates] don’t bend themselves over for a small salary [“不為五斗米折腰,” the Chinese saying referenced earlier in the introduction to Sect. 1.2], so we don’t look just at money. That is a big no in commerce” (CAN). A Philosophy graduate said of the suitability of her work in a non-commercial setting: “Maybe it’s because humanities graduates don’t have a lot of confidence, and don’t really want to work in a very commercial environment. First they think they may not be able to adjust; second they may not like it. Of course after so many years of working it becomes better, and now I’d think: why not? Let’s try something new, and learn something new. But back then, not necessarily” (CAN). These views of such incompatibility may also be due to outsiders’ perceptions. A Comparative Literature graduate said: “In fact in Hong Kong if you are a graduate of Literature […], generally business employers would think that that is incompatible with the business sector” (CAN). A Translation graduate said: “humanities graduates would certainly face more difficulties when looking for a job. For example, an employer may question their possession of relevant knowledge and whether or not it fits in with what the company actually needs. Then it would depend on the candidate’s personal characteristics or passion” (CAN).

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This clash, however, may be a misguided belief that outsiders have rather than reality. A Music graduate who is a composer and the owner of her own music business said: “You don’t know how much people in the music industry earn, so it seems very mysterious, what I do. Because it’s so mysterious, and because they don’t know, so everyone categorizes these people as unable to earn much money, and as pursuing their dreams and ideals with great effort and great determination. Actually we aren’t at all romantic. So going back to you asking me about my determination [to create music], it is in fact a determination. I think everyone has their own profession, and this is my profession” (CAN). The interviewees showed different ways of responding to the potential clash between the humanities and commercial values. Two interviewees criticized employment in the profitable and stable education industry if it was only for the sake of material gain. A History graduate said: Having become a teacher one can live in a nice flat, have a dog as a pet, and be quite happy. But because I didn’t take this usual path, I felt inferior for many years. When teachers were earning 25k, 30k, over 40k, I was earning 12k. But I was enjoying my life, reading what I wanted to read, whereas they might slowly become ordinary teachers, accepting things like the TSA [the controversial Territory-wide System Assessment for pupils at various stages of their primary and secondary school education] as alright, thinking that the most important thing is to get off work on time, have less holiday homework […]. They might slowly become people who just go with the flow […]. Once they reach the age of 30, they might have become ordinary people […] because they might have lost their purpose in life. (CAN).

Another Music graduate said of some of her peers who had become private music teachers: “Maybe they place too much importance on money but don’t think about their entire career path. OK, so you go teach piano, you earn money—and then what? Will you do only this for the rest of your life? […] Many people, because of money, end up on this path” (CAN). She continued: “Studying music, you usually want to play and perform music well, and then join an orchestra or performance. They don’t. When you ask them what they want, they answer to teach piano. Not just one, not just two, all of them” (CAN). The four interviewees who successfully took on jobs in the commercial sector, however, saw this clash as reconcilable. A Humanities graduate who worked for one of the big insurance companies said: “When I entered the industry I also thought I wouldn’t bend myself over for a small salary (“不為五斗米折腰”). But of course I did change. This is a commercial society, but you have core values that you should try to integrate into this [...], for instance [relating to] the family [and] contributions to society. You work, you do further studies; can you think about how to contribute back to society?” (CAN).

1.2.3 Characteristics of Humanities Pedagogy Interviewees pinpointed some common characteristics of humanities pedagogy. These are summarized below, and again, because these narrative characteristics are

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summative and relatively self-explanatory, we have only included interview quotes where they add significantly to the summary.

1.2.3.1

Teachers as Role Models and Mentors

Speaking of the most memorable and cherished elements in humanities education, graduates often expressed that what they learnt from their teachers or professors in and out of classroom, whom they perceived as life-long role models and mentors, was crucial not only to their studies, but also to their life and career development, and in terms of value judgment and perspectives towards the world. To our interviewees, these role models were exemplary figures who broadened their horizons in learning and motivated them in continuing the pursuit of their chosen path. Mentorship was also highlighted by graduates as a distinct and valuable element of their humanities education. Several graduates pointed out that their professors were excellent mentors who often offered them support and advice. Moreover, graduates also discussed the influence on an emotional level from their role models or mentors as manifested through their close relationship developed through the years. They often expressed that the care and concern from teachers went beyond the level of academic knowledge, to cover personal development in different life stages. One graduate expressed that caring acts from mentors would also indirectly and implicitly influence students, nurturing greater humanistic concern in them. This is best exemplified by the five graduates who said they had emulated their mentors to become mentors themselves now, in voluntary work or as teachers, with the aim to offer assistance to the younger generation who face numerous challenges and pressure without always receiving sufficient support from society, such as by helping them re-establish a positive self-image.

1.2.3.2

Individualized Learning Methods: Tutorial Discussions and Dissertations

When asked how they had gained the skills and values outlined in Sect. 1.2.1, fifteen graduates recalled their experience of small-class tutorial sessions, which are a common curriculum design for humanities subjects. Graduates valued tutorials because they very effectively developed their critical thinking skills. Four Philosophy graduates, for instance, described student-centered tutorials with rigorous and in-depth discussions on topics requiring thorough preparation. Two Fine Arts graduates described tutorials in which they commented on and critiqued each other’s artwork. Three graduates mentioned honing their presentation skills because of the need to be clear and concise in their arguments in order to engage in fruitful intellectual exchange with others. Two graduates also mentioned that tutorials helped them bond with teachers, with whom they stayed in touch even after graduating for more than ten years.

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Apart from tutorials, two graduates mentioned that working on their final year project or dissertation, under the individual supervision of a teacher, had been a rewarding experience. One graduate recalled the whole process as having had a huge impact on her vision and later career path as a history researcher focusing on local identity issues.

1.2.3.3

Insightful Major Texts

Nine interviewees expressed how much they valued the chance to study major works—both creative and theoretical—in their humanities education. These provided them with lifelong insights. Interviewees stressed that it was only through their humanities education that it became possible for them to start understanding and appreciating these works. They believed graduates from other subjects might not be able to study them in equal depth because they had not received the same guidance.

1.2.4 Characteristics of Humanities Education Narratives This section describes the main significance of three major stages in participants’ humanities education and their lifelong impact. From the varied accounts of the 59 graduates, the general picture of humanities education as a holistic personal education that enabled students to realize their own potential and develop their value systems, and which equipped them with both practical and more intangible knowledge, emerged. The emphasis on the main characteristics in the three distinct stages of interviewees’ humanities education distinguishes this section from Sect. 1.2.1, although there is of course overlap between Sect. 1.2.1 and the emphasis on the formativity of humanities education in themes 2 and 3 in this section. Thus this section is best seen as complementary to Sect. 1.2.1, emphasizing the chronological stages of humanities education rather than the results—hence its title, “characteristics of humanities education narratives.”

1.2.4.1

Upon entering University: Passion for the Subject

21 interviewees related their passion for their chosen humanities subjects from their teenage years onward when asked about why they chose their academic discipline. In 25 cases, the humanities subjects chosen were graduates’ first choice, instead of ones that students resigned themselves to because they could not get into other subjects based on their public examination results. Two graduates in particular emphasized that they actually possessed outstanding A-level results. 46 graduates said that their humanities education had been rewarding because of its compatibility with their personal interest or personality, which for 26 graduates

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motivated them to pursue their life goals. To give just a few examples from graduates of Music and Fine Arts: 1. A Music graduate considered the subject her life passion: “Music is something that I’m good at. Regardless of whether I can make a living out of it, I’m very passionate about it. This passion also extends outwards: I hope more people will be as passionate about it as I am. Music is also my life motivation. It motivates my career, such as when I give talks and hold music concerts. There is a profound value within it.” (CAN; part of this quotation was also cited under the theme “a sense of mission to spread humanities knowledge” [see above section]). Another Music graduate echoed these sentiments: I think you need to find a subject you like in university education because this is enormously meaningful to your life. This time in your life is very important; if you spend this time on a subject you don’t enjoy this will have severe negative impact on your life. […] Also as to my work, because I hope to do work related to music, studying Music as a subject in fact directly helped with my career, because this was what I was going to do in the future. (CAN)

2. A Fine Arts graduate and artist, who stayed in the field of art after graduation in spite of obstacles, talked about the lasting importance of finding one’s own passion in university studies: In primary or secondary school, one doesn’t have a strong sense of what it means to be an artist. I didn’t. What I knew was that what I was interested in could be found in the subject of art. […] So I went and studied in the Department of Fine Arts. But in making that choice I hadn’t really thought about what to do after graduation. But my thinking back then, and my current feeling based on my experience, […] is that how far something can lead you depends first of all on how much you like doing that thing. […] So I didn’t apply the logic of what I was going to do after graduation in my choice of subject. […] So now that fifteen years you say have passed since my graduation, […] I think back and I still think my choice was correct. […] The path taken for fifteen years since finishing my studies has told me, made me even more certain that choices made using your interest as a starting point will never be wrong—this is never wrong, will never be wrong. […] The more time passes, the more you notice people around you who still like their work, and also the many people who go to work feeling like they want to die. […] So my logic is, when you choose what you like you will walk the furthest; if not, you’ll pay for it fifteen years after graduating. (CAN)

Two other Fine Arts graduates and artists respectively said: “As far as I can remember, even when I was only three or four years old, the first thing I liked to do was drawing. I could draw before I could read or write. I would simply take a pencil and a piece of paper to draw things. So from the very beginning, I really wanted to be an artist” (CAN); and “I wanted to be an artist from the beginning. I just want to make art. I know it won’t make a fortune” (CAN). Studying these humanities disciplines may therefore be the most desirable and rewarding path for these people when considering their situation holistically— regardless of, though not unrelated to, career or financial outcomes.

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During University Study: Formative Education

29 graduates expressed that their education had been greatly formative, in the sense that it had exerted a decisive influence over their identity, and their intellectual and moral development, at a stage in their lives when they had only just come of age and often lacked much life exposure. This narrative theme connects to Sect. 1.2.1.2, which listed the formative influences of humanities education. A Philosophy graduate said of her education: “It was a very ‘formative’ [ENG] experience” (CAN). A Humanities graduate said: “It has had very, very important influence. […] Talking about this I can talk all day, because this is a very large topic: the meaning of life. This is precisely why, if you asked me to choose again, I’d still choose this subject. It didn’t just bring me career or financial [benefits], it led me to shape the person [interviewee’s name] is today” (CAN). A History graduate said: “I think regardless of whether you’re studying history or literature or philosophy, all this comprises the distillation of the wisdom of previous humankind, and the paths they took. Knowing these things helps our growth in life” (CAN). A Fine Arts graduate said: “it is fortunate that I did Fine Arts, because in my studies I gained not only some academic knowledge, but also the process of self-discovery. That is, I would, on the path of creation, have a lot of self-reflection on […] the nature of humans, what it means, what I would do, what I did, whether I was honest to myself in doing these things, and so it was an ongoing process of conversing with myself” (CAN). She continued: “I am lucky to have studied in a field which is more than knowledge, […] which makes my life more complete” (CAN). Graduates thus characterized humanities education as life-changing, as education that focuses on individuals as human beings. A Philosophy graduate said: “I think philosophy, and humanities subjects in general, nurture an individual’s qualities. […] It doesn’t provide professional training” (CAN). A History graduate described it as “shaping personality and temperament, or nurturing a person’s morality” (CAN).

1.2.4.3

Upon Graduation and After: The Lasting Influence of Wisdom Derived from Education

Our interviewees’ reflection on their post-graduation life emphasized the abiding nature of the influence of their humanities education, and even the growth of its influence with time, instead of it ending upon their graduation. This narrative characteristic of humanities education thus continues on from the previous one that emphasized the formativity of humanities education, and like with the previous theme, complements the themes in Sect. 1.2.1.2. Under this theme graduates expressed how they habitually applied the values, principles, and thinking methods of their academic subjects to their daily lives instead of how they could use them lucratively. An English graduate said: “I think all these thinkers’ thinking has been […] influencing my life. […] Although I don’t necessarily use it every day, but it still very much makes me think what I’m doing now, whether […] I can make a reference to what I learned in those fields” (ENG). A Philosophy

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graduate said: “After starting to work, I see even better the importance of the training provided by philosophy, for instance how to see a situation clearly. The way a situation is, and your own judgment of it, these you need to distinguish very clearly. Or why a situation has evolved to a certain stage. One must question, question again, and question again, and think again about ways to handle it” (CAN). A Fine Arts graduate said: “Upon your graduation, you can use these ways of reflection or diversified thinking to move forward or improve. Improvement may not necessarily be in a very practical sense, of the type of maybe how to improve products in order to sell them better. It means whenever you do something, you apply the ability to reflect” (CAN). A Humanities graduate said: “I only had three years of studies back then. But those three years of education shaped the way I think today, and why I’m doing what I’m doing” (CAN). Graduates explained how a variety of views, decisions and stages in life were influenced by ways of thinking in humanities education. Another Philosophy graduate asked rhetorically, after explaining how philosophy influenced the reasoning behind decisions on marriage and having children: “So would you say that the Department of Philosophy has helped me make life decisions?” (CAN). Another Fine Arts graduate said: “I think studying art really changed my life. It has generally changed my personal philosophy, including the way I see family, marriage, […] and life pursuits. It has inspired me to meditate and reflect more upon life. I find myself becoming more curious and interested in this world. If I don’t know something, I will find some ways to know it. […] Anyhow, it has given me my passion. If I didn’t study art in the first place, I doubt whether this fire within me would ever exist. At the same time, my standards towards other people are raised too. Consequently, it affects how I see marriage. For instance, I want to find a person who shares similar interests and [a similar] personality with me. That’s how it influenced my beliefs on marriage. It puts me at ease with life, even though I’m single and childless now” (CAN; part of this quotation was also cited under the theme “Meaning in Life” [see above section]).

1.2.4.4

The Intangibility of the Values of Humanities Education

Despite graduates being able to describe the benefits of humanities education as we have seen from the various themes so far, eighteen graduates expressed that they could not definitively quantify the positive influence of a humanities education, as an indication of the difficulty of articulating the value of humanities education that even experienced educators struggle with. For instance, four graduates talked about their learning as an “unconscious” process, with four of them using the exact Chinese phrase “潛移默化,” which indicates being influenced in a subtle way. The intangibility of the benefits endowed by their humanities education that they expressed, however, did not undermine the magnitude of its perceived importance. A Religious Studies graduate said: “I think religious studies basically do not have ‘tangible value’ [ENG] for society, but I think what I would emphasize even more is that in fact the ‘tangibility’ [ENG] of many things derives from their ‘intangibility’ [ENG], from unquantifiable value. So I think the most important social value of

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religious studies is the maintenance of our ‘intangible but essential values’ [ENG]” (CAN). A Fine Arts graduate said: “I feel that more people need the use of [the humanities], and that use is greater than that of knowledge, to me. It’s more than knowledge” (CAN). Talking about the broad knowledge areas in philosophy she was exposed to during her education, a Philosophy graduate said: “The application [of this increase in knowledge] in future work is difficult to quantify, but I certainly believe it helps” (CAN). A Chinese graduate said: “When you read ancient poetry you’re communicating with these people from ancient times. You travel across time to hear their thoughts at the time, how they viewed certain things. There is an influence there, but it’s difficult to detail very specific influences” (CAN). Another Philosophy graduate said: “I think I have a deeper understanding of life and the world compared to before. But does that mean there are answers? No. In fact we may have even more doubts and questions—this is normal. There’s a platitude that goes: the more you know, the more you know how little you know. Philosophy is such a type of knowledge: the more you know, the more you know how little you know. I think this is something very valuable. So if you ask me what effect it has, I really don’t know what effect it has” (CAN).

1.2.5 The Essential Contributions of Humanities Education to Hong Kong Society Some of the practical uses of humanities education to any society seem obvious. A Music graduate asked, for instance, what would happen to concerts and social functions such as ceremonies without any education in music. Many of the themes in the following list, however, denote interviewees’ perception of how their subject and how humanities education as a whole contribute in particular to Hong Kong society, in response to our final set interview question. They allow us to see not only the general benefits of humanities education to any society in the eyes of the respondents, but to Hong Kong in particular. Apart from interviewees’ views, for a significant number of the following themes we could interpret interviewees’ own work, actions and behaviour as strong examples of the themes in question. The following descriptions therefore often include examples of both interviewees’ opinions, and their actions that exemplify what the theme expresses.

1.2.5.1

The Maintenance of Language Standards

One of the skills named by graduates as resulting from humanities education is “Good Language and Communication Skills” (see above section), humanities

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studies tending to emphasize language use and communication. Graduates followed up on this to express how these language skills were indispensable to Hong Kong’s daily operation: graduates helped maintain language standards in their roles as teachers, administrators, artists, and so on. A Chinese graduate said: “I have met many teachers, as well as those who do not teach Chinese, whose Chinese can be quite outrageously bad. […] I think Hong Kongers do not put a lot of importance on writing. […] So you really need a bunch of people who undergo traditional training in writing to have some protective effect. Then in the end at least you have people who can say: this is not correct. This is very important” (CAN). She thought this need extended to language standards in the creative industry. When talking about some past songs she wrote as a Chinese songwriter, she said: I wrote using really simple language […], so simple that it was nauseating, and still many people asked what the song was saying, what it meant. This wasn’t the most horrifying thing. The people who came out to answer the question [on the internet] were the most horrifying. They could completely misinterpret the song, or even interpret it as the opposite to its meaning. The song was about heartbreak, but they could say it was a romantic, sweet song. [...] It’s as if it doesn’t matter that no one understands what I write. Do people really want to know what the song says? Or do people in fact only care about who sings the song, right? It’s yelled out, and after the yelling, who cares what has been said? […] When you’re a songwriter, you will be very depressed. You understand that people these days don’t set high standards for language, because [their attention] has switched to graphics and special effects. Yes, nowadays the books that people prefer to read have fewer and fewer words in them, [and more] pictures. (CAN)

Another Chinese graduate said: “not having Chinese and Chinese History courses: I can see that this would [affect] our next generation—they would be unable to use the language. They would only be able to write practical, formal documents, yes, but in the long run, I think that there would be very few words and phrases that they could use. And they would even be detached from their whole culture” (CAN). A third Chinese graduate said on “nurturing language teachers”: “We’re talking about finding a group of people to try and improve language standards in society” (CAN).

1.2.5.2

Contributions to Quality Education

As can be seen from the quantitative data, many humanities graduates take up first jobs in the education sector. Ten graduates pointed out that humanities education significantly contributed to the education sector in the nurturing of teachers, in particular good teachers who aspired to pass on humanities knowledge as well as enact what they saw as the humanitic values of caring and concern for others and for society. Interviewees who were teachers themselves talked about establishing bonds with their students or their vision for their teaching work. A Chinese graduate who is a lecturer said on “the influence humanities teachers have on students”: “I think Chinese and other humanities subjects very much emphasize ‘the transmission of the Way, imparting of learning, and the dispelling of doubt’ (“傳道、授業、解惑,”

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a quotation from “Discourse on Teachers” by Han Yu],2 that is, how teachers can influence students or how they can transmit knowledge to them. I think when caring about students, or guiding them, or counselling them, you don’t get that from textbooks, but from observing how your own teachers do it. So [as a teacher] I’m doing again [what my teachers did]” (CAN). Indeed, Small (2013) has argued that an important justification for humanities disciplines in the university is that “they preserve and continue the higher order practices that are passed on to those who will go on to teach the humanities at school level (‘they teach the teachers’)” (p. 147). This is also affirmed in the Oxford Report, which states that “[e]ducation sustained its position as the largest sector of Humanities employment” (2013, p. 17).

1.2.5.3

Emotional and Spiritual Nourishment

Graduates thought the individual benefit expressed in the theme of “Emotional and Spiritual Fortification” (see above section), where the humanities were described as providing emotional and spiritual guidance, also extended to Hong Kong society as a whole, at times promoted by the discipline itself, at times promoted by graduates as they applied the knowledge and methods of their studies to their work and their actions. A Visual Communication graduate described the services that people such as doctors, architects, and accountants could provide as “naturally very functional, with a functional influence on the world, […] whereas us language or arts students, the roles we take on have an influence on society” (CAN). She elaborated on what she meant by this: “What we deliver are changes on an emotional level or in ways of thinking, whereas other disciplines do not tend to focus on influences on emotions or thinking. So to keep this thing would of course be really good, we really need to keep it” (CAN). A Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies graduate who at the time of the interview also worked in music said: “I think the choir I established had some direct influence. I think our performances are decent. At the very least I brought my audiences joy, that is joy from hearing music. Although the influence may just be small, quite a few people attend the concerts, watch them on Youtube” (CAN). These contributions to society were not necessarily opposed to business values to graduates. So a Fine Arts graduate said: “It’s difficult to imagine a society without music or the visual arts. To name an example: how did Apple become the most profitable company in the world? In fact it didn’t just have a very important technological breakthrough. What it did was to polish something so that it touches you, becomes an experience. Like what Steve Jobs said, he hoped the company could connect technology and humans” (CAN).

2 Lo

(2008), p. 38.

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1.2.5.4

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Synergy with Business Values That Underpin Economy and Society

As a preamble to the importance of the humanities not only in opposition to, but also as synergistic with, the pervasive commercial and business values that underpin Hong Kong’s economy, we start this theme with a quote from a Fine Arts graduate who commented on the importance of diversity for the development of a society: If within a society, you don’t have different types of flames being created, that’s really bad because it means everyone is doing what everyone already knows about. Then you lose the innovation you currently have in society […]. Only when you have different sparks can you talk about the next step. If you don’t have any sparks, then there’s no need to talk about that anymore, then everyone can just continue to buy property. (CAN)

This theme echoes what Nussbaum (2010) has argued, albeit in the context of the United States: Innovation requires minds that are flexible, open, and creative; literature and the arts cultivate these capacities. When they are lacking, a business culture quickly loses steam. Again and again, liberal arts graduates are hired in preference to students who have had a narrower preprofessional education, precisely because they are believed to have the flexibility and the creativity to succeed in a dynamic business environment. If our only concern were national economic growth, then we should still protect humanistic liberal arts education. (p. 112)

This means that in the United States, “many firms prefer liberal arts graduates to those with a narrower training” (Nussbaum 2010, p. 53). Humanities graduates enter a variety of jobs, as the quantitative part of this study also confirms. And unlike popular conceptions of the humanities graduate, these are not the most undesirable jobs: a significant number of them, for instance, go on to managerial or leadership positions.3 There were at least four examples of graduates stating that they bridged their humanities education and a successful career in business. For example, a Visual Communication graduate said of creating advertisements: “If apart from the message of selling a product I can also lead people to feel the creativity and passion behind, to feel that the world can be like this, that wow, Hong Kong can be like this. . .” (CAN). A Philosophy graduate and entrepreneur stressed the resourcefulness humanities knowledge brought in running a business: [I]f you ask me if there’s any relation, there must be a relation, because there are ups and downs in business, and there have to be low moments. And when that time comes, we have the mindset of thinking differently. This training is not just limited to Philosophy, but anyway, it helps. And this is, as compared with other professional training skills, better. You’ll break through your limits more easily, and think out of the box. That is, it’s abstract […]. It stresses thinking, analysis, arguments, reasoning, and so on. (CAN; part of this quotation was also cited under the theme “a great variety of career paths among graduates” [Sect. 1.2.2.1])

3 See, for instance, “Occupations of Humanities Majors with a Terminal Bachelor’s Degree” (2018,

February); and Blochinger (2015, June 1), both cited by Ruggeri (2019, April 2).

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Another Visual Communication graduate said on studies and skills in design: “the business industry needs them, so they have some purpose. But they’re not just focused on profit or very technical aspects. There are also some very humanistic angles [to be used] to look at things” (CAN). A graduate said of the vision behind her company in cultural management: I ‘value’ [ENG] different creations or creativity. […] I want to help these cultural ‘initiative[s]’ [ENG], ‘project[s]’ [ENG], help them take the next step, to get known by more people. […] The ‘ultimate’ [ENG] [goal] is so that going to some festivals, [or] seeing some art, [or] participating in some cultural events, is not considered to be anything exceptional, but just a ‘weekend’ [ENG] activity like playing mahjong or ‘shopping’ [ENG]. […] I hope that this is what will change one day, and that my company can be the ‘contributor’ [ENG] to this change. (CAN)

Synergy between the humanities and business practices, as some graduates described, could yield positive results. For instance, a Humanities graduate who at the time of the interview worked in one of the largest multi-national insurance companies shared that she was reluctant to serve commercial interests when she first entered the company. Soon she realized that there could be ways to incorporate humanistic aspects into her work, such as by assisting with the launching of a charity project by the company. The project could at once build a positive corporate image for the company as well as realize her humanistic concern: “In a commercial society, when you run a business, you do need to do things to earn money to support your family. But the thing is, through doing some community work, […], you can also benefit the business, your own company” (CAN). She also said: when I make a business plan [...], I do need to fit it to the purpose of wanting to earn this much business, but I would also add some humanistic sentiments. Quite a few of these can contribute back to society. Also, the things the company is doing right now, for instance, we just went to Guilin to visit the Lifeline Express. [...] The company hopes to promote not just money-making. You combine humanistic sentiments with business. Big companies are doing it, individuals are doing it. It’s possible. Companies are not just money-making tools. (CAN)

As also suggested by a Fine Arts graduate, the humanities can generate their own industries as well as drive the humanistic orientation of existing industries: “The humanities can potentially create a variety of industries. There are two elements there: first, they can generate some independent industries based on the humanities; second, they can add some more humanistic elements to the different components in existing industries. For instance, someone who works in real estate may need to know about art” (CAN).

1.2.5.5

Preserving and Transmitting Hong Kong Culture

Graduates described how the humanities played a defining role in Hong Kong culture, leading to the creation and transmission of local culture and heritage in areas such as history, music, art and design.

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A Chinese graduate said: “I think culture and civilization are very different. When we talk about engineering or medicine, these are what build human civilization. But our culture depends on humanities disciplines for its establishment, so they’re very important. I think both civilization and culture are important, and that’s why the humanities are so important” (CAN). Another Chinese graduate said: “Departments of English and Chinese have a kind of ‘mission’ [to transmit] ‘culture’ [ENG]” (CAN). A Music graduate said: Every city has musicians. Not to say they’re absolutely essential, but it’s an ecological balance. In fact if Hong Kong didn’t have music, that is if Hong Kong no longer had a group of musicians trained in Hong Kong, then that can very easily lead to music produced in Hong Kong having nothing to do with Hong Kong. This would be a big problem, because music has a lot to do with emotional attachment. Of course some people ask: why do big cities like to have orchestras? Because it’s easy—all you need is money. Like for sports teams, you can pay for the best players in the world to come here, so you can buy the most famous conductors to come here. But creating music is very difficult. For the creation of music you need to have feelings towards that place, you need to have been nurtured by that place […]. So I think the importance of departments of music is to nurture a group of local musicians who make music in Hong Kong for Hong Kong people. (CAN)

Another Music graduate said of her music company: “I hope we can create music of different colours, so that the industry and the music market in Hong Kong can be even more colourful. This is our mission” (CAN). She elaborated on the importance of variety: “I think in Hong Kong, the music market is quite monolithic. Many people want to find music they like, but because there’s very little choice here they’re forced to look overseas. But in fact I think Hong Kong can also create more interesting music” (CAN). A Comparative Literature graduate said of fellow graduates: “they ‘value creativity’ [ENG], culture […]. So if you ask what influence this basic training has on society, I think it enlivens the whole cultural atmosphere in society” (CAN). Some graduates also thought that the humanities helped preserve Hong Kong’s collective memory, patterns of thinking, and accumulated wisdom. A History graduate said of the community art projects she organizes: “I hope that they [members of the community] can preserve their own memories, and through the consolidation of those memories, slowly consolidate this history, changing it into a type of narrative” (CAN). A third Chinese graduate talked about the importance of cultural heritage to one’s comfortable sense of identity and belonging, and how this would be lost without “the study of Chinese and Chinese History”: Actually we return to the issue of identity. If there were really no more culture or the passing on of culture, history, and so on, people would become […] very short-sighted. Everyone would just look at their own history—that is from the time they were born to when they die at, say, eighty, and they would only look at what was happening in those eighty years of their lives. I think this would make people short-sighted. They would lack a kind of rootedness. That is, to a certain extent, you say you’re a Hong Konger, or a Chinese person, because you know your roots lie in Hong Kong […]. But if you don’t even have this, or if you’ve never thought about this, and if the whole culture disappeared, I think that person, whether he/she is living in Hong Kong, or the United States or the United Kingdom, it makes no difference:

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1 Interviews with Humanities Graduates s/he would only be looking at the point from when s/he was born, and focus only on his/her life. […] So they would live as if without roots, drifting around without a destination. (CAN)

1.2.5.6

The Arts as Social and Community Service

Interviewees who were artists talked about how their creative work was directly relevant to social problems and issues. They thus saw their creative work not just as art, but very importantly also as a form of social and community service and commitment, or as a way of raising social awareness. The following two quotations come from two different Fine Arts graduates and artists: How extreme the lives are that people can have in Hong Kong—I want to reflect that. You see that every day but you don’t feel anything. People don’t notice it, [and] […] that is ridiculous. Artists put it there in front of you, and say, think about it. That’s something incredible. How can that happen, actually? Just look at the different bags. A bag can be half a million dollars, a handbag, and then a bag can be ten dollars. You can see it every day. But you don’t think of it. […] The housing issue, I also put it there, public housing. This is what poor people dream of, public housing. They queue for seven years to get in the public housing. But then for owners, when they see that, they think, what are those bars, it looks like jail. Actually, it is just public housing windows. It’s a window, but it looks like a jail. But that’s what Hong Kong people dream of. That is ridiculous. That’s what we can have. That’s the kind of situation in Hong Kong. I want people to look at it and think about it. (ENG) I think your work should be meaningful to the society, be it a statement or by […] engaging with labour organisations, NGOs, youth art foundations […]. I usually collaborate with these organisations, not for commercials. You rarely see my work in commercial centres. (CAN)

Another Fine Arts graduate who owned her own design company talked about the more subtle effects of social awareness that art could generate: “Art itself is not very ‘quantitative’ [ENG]. Pure art really doesn’t have very obvious social functions, a direct benefit to society. But like literature and musical lyrics, art has an enlightening effect on the human soul. This increases deeper understanding of art, its development and its relationship to society” (CAN). A History graduate and curator also said: “I set a target for myself now: if I organize an art project, it has to have something to do with the community, with history. I then try to work with an artist within this scope, using a different way to talk about a historical period, and then creating an exhibition, or a project, or whatever. And then we will find ways to develop different educational packages, for instance through cooperating with schools, and sometimes directly talking to people in the community” (CAN).

1.2.5.7

Promoting Cultural Sensitivity, Awareness, and Diversity

Graduates expressed the belief that the humanities promoted cultural sensitivity and diversity. This has many benefits for Hong Kong, creating a rich and dynamic cultural landscape that can have a wide range of impacts on economy and society.

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A Translation graduate said: “You don’t just translate between Chinese and English. […] Broadly speaking, I think [Translation] facilitates inclusiveness and pluralism in society as a whole” (CAN). A Modern Languages and Intercultural Studies graduate said of people in Cultural Studies: “I think we care a bit more about ‘minorities in general’ [ENG], because we, in Cultural Studies, like asking questions about power relations. That is, where does power come from? Who controls it? How does it control? And so on. When you ask these questions you naturally think about ‘minorities’ [ENG]” (CAN). A History graduate said: “I think History can help society to create its own identity. This identity […], is it an identity just for Hong Kong people, or can we have a more inclusive identity?” (CAN). She shared her ideas on how to encourage this: “museums can create a common space for people from different cultural backgrounds, to share their own culture, and to establish a way of communication” (CAN). An Anthropology graduate thought that social inclusion could be better attained if everyone had some multi-cultural knowledge in addition to knowledge of Chinese and Hong Kong culture. She named as an example for her argument peers who considered hijab-wearing to be frightening, and who disliked the fact that Muslim Indonesian helpers do not eat pork: “This I thought would only occur in my mother’s generation. I don’t understand how my generation can still look at the world in such a narrow-minded way. They still think that some other places are very dangerous. I don’t see the world in that way” (CAN). Another History graduate discussed the influence of the study of history on her life, identity, and world views: “I pay more attention to things happening outside Hong Kong. When I do research on South East Asia, Singapore, Malaysia, I don’t just read local news or mainland news. I look at the entire region, at the geopolitics, I read books and journals on these places. […] I think I’ve become more aware of things happening in other places. Although I’m not an expert, I will pay even more attention to news concerning the Asian region” (CAN).

1.2.5.8

Tempering Excessive Materialism and Instrumentalism

When we posed the hypothetical scenario of the removal of all humanities disciplines from universities, our interviewees gave indignant responses. At least six interviewees said they believed that the humanities could help improve society by countering the materialism pervasive in Hong Kong. For instance, a Religious Studies graduate said: “with only [departments] that can earn money, like Medicine or Pharmacy, let’s think about what society would be like” (CAN). She elaborated: “[Society] would change for the worse. It’s already quite bad now. It will just be even worse. A society can’t just all be about money. […] If things become too utilitarian, […] you kill off a lot of things” (CAN). A Translation graduate said: Of course you can ‘translate [the humanities] into’ [ENG] some numbers—they cannot be completely disconnected from society. But because the value of their existence exceeds numbers, unless you tell me that this society doesn’t need them—the pursuit of beauty, […], taste, […]—then just close them down, close down the Faculty of Arts. Then in ten years,

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1 Interviews with Humanities Graduates you can see how people will be like, what kinds of books will be sold in bookstores, what kinds of screenwriters will emerge, or what kinds of people will write popular music. (CAN)

An Anthropology graduate said on being asked about the hypothetical scenario of her department being cancelled: My very honest response is that there would be no loss. If Hong Kong continues to walk down this path of being a society of extreme capitalism, of capitalism to its utmost extent, and the government disregards this issue, and even supports it I think, then if Hong Kongers think that this path is right, and they want to continue to walk it, then not having this discipline would not cause any loss to Hong Kong I think. But if you ask me, a humanities person, who’s been so much influenced by such education, if I have to seriously think about this, […] I really hope to have more chance to get involved with these subjects, not necessarily to the extent of finishing a degree, in the hope of inspiring more people to reflect on the current situation in Hong Kong. (ENG)

A Fine Arts graduate said that “especially in Hong Kong, the value systems are monolithic”: “practical, utilitarian, focused on one’s benefits and interests” (CAN). But she also thought that “people are starting to dare to take on adventures, having the heart to try other things.” These include “curiosity towards this world, having the mindset to embrace uncertainties, to take risks, and not being outcome-oriented but process-oriented, using a different lens to see the world, or to use creative problemsolving skills.” She continued: I think that these values can impact the world quite a lot. And you see that art nowadays, that is, creative people are showing wider perspectives, and even improving lives, or even—we’re saying all the time that our work is not merely intellectual, but also emotional, and spiritual, and it’s not only spiritual, but also physical. […] It makes the world more complete, I guess. That is, it’s not a single kind of thinking. (CAN)

Graduates thought materialistic ways of thinking about university education constrasted with reasons for studying a humanities subject at university. A Humanities graduate said on current university graduates: they have become more and more specialized […]. When you’re in secondary school, you already have to think about what you’re going to do in the future. If you want to do accounting, then you study accounting in secondary school, and choose accounting [as a university subject]. If you want to become a lawyer, you study law. If you want to do finance, you study finance. It’s all too specialized. Education in one’s major, and work in society, should not be ‘match[ed]’ [ENG] in this way (CAN).

She then went on to discuss some of the general skills listed in Sect. 1.2.1, before continuing: “If you’ve received only specialized education, there is a limitation in that for instance I only know how to do accounting, and know nothing whatsoever about other aspects” (CAN). This corresponds closely to some of the views held by the Anthropology graduate quoted earlier in this part, who talked about the misguided nature of such utilitarian thinking: “I think this view is especially serious amongst Hong Kong people. They think what you study at university is for what you will do

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for your work in future. But I’m against this view even up till now. I think this is a very narrow and inappropriate way of thinking” (CAN). A stronger emphasis on humanities elements could help shift Hong Kong’s relentless priority on business and economic development. A Religious Studies graduate said on the “important role of the humanities” as a “safeguard”: “If the whole world talks about business, if 100% or 90% talk about business, that is if everything is just about money, […] if money becomes more and more important, and people then say to you, this doesn’t earn money, let’s cancel it, 100%—then disaster will strike. Can the humanities in this situation help with providing some balance to the world?” (CAN). A Philosophy graduate said: Sometimes I think if everyone in society had this ability in basic philosophical thinking, the advantage would be that we would be able to plan for the future in a deeper and broader way. Maybe we wouldn’t just think about economic development, we wouldn’t just think about whether Hong Kong has fallen two places in certain rankings. […] Maybe if we did worse in certain material developments, we could gain in some other area, for instance our air would be a bit cleaner. If you always want to develop the economy rapidly, you might be sacrificing the environment. Breathing in smog every day, wouldn’t you feel like you’re dying? No matter how much money you have you wouldn’t be happy. You could be very wealthy and buy a very advanced anti-smog mask, but who would want to live like that—wearing a mask every day? So do we need to relentlessly pursue development on an economic level? I think if the whole of society were inclined to philosophical ways of thinking or training, maybe we could […] pause for a while, and think. (CAN)

1.2.5.9

Promoting Civic Engagement

Graduates thought that humanities education cultivated a strong sense of civic engagement and responsibility, the “critical, active citizens” humanities scholars elsewhere say their education can help create (Hampson 2011, p. 73). A Humanities graduate said: “The seed lies within us [humanities graduates] to give voice to injustices in society, or to continue to fight for things like equality between the sexes. […] Although it’s spreading very slowly, we can really, in ten to twenty years’ time, when we have some more influence in society, […] at a very slow speed spread these things, […] these values, because in Hong Kong you don’t have many such disciplines or much opportunity to come in contact with them” (CAN). She thought that her discipline could cultivate “a sense of justice, good judgment, [and] […] looking beyond the mere surface of issues” (CAN). Interviewees also suggested that certain subject knowledge and training encouraged them to consider civic values and their own relation to the actualization of these, promoting reflection and judgment on current affairs and government policies. A Philosophy graduate said of “education in philosophy” that it could “deepen understanding of society, of the rule of law, or of the nation, these relatively abstract areas that nevertheless influence our lives. For instance, in political philosophy there are many [questions] such as what is the rule of law, what is the law, the relationship between the government and people” (CAN). On her own undergraduate studies, she said: “I had a vague understanding of, for instance, social justice, or the pursuit of

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equality or values. But university studies, including at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, led me to a much deeper understanding of these things. For instance, my training in political philosophy, or some views in liberalism” (CAN). A Comparative Literature graduate said of the hypothetical scenario of everyone in society having had similar training as herself: “Of course society would be different. […] People who study this discipline, they wouldn’t be so naïve, because you do analysis all the time, you use different angles to ‘problematise’ [ENG] things, you make up issues even when discussing very simple things. When you make things up like this, you don’t go and blindly accept things, you try and generate some debates, some discussions. I think this training […] can lead to a functional society that is more mature, because everyone will engage more in ‘rational’ [ENG] discussion of all issues, and such discussion will be more multiperspectival” (CAN). A Religious Studies graduate talked about how her studies “strengthened her ‘critical thinking’ [ENG]” and how this “‘critical thinking gave her a lot of courage to pursue ‘who I am’ [ENG]” (CAN). This, in turn, led to the following view: A lot of the time when Hong Kong people gather together they talk about very trivial things, such as what type of mobile phone they have bought. There is no exchange in values. […] In terms of the relationship between human beings and society, in recent years when social debates come up I think about how I can participate. How can I not have a stake in what happens in society? […] But in Hong Kong, many people think: I don’t want to know, I don’t want to bother, I just want to go through my days. Those people have actually not grown up. (CAN)

1.2.5.10

The Challenging Socio-economic Climate in Hong Kong Limiting Potential Contributions

When interviewees discussed the contributions of the humanities to Hong Kong society, a similar thread emerged as when they discussed their career experience (as detailed in Sect. 1.2.2): despite their thoughts on the benefits of humanities education to Hong Kong society as listed in the themes above, interviewees also talked about what they saw as a misfit between the humanities and the competitive capitalist culture underpinning Hong Kong society. When discussing the general situation of the humanities in Hong Kong, interviewees tended to be pessimistic and to complain that the local socio-economic climate did not favour them. What eleven interviewees variably called the “humanities spirit” (“人文精神”) (used by two interviewees), “humanities values” (“人文價值”) (used by two interviewees), and “humanistic care” (“人文關懷”) (used by seven interviewees), remained, they thought, a weak undercurrent in an extremely competitive, capitalist, and utilitarian society that generally employed a profit-oriented perspective towards life, leading to unhealthy sociocultural trends. A Humanities graduate said: “Hong Kong is a place of extreme capitalism, so Hong Kong has the greatest wealth disparity in the whole world. […] You don’t find many places more capitalist than Hong Kong. Here, earning money is easy, success is easy, but what is more and more lacking is humanism. […] How do we change our society so that it isn’t just one about money or business values, with only these

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companies but without art and human relationships?” (CAN). Another Humanities graduate said: The atmosphere of humanistic qualities isn’t just about the classroom, but about the whole of society and whether it can accept these things, whether such an atmosphere exists. Think about a simple example: seating in Hong Kong malls. There are very few seats if you don’t pay for a drink. Is it possible to provide seating from where I can observe the streets? […] For instance in Taiwan, and in Europe as well, there are lots of places to sit, and sit comfortably, for an entire day. Where in Hong Kong do we have this? […] Why do we have to pay for everything in Hong Kong? Why can’t we incorporate such things into our lives? I think Hong Kong doesn’t have this space, Hong Kong really doesn’t have space. (CAN)

The lucrative market of classical music education was named as one example of the competitive and capitalist ethos of the city. Two Music graduates remarked that the compulsory mastery of music instruments among primary and secondary school students had a largely instrumental agenda. One Music graduate said: Music students nowadays are too busy teaching students certain technicalities. […] They focus more on how they could better their own or their student’s performance. […] The development remains on a mechanical level. […] I don’t think people value music or take it seriously in general. This is because we have no platform to express it and people don’t really care. We are silenced by the society. I think this stereotyping works both ways. You can say that people stereotype us, but we are simultaneously perpetuating this very stereotype as well. From what I see, most musicians around me focus on how to hone their craft, and their reflections or work remain on the musical level—which is a normal thing. There is little to do with the society. I don’t think there are a lot of people who attempt to influence society through music. (CAN)

Another Music graduate described how classical music knowledge and skills were regarded instrumentally, as merit-earning qualifications that strangely did not encourage the pursuit of a career in music: There are many people who learn musical instruments, but there are very few people who study music. That is, it’s just a tool, like the Kumon Method for learning mathematics, like typing. You can play practical things, but are you really learning about music? I very much doubt it. The numbers are high. Every year there are many people taking music grade exams. But in the end there are very few who go and study music or become a musician. All parents push children to play the piano, to play the violin, but do you want them to become violinists? For many, this wouldn’t be the case. I want to pass the Grade 8 exam, the Performers Certificate exam, and then enter a top school, and that’s it. That’s the end of it (CAN).

Such pervasive values also influence the resources allocated to the humanities in higher education. Five graduates expressed concern at how limited funding for the humanities at the university level could lead to a vicious cycle of decreasing diversity and deteriorating quality of graduates, and a further exacerbation instead of alleviation of the restrictive socio-economic climate that the humanities could help temper. A Philosophy graduate had the following insights to share: In Hong Kong, whether at the secondary school level or at the university level, the devaluation of humanities subjects has always been present, […] because the level of practical benefits

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1 Interviews with Humanities Graduates to society that results from them is very low, invisible, and unquantifiable. This is the most lethal drawback that leads to our administrators, whether government ones or university ones, to think: I can’t see your value, you haven’t given me actual value. For instance the Faculty of Medicine experimenting with rapid testing for the flu virus: these things have a lot of value. But humanities disciplines have few [such contributions]. […] But the government has really applied standards that are scientific or derive from social science to quantify humanities disciplines. This is the biggest source of injustice to humanities subjects. Also, [the government] can’t really understand their inherent value, can’t understand their nurturing value, that they lift up human beings. I think that they don’t really understand or if they do, that they’re not doing anything about it. But I think that the quality of citizens in a society is achieved and nurtured through humanities subjects. If you don’t have enough resources to support this, then when society criticizes students for lacking creativity, when it can only think about tourism and banking [as driving forces for the economy], then there’s nothing you can do. It’s because the whole social structure has created this situation. The government allocates resources to the UGC. The UGC’s evaluation system is very disadvantageous to humanities subjects, while such conditions are favourable to other subjects like medicine or science.4 Then naturally there is a chain reaction with such results. Then the society must accept the responsibility for the people who are the result of such training, and teachers must bear the negative consequences, that is, humanities teachers bear the negative consequences of neither having time to do research, nor to teach well. Then graduates will naturally be lacking in some respects, since when others have more resources, they can produce better results. (CAN).

The need for an alternative way of valuing the humanities chimes with existing accounts of the humanities as providing essential alternative benefits to society: while “[i]t is generally assumed that the value of research in the sciences is to advance knowledge so as to improve the quality of human life,” knowledge-based inquiries led by “questions such as why we should value long life and what ethical obligations we might have to future generations, to other species, or indeed to the planet itself, [which] are ‘humanities’ questions, only answerable from within the framework of 4 This

is an accurate representation of the budgetary consequences of methods of evaluation that the UGC administers, such as the General Research Grants (GRF) it allocates each year, and the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) it conducts every few years, which is modelled after the UK’s, now called the Research Excellence Framework, there. The irony to be pointed out here is that this report was funded by a GRF grant. To provide a rounded picture here, however, the UGC has itself also argued for emphasizing the holistic and humanistic qualities that higher education should nurture in students. For instance, in the UGC report Aspirations for the Higher Education System in Hong Kong (2010), they write: Students should acquire a greater sense of the wider world and the moral or ethical tools with which they can contribute to that world. The experience of university should firmly root an individual sense of personal and social responsibility. Time spent at university should also be time used to develop adults full of curiosity about life, conscious of their capacity to contribute to and be equipped with a personal and social value system appropriate to their time. All of these are qualities that a mature society requires in its citizens. More than that, universities operate on the basis of seeking to distinguish between the true and the seemingly true, of testing assumptions and values to discern what is sound and what is false. Society requires that its best-educated citizens bring this capacity to their civic engagement. (p. 16)

How to realize such laudable visions for higher education within frameworks for assessing and evaluating university departments will remain a major challenge in years to come.

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disciplines that are attentive to language, history and philosophy” (Bate 2011, p. 3), are equally crucial. Although many of these headwinds facing the humanities have been discussed elsewhere, in particular with respect to other locations,5 what makes the discussion in this theme distinct is that these issues are not only discussed by the academic whose interests are tied up so intricately with these debates, but also by the humanities graduate. What is also striking about this theme is the graduates’ representation of the general climate of Hong Kong as being cut-throat capitalistic and instrumental, and therefore the great sense of urgency they attach to preserving humanities education in Hong Kong as a tempering force that offers vital alternatives.

1.3 Further Discussion Stefan Collini (2017) has argued that “as scholars, we do perhaps need to make a greater effort to try to provide politicians, officials, journalists, administrators and other public figures with a usable set of descriptions of what we do” (p. 226). Similarly, the Humanities World Report 2015, in discussing the results of asking humanities academics about the nature of the humanities, explored one important theme: academics’ pessimistic evaluation of the public’s perception of the humanities, generally because they think the public consider the sciences to be much more useful to society (p. 61). The writers here make the recommendation that humanities scholars need to express the significance of their work in ways understandable by the public. This report represents our effort in this respect in relation to the Hong Kong context. The interviews represented in this report have provided concrete empirical evidence of the unique values that humanities higher education possesses for graduates and for Hong Kong. We see this list as descriptive—that is, as useful in answering the question of what humanities higher education does—rather than definitive. To define the value of humanities education with a rigid list is to reduce it and diminish its generative potential. With this crucial distinction in mind, the next subsection looks at how the results we have presented so far can be used to address some of the specific struggles humanities graduates seem to face in Hong Kong society and in relation to its economy.

5 To

list just a two examples here out of many, Chao (2019) notes that there has been “the rise of academic capitalism and entrepreneurship across higher education systems and institutions across the world” due to increased demand for research that is able to demonstrate social and economic relevance (p. 6), and that “[t]here is a need to balance basic and applied research, and. . . to enhance the importance and contribution of the social sciences and humanities” to society (p. 12); Butler et al. (2017) point out that there is the danger that universities become “increasingly governed by the diktats of cost-benefit analysis and cutthroat careerism” (p. 474).

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1.3.1 Recommendations on Pedagogical Interventions Based on the Graduate Interviews We have seen how the responses that graduates gave argue against the view that a humanities education is impractical and less connected to real-world living conditions. There are, however, still some specific connections between their humanities education and other areas in their lives that graduates wish to but struggle to make. The most important themes for rethinking pedagogical interventions are the more critical themes that discuss the challenges that humanities graduates face. These include the theme “Initial Disorientation Followed by Gradual Career Establishment” (Sect. 1.2.2.2); the subthemes under “Challenges to Career Development” (Sect. 1.2.2.6); the theme “The Intangibility of the Values of Humanities Education” (Sect. 1.2.4.4); and the theme “The Challenging Socio-economic Climate Limiting Potential Contributions” (Sect. 1.2.5.10). The first subtheme under “Challenges to Career Development” is “Education as the Dominant Industry” (see above section). As we will see from the analysis of the graduate employment survey data by different universities in Chap. 2 of this report, many graduates take on work in the educational sector as their first employment. On the one hand, this can hardly be considered as a negative outcome of obtaining a humanities degree. Education is a field where graduates can make meaningful, lasting contributions to society. From a more practical perspective, education even tends to be well-paid work in Hong Kong, comparatively speaking. On the other hand, if some graduates do not aspire to educational work, but perceive this, or face others’ perception of this, as the natural outcome of their humanities degree, this can understandably lead to frustration and a sense of being trapped. The problem seems to be less that there exist no other options (as we have seen from the theme “A Great Variety of Career Paths Among Graduates” (Sect. 1.2.2.1), interviewees in fact held a great variety of jobs across different industries), but that graduates, and especially fresh graduates, are not sufficiently aware that other options exist, or of how to argue for the relevance of their skills to the wider job market. Such an argument is much less difficult for the field of education. If one teaches the subject one studied, then potential employers in education are not likely to ask the one question that humanities graduates dread answering: how is your degree useful to this job? This struggle in explaining the applicability of knowledge and skills gained from a humanities degree explains in part some of the other themes that describe the obstacles graduates faced, such as the sense of feeling lost in the early stage of one’s career, described in the theme “Initial Disorientation Followed by Gradual Career Establishment” (Sect. 1.2.2.2), which is also related to the subthemes of “Lack of Specific Training for the General Job Market” (see the section above) and “Difficulty Convincing Others of the Use of Humanities Education” (see the section above) under the theme “Challenges to Career Development” (Sect. 1.2.2.6). These themes highlight how graduates had great difficulty learning by themselves how to translate their skills to a job market that is dominated by commercial industries and values. Such difficulty corresponds to some extent to the difficulty scholars themselves may

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face in trying to explain the value of their work to the public, as we pointed out earlier in referring to Collini’s work and the Humanities World Report 2015 and how they implore that humanities scholars provide more accessible descriptors of their work. The reasons behind this difficulty are multifold. First, humanities graduates’ skills are of course not generally sufficiently specialized or applied to have direct and straightforward connections to the commercial world. They would have to learn such specific practical skills on the job. In response to this dilemma, numerous departments in humanities disciplines in Hong Kong have already established internship programmes with local businesses for their students. Second, as described in particular under the theme “Difficulty Convincing Others of the Use of Humanities Education” (see the section above), graduates need to battle others’ preconceptions of their education as being highly impractical and hence unrelated to the job market. This is a first impression that graduates who wish to enter the mainstream job market must work hard to overcome by becoming more fluent communicators of the relevance of their education. It is not a skill that humanities educators generally teach their students, despite teaching them to be fluent communicators within the academic setting—hence such themes as “Good Language and Communication Skills” (see above section) and “The Maintenance of Language Standards” in society (Sect. 1.2.5.1). The teaching of such a skill could be added to existing curricula, not as part of its core, but as supplemental and addressed to students who wish for more help in translating their education to mainstream careers outside education after graduation. We have seen from the themes that if graduates are given a chance and enough time to speak their minds, most of them could describe at least some skills and abilities they gained through their humanities education that could be useful in the workplace. However, their knowledge of these had mostly been painstakingly gained through navigating their wide-ranging careers over a number of years. There should be a formal curriculum in place to help graduates articulate the relevance of their skills and abilities—developed via an education in the humanities—to outsiders to the humanities. However, the argument for the teaching of more practical skills in humanities curricula needs to be made extremely carefully. The common problem here identified by the interviewees is the lack of a more focused career orientation component in a humanities degree, despite the very real benefits that the non-vocationality of a humanities degree brings, which have also been highlighted by interviewees. For instance, as graduates we interviewed also expressed in the theme “Meaning in Life” (see above section), explorations of “what living is for,” with students embarking on “their own personal encounter” with this question that “comes before all vocational training and goes beyond any answer that such training can supply” (Kronman 2007, pp. 35–39), is an essential goal of higher education and in particular of humanities higher education. Indeed, the themes in Sect. 1.2.1.2, though not explicitly or straightforwardly pragmatic, are as valuable, if not more so, than the more pragmatic themes in Sect. 1.2.1.1. In addition, graduates’ frequent sense of “The Intangibility of the Values of Humanities Education” (Sect. 1.2.4.4) has its own importance as a generative source

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of value for individuals and their unique circumstances. To quote one of the interviewees again, the “intangibility” of humanities education has its own value, since “the ‘tangibility’ [ENG] of many things derives from their intangibility, from unquantifiable value, creating ‘intangible but essential values’ [ENG]” (CAN)—such as the values in Sect. 1.2.1.2. As Aristotle said in The Politics, “To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and exalted souls.” A humanities degree is not supposed to be solely, or even mostly, vocational; if it were, many of the values and benefits that interviewees described would be at best dulled, and at the worst lost. Mere vocationality is then obviously not the direction that humanities education should take. At the same time, the disorientation that graduates initially feel as they struggle to connect their degrees to the general job market, and the difficulties they experience in arguing against the common social perception of the humanities as useless, should also not be accepted as matters of course for humanities graduates, as part and parcel of a tortuous path of existential angst in the quest for ultimate self-discovery and self-realization. Although something can be said for suffering as self-making, educators should also help lead and guide, and not neglect students’ sense of being lost in the world where they need to make a living after graduation. This is an area where specific pedagogical interventions can take place. The key—and the challenge—is to strike a balance between incorporating some aspects of career guidance in the humanities curriculum, without compromising the core attributes of a humanities education that are not meant to be geared towards vocationality. This means not seeing instrumentality as intrinsically opposed to a humanities education, as some commentators on the humanities have done. Stanley Fish (2008), for instance, has argued for the intrinsic value of pleasure and intellectual inquiry for their own sake, writing: “To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’, the only honest answer is none whatsoever.” Concerning any attempt at trying to justify the humanities, Fish says: “Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good.” A more considered, reflective stance than a wholly quantifying approach, a recognition that the humanities have “intrinsic value”— as was one of the themes resulting from the analysis in the Humanities World Report 2015 of its interviews with academics—is crucial, encompassing the idea that the humanities “has a value in and of itself” and therefore should be “pursued for its own sake” even if it also “leads to other benefits” (p. 12). Without necessarily changing the fundamental way in which academics teach their subject material, it should be possible to use the results of this report to become more conscious of intervening at various points of humanities education. For instance, while conducting multiple readings of a text, humanities educators could point out to students that what is being done is an example of “Multiperspectival Thinking” (see the section above), and describe scenarios where this skill might stand one in good stead in the workplace. For example, when working in a multicultural or multidisciplinary environment, such a skill could be effectively applied to think from the perspective of those from a different background to oneself, and in combination with other skills—such as good communication skills—it could be used to reach

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productive consensus, similar to how one combines the multiple perspectives on a text to make one coherent argument in an essay. For each of the abilities and skills that the report lists, educators could have some concrete examples ready of how they might be useful in various workplace settings, of how their humanities education can potentially connect to their work afterwards. The focus on those components in humanities education that lead to such skills would then remain the same as before: not geared to their potential vocationality, but with the connection to their vocationality made clear as an add-on component to students’ education. This would address the problems identified from the interviews that were discussed earlier in this section. It would mitigate the sense of being lost that graduates can feel when trying to convince others of the use of humanities education, because such add-on components would be able to be used to provide ready and strong answers when graduates are asked such questions at job interviews, or throughout their careers and indeed, their lives. Also, their discovery of their skills and abilities would then not solely rely on whether or not they finally find them out through years of further reflection on workplace encounters, as was the case for many of the interviewees. This way, humanities educators can better ensure that students know concretely that these are skills and abilities they gain at various points in their education. But they would need to do so while keeping in mind not to diminish the essential (trans)formative effects of humanities education that prove so important across graduates’ lives.

1.3.2 Hong Kong’s Economic Conditions The challenging socio-economic climate that interviewees referred to in Sect. 1.2.5.10 may not be distinctive to Hong Kong, but its level of severity in the context of Hong Kong makes it unique, and hampers not just the potential of humanities education in Hong Kong, a city that otherwise has abundant material resources to support the humanities, but also the potential of graduates’ contributions. Hong Kong’s GINI coefficient in 2016 was a staggering 0.539 (“Hong Kong 2016 Population By-census” 2017), one of the highest in the world, making it one of the world’s most unequal societies in terms of income. The World Factbook 2016–17 puts Hong Kong in ninth place in terms of income inequality, with the first eight places occupied by developing countries. Hong Kong’s housing prices are now also the highest in the world (Liu 2019), even as average salaries of university graduates have decreased in real terms (Ng 2019). We can return here to the theme of “The Volatility of a Creative Career” (see the section above), where interviewees who worked in creative industries, such as musicians, artists, and designers, emphasized not just the unpredictability of being pioneers in non-standard career paths—conditions that would be true in many other places—but also specifically the extremely harsh general working conditions in Hong Kong that made the pursuit of a creative career even worse. These include very low,

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stagnant pay levels—not just for fresh graduates but even for people who have gained years of experience—for very long working hours, while the cost of living continues to climb. Such conditions have shown few signs of becoming better. These harsh general working conditions in Hong Kong society actively discourage experimentation, creativity, and uncertainty in one’s career. They are also conditions that we can imagine greatly exacerbate the initial disorientation graduates described in the earlier stages of their career (Sect. 1.2.2.2). These are macroeconomic issues where humanities educators can do little to alleviate graduates’ plight directly apart from continuing to serve as constructive critics to unhealthy trends in social developments, to be addressed mainly through active government intervention that needs to be more effective than it has been. In fact, the list of benefits of humanities higher education as discussed in Sects. 1.2.1 and 1.2.5 in particular match a significant number of the goals and visions that the Hong Kong government has set for the city. Hong Kong’s aspiration to become a more “diversified economy” through “the development of new economic sectors such as innovation and technology and creative industries” (Policy Address 2017, pp. 13–19), for instance, can be greatly enhanced by the major skills and values that interviewees reported they had gained from their humanities education in Sect. 1.2.1, such as “Multiperspectival Thinking” (see the section above), “Adaptability And Flexibility” (see the section above), and “Creativity” (see the section above). This also ties into the government’s vision to “consolidate Hong Kong’s status as an international cultural metropolis” since “arts and culture […] enrich people’s life, support diversification of industries, […] and provide alternative employment opportunities for young people” (Policy Address 2017, p. 80). Such aims under this vision as to “provide an environment conducive to arts and cultural development” and to “cultivat[e] the cultural literacy of our younger generation” (Policy Address 2017, p. 81) correspond closely to the contributions that interviewees thought the humanities could bring Hong Kong in Sect. 1.2.5. The challenge for the government is to realize these visions for Hong Kong in an effective way through the formulation of policies specific to humanities education, and through a focused allocation of resources tailored to the distinctiveness of humanities subjects—as laid out in some of the themes in this study—as compared to other subjects. For instance, as the theme of “The Intangibility of the Values of Humanities Education” (Sect. 1.2.4.4) has shown, the impulse to quantify benefits or to translate them directly and straightforwardly into economic benefits is often to the detriment of humanities education, given that many of these benefits cannot be simply captured by such methods of evaluation. In the next part of the report, we turn to more quantitative ways of evaluating the impact of humanities higher education on the Hong Kong economy. The irony of doing so, after a discussion on how humanities education cannot be reduced to quantitative outcomes, will not be lost on readers. However, instead of viewing the next part of the report as contradictory to the case we have made for the distinctiveness of humanities education, we see it as the presentation of alternative approaches—which come with their own assumptions of “value” and methodological languages—so as to

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elucidate different facets of humanities higher education, a multivalent phenomenon that cannot be reduced to single definitions or paradigms. Chapter 2 is therefore far from definitive of the value that humanities higher education holds in Hong Kong, but rather contributes to a much larger picture.

References Aspirations for the higher education system in Hong Kong: Report of the University Grants Committee (2010). Retrieved from https://www.ugc.edu.hk/eng/ugc/about/publications/report/ her2010/her2010.html. Bate, J. (2011). Introduction. In J. Bate (Ed.), The public value of the humanities (pp. 1–13). London: bloomsbury. Blochinger, S. (2015, June 1). What do the world’s most successful people study? Retrieved from https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/what-do-worlds-most-successful-people-study. ´ Butler, N., Delaney, H., & Sliwa, M. (2017). The labour of academia. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 14(3), 467–480. Chao, R. Y. Jr. (2019). Entrepreneurial universities in ASEAN nations: Insights from policy perspective. Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education, 10, 6–12. Chiu, C. J. (2016). Cultivating a humanistic mind: A view from Taiwan. The humanities in contemporary Chinese contexts (pp. 57–75). Singapore: Springer. Collini, S. (2017). Speaking of universities. London: Verso. Elliott, J. (2005). Using narrative in social research: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. London: Sage. Fish, S. (2008, January 6). Will the humanities save us? Retrieved from https://opinionator.blogs. nytimes.com/2008/01/06/will-the-humanities-save-us/. Hampson, Robert. (2011). Custodians and active citizens. In J. Bate (Ed.), The public value of the humanities (pp. 68–75). London: Bloomsbury. Hollway, W., & Jefferson, T. (2000). Doing qualitative research differently: Free association, narrative and the interview method. London: Sage. Hong Kong 2016 Population by-census—Thematic report: Household income distribution in Hong Kong (2017, June 9). https://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp459.jsp?productCode=B11 20096. Kreager, P. (2013). Humanities graduates and the British economy: The hidden impact. University of Oxford: Institute of Human Sciences. Kronman, A. T. (2007). Education’s end: Why our colleges and universities have given up on the meaning of life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lewis-Beck, M., Bryman, A. E., & Liao, T. F. (2003). The Sage encyclopedia of social science research methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Liu, P. (2019, January 21). Hong Kong tops the table as world’s most expensive housing market for 9th straight year. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/business/article/2182980/nothingbe-proud-hong-kong-tops-table-worlds-most-expensive-housing-market. Lo, Y. K. (2008). Teacher-disciple, or friends?—An historico-exegetical approach to the Analects. In Q. Shen & K. L. Shun (Eds.), Confucian ethics in retrospect and prospect (pp. 27–60). Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. Ng, K. (2019, May 15). University graduates face tough competition and low salaries as they enter Hong Kong’s crowded workforce. Retrieved from https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/edu cation/article/3010178/university-graduates-face-tough-competition-and-low. Nussbaum, (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Occupations of Humanities majors with a terminal bachelor’s degree (2018, February). Retrieved from https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatordoc.aspx?i=63#fig284. Ruggeri A. (2019, April 2). Why “worthless” humanities degrees may set you up for life. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190401-why-worthless-humanities-degrees-may-setyou-up-for-life. Small, H. (2013). The value of the humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The Chief Executive’s 2017 Policy Address (2017). Retrieved from https://www.policyaddress.gov. hk/2017/eng/index.html.

Chapter 2

Graduate Employment Survey Data

Abstract This chapter describes the results of the analysis of graduate survey data by three Hong Kong universities from 1995 to 2015 detailing the major career fields graduates entered. Here we compare labour data for humanities graduates’ job destinations with data on employment sectors for the Hong Kong economy as a whole. We show what percentage of humanities graduates go on to work in the major employment fields used by the government to categorize GDP contribution as compared to the graduate body as a whole (excluding graduates of professional degrees). This provides a quantitative picture of the contributions of humanities degrees to the economic needs and growth of Hong Kong in these two recent decades, and shows the concrete economic contributions that humanities graduates in Hong Kong have made in major employment sectors. Keywords Graduate survey data · Employment sectors · Gross Domestic Product · Humanities higher education · Economic contribution · Hong Kong economy This chapter of the report is based on graduate employment survey (GES) data collected by three public Hong Kong universities from 1995 to 2015, which detail the major career fields graduates enter. It shows the results of our comparison of labour data for all graduates’ job destinations (excluding graduates of professional degrees) and for humanities graduates’ job destinations with data on the contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) various employment sectors made to the Hong Kong economy as a whole. This provides a quantitative picture of the contributions of humanities degrees to the economic needs and growth of Hong Kong in these two recent decades, and shows the concrete economic contributions that humanities graduates in Hong Kong have made in major economic sectors.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. T. Y. Chan et al., The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7187-9_2

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2.1 Methodology We collected GES data from three public universities in Hong Kong: the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), The University of Hong Kong (HKU), and Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), for the years 1995–2015. Two sets of data were collected. The first was for all graduates from undergraduate programmes, excluding graduates from the following faculties or degree programmes which focus on providing professional degrees: the Faculties of Education, Medicine, and Law at CUHK; the Faculties of Education, Dentistry, Medicine, and Law at HKU; and the Bachelor’s degrees of Education provided by different departments at HKBU. The data for these degrees was left out because they are geared towards specific jobs, whereas a more suitable comparison would be between arts graduates’ job destinations and those of graduates from other non-professional disciplines. The second set of data collected was for all graduates from humanities undergraduate programmes. All three universities used two ways of classifying types of graduate employment. First, they categorized graduate statistics into the same four large sectors, which have slightly different names depending on the university as shown in Fig. 2.1: civil service/government, education/education institutions, community and social services/social and public service organizations, and commerce and industry. Second, they also categorized graduate statistics into more detailed job natures that were different for each university. In order to illustrate the contribution of humanities graduates to Hong Kong’s economy, the three universities’ employment data were combined and mapped onto the categories that the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department uses to classify GDP by economic activity, a classification that is based on (but does not exactly correspond to) the Hong Kong Standard Industrial Classification (HSIC) version 2.0. Such matching allowed us to examine how much the type of economic activity that most humanities graduates engaged in for their first jobs contributed to GDP over the past twenty years. In Fig. 2.1, we detail this matching for each university’s data. Important notes for Fig. 2.1 i.

For CUHK, the job destinations of all graduates (including humanities graduates) are classified into the four main sectors of “government,” “education,” “social and public organizations,” and “commerce and industry.” In order to show how many humanities graduates were employed in each governmentdefined employment sector, we mapped the number of graduates from the four main sectors in the following ways. First, graduates entering the main sectors of “government,” “education,” and “social and public organizations” were considered to have entered the government-defined employment sector of “public administration, social and personal services.” Second, for jobs falling under other government-defined employment sectors, we used two ways of classification. For the years 1995 to 2000 inclusive, CUHK does not provide a detailed breakdown of job destinations under the “commerce and industry” sector in its GES. This meant that we had to use the separate list it provides of job

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Publication

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Printing/publishing

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Editorial/journalism

Banking/ finance Insurance services

Account/ audit & taxation/ sec. Work Architecture/ surveying Aircraft & marine Art & design Economic, statistical & mathematical Work Engineering Interpretation & translation Legal services

Government Education Community / social services

HKBUii Civil service Educational institutions Community, social and personal services Business services Engineering, architectural & technical services

Financial institutions - Insurance services N/A

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Fig. 2.1 Mapping the three universities’ GES data onto the categories that the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department uses to classify GDP by economic activityiv

Information and communications

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(2001-2015) - Accounting - Architecture/ construction - Art and design house - Business consultant - Electronics - Professional services - Engineering/ information technology services

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Professional and business services (1995-2000) - Accounting - Architecture/ surveyor - Art/ design - Legal service - Statistics - Translation - Consultancy - Laboratory work - Computer engineering - Electronic engineering - Mechanical engineering - I.T. - Environmental work - Technology development - Market research - Banking Financing and insurance - Finance - Insurance

Categories of the Hong Kong Standard Industrial Classification Version 2.0 Public administration, social and personal services

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N/A N/A

N/A N/A

N/A N/A

Construction

Agriculture, fishery & Quarrying Manufacturing Electricity, gas & steam

Fig. 2.1 (continued)

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Property development

Tourism

Logistics/ transportation N/A -

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Marketing/ sales Merchandising/ purchasing

Real estate & Ownership of premises

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Logistics/ transportation Property management Property agent

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Transportation and storage

Media & communications Systems analysis & computer programming Public relations/ advertising

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Mass communication Journalism Telecommunication Computer programming System engineering Public relations Advertising Purchasing Retail management Trading/ marketing

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Electricity, gas & steam Manufacturing Agriculture Mining

Construction

Transport, storage & communication Real estate

Hospitality & tourism services

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natures (not organized according to the four main sectors) to map these jobs onto other government-defined employment sectors one by one. From the year 2001 onward, CUHK included a detailed distribution of job destinations under the “commerce and industry” sector in its GES. We used this to match graduate employment destinations onto government-defined economic activities other than that of “public administration, social and personal services.” ii. HKBU’s GES presents the distribution of job destinations in terms of the same four main sectors of “government,” “education,” “community/social services,” and “commerce/industry,” and like CUHK for the years 1995 to 2000 inclusive, provides a separate list of job natures not organized by these four main sectors. This means that like for those years for CUHK’s GES we did not have information on detailed job destinations under the “commerce/industry” sector. Therefore, like for CUHK’s GES statistics in the year 2000 and before, we mapped graduates who entered employment in the three sectors of “government,” “education,” and “community/social services” onto the government-defined employment sector of “public administration, social and personal services.” Then we mapped the job natures in HKBU’s GES onto government-defined economic activities other than that of “public administration, social and personal services” one by one. There was an additional issue with HKBU’s GES data for humanities graduates: it did not provide the distribution of job destinations for HKBU arts graduates across the four main sectors for the years 1996, 1999, 2011, 2012, and 2014. Therefore, for these years, we only used data for job natures, and not for the four main sectors, to map job destinations of all arts graduates onto governmentdefined economic activities one by one. iii. HKU classified the job destinations of all graduates (including arts graduates) into the same four main sectors of “civil service,” “educational institutions,” “community, social and personal services,” and “commerce and industry.” Moreover, HKU also provided the distribution of detailed job destinations under the “commerce and industry” sector in its GES for all years under investigation. iv. The fact that CUHK before 2001 and HKBU do not provide a detailed distribution of job destinations across the four main sectors, but only across job natures that were presented without reference to the four main sectors, presented problems at times for data processing. A handful of job natures in the GESs, such as “administration and human resources,” are ambiguous: they could potentially belong to both the main sectors of “government,” “education,” and “social and public organizations,” and the main sector of “commerce and industry.” In CUHK data before 2001 and in HKBU data, these ambiguous job natures were not classified under the four main sectors. If some of the numbers of these ambiguous job natures belonged to the first three main sectors, these numbers would have been taken into account in our representation of the data because numbers under the first three main sectors were mapped onto the government-defined employment sector of “public administration, social and personal services.” If some of their numbers belonged to the main sector of

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“commerce and industry,” however, this specific data would lack representation, because we chose not to forcefully map such ambiguous job natures to government-defined economic activities.

2.2 Results: Graduate Survey Data 2.2.1 GDP by Government-Defined Sectors As seen from Fig. 2.2, the percentage contribution of different types of economic activities to Hong Kong’s GDP was relatively stable from 1995 to 2015. There have been no huge fluctuations in the composition of economic activities in the Hong Kong economy apart from for “financing and insurance,” which grew from 10.4% of GDP to 17.6% of GDP in these twenty years.

Fig. 2.2 The percentage contribution of government-defined employment sectors to Hong Kong’s GDP from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.3 The percentage distribution of the number of graduates entering various governmentdefined employment sectors from 1995 to 2015 (The number of graduates entering “agriculture, fishery and quarrying” each year were very low)

2.2.2 University Data Figures 2.3 and 2.4 show the distribution of all graduates’ job destinations (excluding those from the highly professional degrees mentioned earlier) across governmentdefined sectors from 1995 to 2015 in percentage and absolute number terms respectively. Figures 2.5 and 2.6 show the distribution of humanities graduates’ job destinations across government-defined sectors from 1995 to 2015 in percentage and absolute number terms respectively. Figures 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 2.11, 2.12, 2.13, 2.14 and 2.15 compare the percentages of all graduates (excluding from the highly professional degrees mentioned earlier) versus those of humanities graduates who entered each government-defined employment industry from 1995 to 2015. The numbers for two government-defined employment sectors have not been shown here because they are very low: the “agriculture, fishery and quarrying sector,” and the “electricity, gas and steam sector.” Figures 2.16, 2.17, 2.18, 2.19, 2.20, 2.21, 2.22 and 2.23 show the percentages and absolute numbers of all graduates (excluding those from the highly professional degrees mentioned earlier) and of humanities graduates who entered the four main employment sectors used by the university GESs from 1995 to 2015.

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Fig. 2.4 The distribution of the number of graduates entering various government-defined employment sectors from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.5 The percentage distribution of the number of arts graduates entering various governmentdefined employment sectors from 1995 to 2015 (The number of arts graduates entering “agriculture, fishery and quarrying” each year was zero for most years, and one for the year 2000)

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Fig. 2.6 The distribution of the number of arts graduates entering the most common governmentdefined employment sectors from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.7 The percentage of graduates entering the public administration, social and personal services sector from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.8 The percentage of graduates entering the professional and business services sector from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.9 The percentage of graduates entering the financing and insurance sector from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.10 The percentage of graduates entering the import/export, wholesale and retail trades sector from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.11 The percentage of graduates entering the information and communications sector from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.12 The percentage of graduates entering the transportation and storage sector from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.13 The percentage of graduates entering the real estate and ownership of premises sector from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.14 The percentage of graduates entering the construction sector from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.15 The percentage of graduates entering the manufacturing sector from 1995 to 2015

2.3 Further Discussion On the one hand, we could argue that the above analysis and results are not necessary to show that humanities graduates contribute to the Hong Kong economy: unless a significant number of humanities graduates remain unemployed, they will do so

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Fig. 2.16 The percentage distribution of graduates entering the GES’s four main employment sectors from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.17 The percentage distribution of arts graduates entering the GES’s four main employment sectors from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.18 The distribution of the number of graduates entering the GES’s four main employment sectors from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.19 The distribution of the number of arts graduates entering the GES’s four main employment sectors from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.20 The percentage of graduates entering the GES’s commerce and industry sector from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.21 The percentage of graduates entering the civil services sector from 1995 to 2015

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Fig. 2.22 The percentage of graduates entering the education sector from 1995 to 2015

Fig. 2.23 The percentage of graduates entering the community and social service sector from 1995 to 2015

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in one way or another, no matter what industry they enter. On the other hand, analyzing this data yields an important insight: it allows us to see that the type of government-defined economic activity called “public administration, social and personal services,” whose contribution to GDP has held steady at roughly 17% in the past twenty years, is the sector that humanities graduates significantly contribute to, and for most of the years examined significantly more so in terms of percentage of graduates entering this sector compared to the body of graduates as a whole (excluding those graduating with the professional degrees mentioned earlier), as can be seen from Fig. 2.7. Until “financing and insurance” slightly surpassed it in 2015 (see Fig. 2.2), this sector had consistently been the second largest contributor to GDP in the years examined. So outsiders’ preconception (mentioned in the interviews in Chap. 1 under such themes as “Difficulty Convincing Others of the Use of Humanities Education” [see section in Chap. 1]) of humanities degrees as useless in the sense that graduates’ skills are not in demand in Hong Kong can be refuted using the data. In fact in terms of the percentage of GDP contribution, the government-defined employment sector of “public administration, social and personal services,” in which humanities graduates’ more generalist or variable skills are in high demand, makes up a larger share of Hong Kong’s GDP than the government-defined employment sector of “professional and business services,” the skills for which would seem more useful to the economy because they are much more specific—and which, as we have seen from the analysis of the interviews, some humanities graduates benchmarked themselves against when referring to demand for their skills as compared to those of professionals such as doctors and lawyers. For instance, to quote a graduate again under the theme “Adaptability and Flexibility” (see section in Chap. 1): “Our great flexibility is our selling point. When you work, unless you are a highly specialized professional such as a doctor or a lawyer, otherwise you’d want someone who has a wide variety of abilities, for instance not someone who only knows English but not Chinese, only knows about literature but not about art” (CAN). We can then, with quantitative results, substantiate such claims made about humanities education elsewhere as Small’s (2013), who has pointed out for the UK and US contexts that “[t]he skills that today’s humanities graduates eventually secure are widely transferable” and that “there is, demonstrably, a product” even though “[t]he link between the training given and how it is used is much less transparent than with vocational subjects such as law and medicine” (p. 66). Although it may be easier and more straightforward for graduates having the educational background to enter the “professional and business services” sector to find jobs, this is merely because their education is more specialist and technical, leading them to more specific jobs afterwards. And although humanities graduates have less well-defined job destinations, as themes such as “Initial Disorientation Followed by Gradual Career Establishment” (Sect. 1.2.2.2) and “Lack of Specific Training for the General Job Market” (see section in Chap. 1) have expressed, this does not in fact mean that quantitatively speaking, their skills are less in demand by the Hong Kong economy as a whole—and indeed, the evidence presented in this part has shown the opposite. Feeling lost because one’s education has not led clearly to a specific job is

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different from the idea that one’s education is useless, or that the benefits endowed by one’s education are not in demand by the economy. These different issues should be consciously separated because they are often conflated, both in outsiders’ views and in humanities graduates’ and educators’ minds. The primary limitation of the above data is that the graduate employment surveys only show the first job that graduates hold. As we have seen from the interviews (especially from the narrative theme “A Great Variety of Career Paths Among Graduates” [Sect. 1.2.2.1]), humanities graduates’ specific career trajectories are extremely variable. The graduate employment surveys therefore only capture a particular facet of humanities graduates’ contributions to the Hong Kong economy, and the results of current chapter should be read alongside the more complex, nuanced results of Chap. 1 for a fuller picture of the values that humanities higher education has in Hong Kong. Having presented graduates’ views and examined quantitative data on humanities graduates’ employment in order to explain the value of humanities higher education in Hong Kong, the next part will focus on the perspectives of the humanities scholar.

Reference Small, H. (2013). The value of the humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Chapter 3

Conversations with Senior Humanities Scholars

Abstract This chapter describes the views on the humanities of ten senior humanities scholars based in Hong Kong in the present or in the past. Their views on the contributions that the humanities can make to society in general—for instance the humanistic values it teaches; the growth in personhood it leads to; and the crucial alternatives it provides to economic models of society—are paired with views on the ones they can make to Hong Kong as a special cultural and geographical habitat, for instance in light of its colonial history, and as an intercultural space combining Chinese and Western values. These views allow for a fuller understanding of the benefits the humanities can provide to Hong Kong. Humanities scholars also emphasized the breadth of the scope of the humanities, making it not possible or desirable to pin the humanities down to more narrow definitions. Keywords Humanities scholars’ views · Humanities higher education · Benefits and contributions · Hong Kong Society Although academics’ views on the humanities and the headwinds they face have been well represented in published scholarship—and in fact have been the dominant voice—this is not the case for Hong Kong. In this final chapter, we summarize the views of senior scholars based in Hong Kong either in the present or in the past and from a range of humanities disciplines to provide yet another important perspective on the question of the value of humanities higher education in Hong Kong. In the period of February 2018 to April 2019, we successfully invited ten senior humanities scholars to participate in either in-person or email interviews. We asked them the following set questions: 1. What is your understanding of what the humanities are? 2. What value(s) do the humanities have in Hong Kong? 3. Where lies the value of pursuing higher education in the humanities in Hong Kong? 4. How have the humanities influenced how you understand your life in general? 5. What is your opinion of the state of education policy in regard to the humanities in Hong Kong? © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. T. Y. Chan et al., The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7187-9_3

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After we summarized their responses, the scholars were invited in September to October 2019 to review our representation of their views and to make modifications if they wished to. Since the emphasis in this part is more on representing the views of individual scholars, these interviews were not analyzed thematically. Instead, their views are summarized using the three organizing categories within which they fell, which correspond largely to the set questions: their definitions of the humanities; the contributions of the humanities to Hong Kong society; and the current state of the humanities in Hong Kong.

3.1 The Humanities as Both Broadly and Personally Defined Humanist values elude sharp boundaries or exact measurement, This echoes the theme of “The Intangibility of the Values of Humanities Education” (Sect. 1.2.4.4) that came up in the graduate interviews, where such lack of exactitude was presented as beneficial rather than necessarily detrimental. The humanities scholars interviewed affirmed such expansive ways of looking at the humanities. Gordon Mathews, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at CUHK, defined the humanities in the broadest possible terms, saying that “the humanities encompass everything that cannot be counted.” For him, “humanities in the narrow sense” refer to disciplines in universities. Instead, the humanities as a field escape empirical definition and quantification as it often foregrounds the singular and the individual rather than the general. The things that “cannot be counted” include relationships with spouses, children, and with other people in society. The experience of an individual cannot be equated with the experience of another person. For him, “the essence of a humanist is to be really interested in the world.” For Leo Ou-fan Lee, Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture at CUHK, the humanities mean “learning about life and learning how to be a good person.” This applied to him personally as well: “In my old age I still feel that I am still learning. I live and I learn in the humanities. The humanities surround me.” The humanities, to Lee, is “a cross-discipline. That is to say it is plural. I feel that I am not a specialist in any discipline.” This is “because being a human means so many things to different people.” This lack of narrow specialization, however, “is under siege” because of the drive to quantification. Echoing graduates’ views of the great influence their humanities teachers played in their growth, he said: “My personal memory always stems from a few good teachers in high school […]. [G]radually you learn from these teachers and try to emulate them and then be on your own. These are the things the Hong Kong government does not trust anymore because they will say […] you need figures.” Instead “the value of the humanities lies ironically in something invisible. . . in between the classrooms or outside the classroom, or between classes or in student-teacher relationships.” It “lies in spaces within the

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current modern structure. It’s like air, it’s like nourishment, it gets into the human body, it doesn’t show straight away but gradually you become healthier.” This view of the humanities as boundless relates to his own life as well. He said: “The sky’s the limit for me. […] I was never trained in any specialty,” and that “the older I become the more I feel I have to so much to learn. People say I am being modest. It’s not. It’s being human.” His views exemplify the same impulses to “Capacity for life-long learning” (see section in Chap. 1) and “Intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm” (see section in Chap. 1) that we have seen in the graduate interviews. For Peter Stambler, who set up the Humanities programme at HKBU in the late 1980s and ’90s (a number of the graduates of which provided their crucial insights into humanities education for this study in Chap. 1), the humanities now go beyond the traditional conception of them as “academic disciplines that focus on the history, culture, arts, and thought of human civilization.” Whereas “[i]n past generations, the Humanities dealt primarily with texts and that Victorian ideal of dwelling on the ‘best that has been thought and said,’” “as notions of culture have changed, that rather high-toned description of The Greats applies less and less appropriately.” Therefore, like the other scholars cited here, Stambler saw himself “tak[ing] a step back and hop[ing] for a more fundamental, capacious view: to promote the Humanities means to permit and enable the fullest possible development of the human person,” that is, his or her “intellectual, psychological, creative, affective potential.” Echoing Lee’s views, Stambler thought that “none of the discrete Humanities disciplines can actually teach a student or transmit to a student such potential”—rather, drawing on all of the disciplines, they “allow the discovery of one’s potential and then provide means— texts, art, intellectual guides—for that potential to grow.” This was also the key way Stambler chose to define how the humanities influenced his life: “If we can help a personality grow, if we can unlock potential, we will do so by diminishing fear and ignorance, by honoring the students while they bloom, and by preserving human accomplishment. If I can see such effects in how I treat the world, I also recognize how the Humanities have influenced my life.” Chris Hutton, Professor of English at HKU, also returned to a more capacious definition of the humanities than the one that emerged in the Victorian period: “Given the disciplinary specializations that emerged in the nineteenth century, and the rise of the natural sciences as we known them today, the humanities is now understood in opposition to natural science, as well being distinct from the ‘professional’ disciplines such as law and medicine; it is also distinguished from social sciences, with their particular methodologies (anthropology, sociology) and applied sub-disciplines.” Instead he considers them “as a general inquiry into texts and actions and their interpretation, concerned with questions of meaning and value, including sociocultural and ideological questions, without a clear boundary marking the humanities off from any other discipline, specialist or not.” This provides a much more stimulating approach to their studies: “In principle, if one takes the humanities as an open-ended mode of inquiry or as informed curiosity about the world, everything is interesting and everything can be relevant, so that is highly enriching personally,” although this can also be frustrating intellectually since “a training in the humanities means that it is

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difficult to find certainty in knowledge,” so that “everything we write and believe is so hedged-about with qualifications and contextualizations.” David Faure, Wei Lun Research Professor of History and Director of the Centre for China Studies at CUHK, cited the influence of “[h]aving lived all my life in an inter-cultural environment” for his understanding of the humanities “in terms of literature, history, [and] philosophy (“文、史、哲”), as well as in the broader sense of an appreciation of the human achievement, including the understanding of nature.” In what echoes the view of the humanities as a lifelong journey of self-exploration and self-revision expressed both by other scholars and by graduates, he said that perhaps the greatest influence of the humanities to his life had been that they had “taught me that even what I consider to be my understanding of myself might be mistaken.” Ho Che Wah, Professor of Chinese at CUHK, elaborated on such educational potential of the humanities for the individual. He viewed the humanities as making up the foundation of education in human emotions and affect, and as providing the source of cultural values through which people can discover their own secure bearings and values. He emphasized that this was not mere transmission of knowledge, but a process of individual evaluation and discovery. For instance, he pointed out that the “multidimensionality” of Chinese culture meant that “you can take a variety of different approaches. If you are very proactive, very eager, […] then Confucian philosophy may suit you in your life journey. If you think that human life is the result of a perpetual natural process, and that each individual life is fleeting and ephemeral, you will find good sources in Taoist thinking. Or you find inspiration in both strands, as many people do.” This way students can arrive at their own answers to the question: “What kinds of values do I identify with the most?” John Erni, Fung Hon Chu Endowed Chair of Humanics and Chair Professor in Humanities at HKBU, explicitly linked humanities knowledge and individual experience, stating that “the humanities are really about two things: they are about knowledge and about a way of life.” The former is “a very special type of knowledge that puts the value of creative judgment, and creative engagement, very high on the agenda […]. [T]his is about being flexible, being reflective.” The latter is “a good way of life. It’s a way of living, a way of experiencing life […] [that means] you can find the subtleties and fascination with everyday things in our culture,” so that “your life becomes more interesting, you become more sensitive and observant of things.” The two in combination, then, become “a creative way of life […] [and] “a way of life that values creativity.” This means that, like the other scholars interviewed, Erni thought the humanities escaped firm measurable definition: “creativity isn’t something that you can necessarily measure, and it doesn’t have a certain outcome, orientation.” Instead “it is more perceptual, it’s about our feelings, our intuitions.” But that also makes such education all the more valuable: if you study the humanities, “you are going to get a good life. That’s my shortest answer to what humanities is: it’s about developing a meaningful life for public good.” Going beyond rigidly narrow definitions of the humanities, therefore, seemed key to the scholars’ understanding of their work in the humanities and the humanities’ influence in their ways of thinking and lives. Such expansiveness is closely

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related to the benefits that graduates named in Chap. 1, such as “Multiperspectival Thinking” (see section in Chap. 1), “Capacity for Life-Long Learning” (see section in Chap. 1), “Creativity” (see section in Chap. 1), “Open-Mindedness” (see section in Chap. 1), and “Intellectual Curiosity and Enthusiasm” (see section in Chap. 1). The constant links that scholars made between the humanities and personal experience and values also echo graduates’ views on the formativity of their humanities education, as expressed in such parts as “The Formation of Personality, Values, and Vision” (Sect. 1.2.1.2). However, the difficulty in measuring these benefits also mean that the value of the humanities and of humanities education can be greatly underestimated, especially so considering tendencies to quantify in the current educational climate, as scholars expand on in the last subsection in this part.

3.2 The Humanities as Engaging with and Contributing to (Hong Kong) Society A common point made by the scholars was that humanities studies at universities were not unconnected from the world, but were intrinsically related to society, engaging with important topics that influenced people’s lives. Erni, for instance, described his long career in the humanities as being intricately linked with the world, “partly because of my own kind of disciplinary orientation which is cultural studies […] and now […] critical human rights studies.” Therefore, he said: “I’ve never been able to disengage myself from the world. Even though I’m situated in the university, it is simply impossible for the kind of work that I do and the kind of things that I say to be confined within the academic environment. I have to engage with social change. I have to be very sensitive to change in my surroundings and beyond.” This understanding reorients the common view of the humanities as impractical by outsiders that was raised in the interviews with graduates: the humanities can be deeply practical in the sense that they are “not apart from the world” but are deeply “of the real world.” Importantly, Erni emphasized that the humanities taught us to recognize that Hong Kong was not just an economy, but a society with its people, cultures, customs, human values, and so on: “For a very long time, it is as if we understood this place only or mainly as an economy, forgetting or downplaying that we are also a society—and a highly contested one at the moment.” This is a crucial insight the humanities is able to foster, one that is reflected on a fundamental level in the interview data we have presented, where the subsection “The Formation of Personalities, Values, and Vision” (Sect. 1.2.1.2) highlights the individual and social benefits of humanities education over its economic benefits, and where themes such as “Preserving and Transmitting Hong Kong Culture” (Sect. 1.2.5.5) and “Promoting Cultural Sensitivity, Awareness, and Diversity” (Sect. 1.2.5.7) in the section “The Essential Contributions of Humanities Education to Hong Kong Society” again stress the impact primarily of humanities education on Hong Kong as a society instead of an economy.

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The focus on Hong Kong only as an advanced economy is misguided. As Erni argued, “[A]s a society, we need people who can expect and adapt to changes that are not necessarily economic changes […]. We need people who can experience these things in a way that is meaningful and come up with some creative ways of living through these things,” which is “all the more important for a place like Hong Kong, that in recent times, has gone through certain amount of volatility, and of course, critical change.” The humanities, because of “its breadth of knowledge,” allows us to “navigate these things,” and “would help us capture that spectrum of possibilities when confronting change.” Warning against the foregrounding of economic gain above all else, Nussbaum (2010) writes of the American context: “Distracted by the pursuit of wealth, we increasingly ask our schools to turn out useful profit-makers rather than thoughtful citizens.” (pp. 141–42). This is where universities play an important role in terms of engaging with social changes. Universities allow for experimentation, and they, as Erni put it, “allow failures as well as advances.” Universities are places where “young people have an idea of how the world should be run, how ideas should be encouraged.” Erni’s points converge with those of de Marenne (2016), who argues that the “value of the liberal arts should be assessed, beyond the lens of marketability, in societal, existential, and transcendental terms” (p. 102). Hence, the teaching of the humanities at universities should result in a safe and creative space where ideas can flourish. Stuart Christie, Professor and Chair of the Department of English at HKBU, made the specific argument that “humanistic endeavor” involves a “dynamic interaction” between “sustained engagement (critique); the marshaling of affect in recognition of the dignity, personhood, and being of others (empathy); and the amelioration of adverse social, economic, and environmental outcomes which is materially quantifiable, hence of perceived value for the betterment of society as a whole (measurable effect).” Christie’s emphasis on society resonated with Erni’s, and came in spite of his observation on how “[t]oday the very term, ‘society,’ seems almost quaint.” This is due to “the backdrop of our presently globalized and neoliberal order, which has exerted extreme pressures on the intimacies and economies, familial as well as national, which nineteenth-century notions of ‘society’ bequeathed to the twentieth century,” so that now “‘society’ seems almost unrecognizable as an aspirational value.” But the term “society” is crucial to the contributions Christie saw the humanities as being able to make: Whether “society” is defined in individual terms (the enhancement of access to life opportunities and their fulfillment) or in aggregate (the collective achievement of the same), the best humanistic practices tend to correlate individual capacities to aggregate potentials forcefully and persuasively. It follows that my understanding of the humanities engages in critique, remains empathic in the face of hardening positions, and always strives toward the betterment of material conditions and capacities for all, and most especially the vulnerable, the structurally compromised, or the unloved.

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Graduates interviewed seemed to agree with this view, as can be seen from such themes as “Critical and Independent Thinking” (see section in Chap. 1) and “Promoting Civic Engagement” (Sect. 1.2.5.9). There is much potential for these benefits to be actualized in the context of Hong Kong. Even though Hong Kong’s dominant preoccupations often have to do with the state of the economy, the well-being of “all Hong Kong people, from any background, and not exclusively of the kleptocratic class and its ruling bureaucracies” needs to be attended to. As Christie put it, “This reassertion of humanistic value […] constitutes the salutary reminder humanists in Hong Kong must always make to their colleagues in the more corporatized domains of science, technology, and business.” Such amelioration goes hand in hand with what Christie sees as the “redistributive” value of the humanities in Hong Kong. He contextualized such a view in his response to the recommendations of the Sutherland Report in 2001, which “enjoined the HKSAR government and its tertiary sector funding body, the University Grants Commission (UGC), to democratize access to university learning by expanding existing quotas for publicly funded, first-year, first-degree (FYFD) places—then peaking at only 18%—to 60% by 2020. I was thrilled because, still knowing very little about Hong Kong, I could at least identify the logjam blocking educational advancement for the vast majority of the 18–22 year old cohort in the territory.” Instead, what happened was not growth in the funded higher education sector, but “the self-funded sector (particularly in the taught MA, AA-degree, and ‘top-up’ degree programmes) which have until recent years enjoyed double-digit growth in enrollments and private tuition-driven income year on year),” so that even now “UGCfunded FYFD places continue to hover around the 18% level, which is simply unacceptable for the thriving and intellectually rigorous educational system we know and appreciate Hong Kong’s to be.” Thus the redistributive value of the humanities in Hong Kong “is also profoundly political, in as much as it would seek to honor promises made to young people in the years immediately following the return of sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China,” “level[ing] the playing field for the vast majority of students in Hong Kong who possess the same spark and potential as elites groomed by the existing system, and yet who still find themselves in the unsustainable position of having to pay (via alternate pathways) for what far wealthier persons receive for free.” This would not just be beneficial to the young people and rectify a situation that “is unjust,” but also be good for the economy:” liberalizing the FYFD quotas to those levels mandated by the 2001 Sutherland Report would release considerable resources, across diverse economies of far greater scale, into the tertiary sector as it expanded to meet such increased demand.” For Mathews, the “social critique” offered by the humanities is similarly important, because such a “critical view of society and the ability to make judgements” help “make for a better and fulfilling society.” This is enabled by the “ability to keep reading and thinking” even after the completion of formal degree requirements that humanities education endows students, a view that graduates agreed with, as such themes as “Capacity for Life-Long Learning” (see section in Chap. 1) and “Upon Graduation and After: The Lasting Influence of Wisdom Derived from Education”

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(Sect. 1.2.4.3) express. Mathews also argued that studying the humanities was important for those who planned to work for NGOs, as the values of these organizations were often grounded in humanitarian values. And indeed, as we have seen from such themes as “Empathy and Care for Fellow Humans” (see section in Chap. 1) and “A Sense of Mission to Spread Humanities Knowledge” in Chap. 1, many humanities graduates indeed do similar work in such fields, either paid or voluntary, and attribute such a tendency to their humanities education. The research that humanities scholars conduct also champions these values as well as giving people insights and new perspectives on social issues. Mathews’s book Ghetto at the Center of the World: Chungking Mansions, Hong Kong, for instance, aims “to show […] readers a part of the world they know nothing about.” The courses Mathews currently teaches, such as “meanings of life,” are about how people make sense of their worlds as seen through Western and Chinese intellectual history. Longxi Zhang, Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation in the Department of Chinese and History at City University of Hong Kong, emphasized the great need for the humanities in the face of “the emphasis on practical skills and values in terms of input and output ratio and for utilitarian purposes,” saying that the “problematic situation in Hong Kong actually highlights the need for the humanities for the cultivation of moral values and political consciousness, for the education of responsible citizens for the good of a democratic society.” Again, without reducing a humanities degree to merely practical results, humanities education in fact does have pragmatic importance. Since the humanities “cultivate humanity and educate the young to think logically, critically, and analytically,” they also “make you a better educated and cultured person, a person with the ability to work better and deal with problems in any job you are likely to do in the future.” In addition, Zhang pointed out, Hong Kong has “a special place in higher education”: its unique position as “a great city with both a rich Chinese cultural heritage and close connections with Europe and the West in general,” as “a Special Administrative Region [so that it] is part of China, but also not the same as mainland China,” and “with a higher degree of internationalization than most, if not all, Asian cities,” means that “higher education in the humanities in Hong Kong would have the opportunity to provide students with a better East-West cross-cultural understanding and prepare them to work efficiently and effectively in the increasingly globalized world, in which China is having a greater influence in economic and political terms.” Hong Kong, then, is exceptionally situated to make a unique contribution in these respects. Kwok-ying Lau, Professor of Philosophy at CUHK, also referred to the important Chinese element in humanities teaching in Hong Kong in speaking of how, from personal experience, he believed the many different cultural perspectives— “the melting pot”—that Hong Kong society offers and sustains were important for society: “[this] makes Hong Kong strong, growing up from a tiny colony without resources.” If looking at China using a more modern view of “China in the world” instead of the traditional view of China as “high above others” and “against the world,” Hong Kong can “play a constructive role” in its “incorporat[ion] [of] a lot of resources, human resources, cultural resources from other people, other cultures.”

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This way “we’ll contribute to both the modernisation of Chinese culture and probably […] better understanding among different cultures” despite the many “cultural conflicts” in the world. One vision of what the outcome of such interactions might look like has been expressed by Jiang (2016), who writes on universities in China that “[a]s Chinese higher education institutions become more internationalized and globalized through educational exchanges, a well-integrated interrelationship between humanities, liberal arts education, professional education, and market-needs will allow Chinese universities to educate more qualified citizens and ethical leaders for the contemporary globalized world” (p. 131). Lau thought that “Hong Kong and scholars—people who work in the humanities – have a role to play towards promoting inter-cultural understanding.” This view of the contributions that Hong Kong can offer is also based on Lau’s intercultural perspective on the humanities, as “knowledge about human beings, and not only individually, but also collectively, not only in the Western sense but also in a Chinese sense.” Lau’s views are similar to those expressed by graduates in the theme “Promoting Cultural Sensitivity, Awareness, and Diversity” (Sect. 1.2.5.7) as a contribution that humanities education can offer Hong Kong. For Ho, a deeper understanding of Chinese culture is especially important in Hong Kong to allow one to find one’s anchoring and bearings in Hong Kong because, as an ex-colony and “now a Special Administrative Region,” “[w]e have always been at some distance from Chinese culture.” This means that “building up the values of the humanities here and in our education system is of vital importance.” Ho explained how, during the colonial era, the only exposure students had to aspects of Chinese culture was through the subjects of Chinese language and perhaps Chinese Literature at school. Now, the difficulty in promoting deeper understanding of Chinese culture lies in the common conflation of the idea of traditional Chinese culture with the Chinese government, leading to the mistaken conclusion that “[w]hen we talk about Chinese culture, such discussions can be seen as supporting the ruling government.” Instead, Ho emphasized that Chinese culture here meant as manifested in its full historical scope of five thousand years, “going beyond the cultural inheritance of any specific ruling government.” More broadly speaking, the humanities, Ho said, “are precisely not just focused on practical value. They can be very intangible, but they are necessary in human life.” Without them we may end up with only skills but no inherent values of our own—a dire prospect for Hong Kong society. At universities, students can progress to a more advanced level by building on this foundation and widen their exposure to the humanities of different cultures, and through comparing and evaluating these, discover values that they identify with and accept the most. Indeed universities have a unique role to play in this: “We should not be trying to change education into only training for skills. The nature of the humanities match the university’s ethos the most. What we are trying to establish is precisely a university that imparts a broad and advanced awareness of cultural substance, of individual value.” Without the humanities, “our schools will become entirely about gaining skills, in particular skills to do with careers, devolving into being driven by utility.”

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One of the results of developing one’s own set of values is greater mental and emotional resilience to support one through times of hardship. As Ho explained: “In real life when we encounter setbacks in life, we can think of a poem by Su Dongpo ( 蘇東坡), which can aid you in solving misfortunes in your life. Or you may discover some similarities between events in your life and in that of Han dynasty’s Sima Qian (司馬遷). Through his literary works, or the cultural remains left by him, you can see how such ancient writers solved problems they faced through their inner qualities and cultural substance.” Students in particular, “[a]fter finding their own values,” “can be more confident in the face of various events in life. They will know that when they encounter difficulties, that these are just temporary setbacks. They can look much further ahead. […] They can stand tall and see far (‘高瞻遠矚’), and see the changes through five thousand years of history, see the various changes that cultures throughout human history have undergone. […] They will acquire a more profound vision.” In the long term, over the course of one’s long life journey, this “ability to handle difficulties is more important than money-making skills.” Otherwise, “without a position of one’s own to fall back on, they might very easily be shaken.” Ho’s views echo many themes that emerged from the graduate interviews, such as “Meaning in Life” (see section in Chap. 1), “Emotional and Spiritual Fortification” (see section in Chap. 1), and “Emotional and Spiritual Nourishment” (Sect. 1.2.5.3). Lee similarly emphasized the educational potential of the humanities, arguing that “[t]he value of the humanities lies in the educational growth of a human being,” and that “[t]he humanities forms the core of a good education from kindergarten upwards.” Like Zhang, he thought that this education in fact improved students’ career potential. Lee described how the business people he spoke with were always looking for people with “vision” in their companies and that most often it was not people who studied STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects or management who had such “vision” but people trained in the humanities. He recounted the following anecdote to make a case for the career-enhancing values of the humanities: “The top management always look for people with vision and cultivation. Even in China I talked to a tycoon of construction and he said the top layer of people are all from Chinese literature. I said what about Management [graduates]? He said they were the mid-ranking […] [,] that when you get to the top layer of planning you need people with vision. […] I try to explain this in the most simple way to the Hong Kong management people but they don’t get it.” This lack of a more accurate perception in regard to what the humanities can offer a young person can lead to families preventing their children from pursuing an education in the humanities. Stambler said: “Hong Kong’s pragmatism and commercialism are powerful forces that, if they choose, can crowd out a young person’s desire for education. They can overly influence a family who want their child to be successful in employment. They may short-sightedly think that a vocational degree will benefit student and family and fail to notice that, within a few years of graduation, the Humanities degree has indeed proved to be highly marketable.” Like the interviewees who thought that a humanities education had endowed them with distinct competitiveness (see Sect. 1.2.2.4), Stambler thought that “if an education reveals, opens, and expands the potential of a person, that person will be a stronger

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economic engine than a narrowly trained (dare I say) automaton. Hong Kong must not forget this.” This last imploration is especially important considering how both the interviews with scholars and with humanities graduates have shown how various parties’ understanding of the marketability of skills can often diverge in significant ways. What Stambler here, and Zhang and Lee earlier, emphasize, then, is that there is practical value to a humanities degree in the workplace, but that such value lies precisely in how a humanities degree is not oriented to mere pragmatism. Stambler, like Zhang and Lau, emphasized the intercultural position of Hong Kong—its “unique position as a leading international city demands some sort of grand entente that honors the contributions of Western and Eastern humanists”— and thought that this made the humanities vital in Hong Kong education: “Business norms, many sciences, mathematics and other fields can cleave to accepted international standards without much controversy. The Humanities, on the other hand, must contend with multitudes of contentious approaches to education, human cognition, human behavior, political and philosophic understanding.” The dynamic cultural interactions in the Hong Kong context also mean that “Hong Kong can look forward to reinventing notions of the Humanities.” Although ultimately Stambler thought that “the value of the Humanities, fundamentally, should be the same everywhere though it will be identified or emphasized differently in different places,” he pointed out how “some will argue that the Humanities might soften the materialism and commercialism that might seem to be the bedrock of Hong Kong society”—as we have indeed seen graduates do in the theme “Tempering Excessive Materialism and Instrumentalism” (Sect. 1.2.5.8). If looking at which of their values could play a particularly important role in Hong Kong, this may be that they “can address, counter, question, ameliorate both social and governmental mores.” Hutton also emphasized this quality of the humanities, especially in relation to the distinctiveness of Hong Kong’s position: “with its unique and uneasy position within the PRC,” “Hong Kong offers a fascinating vantage point for thinking about gobal developments, history, language politics, etc.” The humanities here are crucial “as a contributor to and reflection of a free and open society, as promised in Articles 27 and 34 of the Basic Law and Articles 15 and 16 of the Bill of Rights.” This means that in particular the study of history is “central to the sociopolitical and sociocultural questions that confront Hong Kong”: since “[t]he history of the PRC is highly contentious, and Hong Kong’s own history has become an ideological battleground,” “[a]n informed critique is needed both of colonialism in its many facets in different phases of Hong Kong’s development, as well as of PRC orthodoxy.” Talking more broadly about the results of studying the humanities to students, Hutton pointed out that the fact that humanities degrees “carr[y] less status than other more applied or more professional subjects” does not mean that they are impractical, since students in fact “do acquire an impressive set of skills.” Talking about some excellent undergraduate students he was teaching, he believed that they “will have their pick of career options”—echoing the views expressed by Zhang, Lee and Stambler earlier in this subsection.

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An overly narrow, instead of a deeper and richer, understanding of the marketability of a university degree may paradoxically lead to what can be considered essential skills, such as, in the words of Faure, the ability “to read and write,” being lost in the modern university. Faure said: “I am old fashioned. I believe university education should turn out graduates who are able to read and write. As an oldfashioned historian, I might say that History teaches one to think. By that, I refer to thinking in the way one might present arguments in essays. I think we need to bring back those skills, even in this day and age of the mobile phone.” Again, the humanities seem uniquely positioned to equip students with these skills while at the same time providing them with deeply meaningful and (trans)formative education.

3.3 The Current State of the Humanities in Hong Kong Universities Many of the scholars interviewed expressed concerns about how the humanities are regarded in Hong Kong, specifically in universities in Hong Kong. The challenges the humanities will continue to face in the twenty-first century as disciplines in which the measurement of progress is difficult and very different from the sciences,1 in the context of the ongoing shift in the way universities operate as a result of the global embrace of neoliberalism, have been well-documented in other countries.2 These global forces apply to Hong Kong as well, as we see in scholars’ interview responses below. Yet scholars’ responses, like in the previous subsection, also highlight more unique aspects of the state of the humanities in Hong Kong universities that can usefully inform continued debate on their suitable place in higher education and in society. Raising the issue of the relatively subsidiary status of the humanities in higher education in Hong Kong, Erni pointed to the fact that many more presidents of higher education institutions in Hong Kong have been scientists or economists rather than humanities scholars. He observed a certain driving force, […] perhaps not intentionally but one way or another, to privilege the sciences in higher education in Hong Kong. That itself isn’t necessarily a critique. There are good reasons, but it’s also a fact, and that fact has translated into all facets of university life including the distribution of funding and resources, the kind of work that become more visible on university websites, the kind we investigate, the kind of department goals that flourish, that there is that tendency to privilege the sciences.

Erni emphasized that science is important, and “foster[ing] scientific or technological advancement” should be encouraged since “it changes the world and brings about 1 See,

for instance, Volney (2010), Progress and values in the humanities: Comparing culture and science. 2 As explained more recently in studies such as Coleman, D., and Smaro. K. (2011), Retooling the humanities: The culture of research in Canadian universities; and Delbanco, A. (2012), College: What it was and should be, for the Canadian and American contexts respectively.

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a better life as well.” But an emphasis, perhaps of a different kind tailored to the different nature of the humanities, is also needed as a balance. Therefore, although reasons for prioritizing the sciences are not difficult to understand, funding and resources “could be more evenly distributed” because of the unique contributions the humanities have to offer. Erni notably did not use the word “crisis,” so commonly used elsewhere in the world, to describe the state of the humanities in Hong Kong, saying that the humanities still had supporters at the level of decision-making in Hong Kong because of the recognition of their importance. Operating within an environment where subjects need to justify their use value, Hutton pointed out that “the humanities has responded to pressures to model itself after science and become itself over-specialized and in some cases highly jargonladen.” This is related to the “pressure to show ‘impact’ and to instrumentalize humanities research,” whereas “[i]n fact the humanities have enormous direct and indirect social impact through the teaching of undergraduates (and informing the next generation of secondary teachers).” Thus “it is absurd to see them as somehow less relevant than STEM disciplines or applied social science.” However, “technocratic models of knowledge are much more politically convenient,” continuing to put the humanities under such pressures. Again, if evaluation of the humanities is required, a different system tailored to the nature of the disciplines instead of seeing them on the same basis as science disciplines is needed. The worry is that this will not happen, or will not happen soon enough. Lau said: “I have certain concerns about the future. Today most governors and politicians, they believe that the way to solve problems . . . [is by] looking for solutions from the purely technological side,” “believ[ing] in a certain kind of technological utopia.” Yet “there are lots of problems—human problems” that cannot be solved this way. In higher education, the methods based on narrow “principles of development” used to “evaluate the performance of scholars” and to “promote commission” in their work “will do more harm to the humanities than to encourage those things which are inventive and original.” In also contrasting the humanities with STEM subjects in Hong Kong, Lee observed that “[t]he newest Hong Kong policy is to promote the STEM scheme,” but “STEM is not a goal. It is a career, a career pattern. It is practical. It is for a shortterm outcome. The humanities has no visible outcome but it is […] life affirming and fulfilling.” Lee “no longer trust[s] curriculum reform,” because “[w]hen you talk about curriculum reform there is no compromise.” He said: “Our RGC for example is no longer interested in why good books are good books, for they have ruled that rather than reading them and talking about their content, they’d rather find a panel to cast votes on them.” And even if, for instance, secondary schools were to be required to teach the humanities, teachers “are under a lot of pressure. They don’t have the space, they don’t have the time.” Therefore Lee looked to a more personalized way of handling this dire situation: “Find your own space. Establish your own informal groups for whatever lengths of time in whatever format so long as you don’t become a slave to the rigid bureaucratic structure.” Ho had concrete suggestions to make for language education in secondary schools, ones which could impact humanities education at the university level. He said in Hong Kong “we do not emphasize our own literature. We allow our students to grow

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up treating language only as a communication tool.” Such emphasis on functional communication means that students “can describe things well, can easily find information online to write a report,” but at the potential cost of “cultural substance, literary exposure, and the ability to handle one’s own emotions and mental wellbeing.” This educational system is a remnant of policies by the colonial government. Ho said: The colonial government made the wrong decision to separate language and literature studies. They wanted to train students in language skills, and allow literary studies or the deeper cultural understanding behind literary studies to become elective subjects for students with such a special interest. They also . . . made the study of history non-mandatory. I cannot understand the philosophy behind this type of educational policy. I have not seen another place that lacks emphasis on its own culture to the extent that Hong Kong does.

This has resulted in language subjects that have examination papers on only functional aspects of reading, speaking, and writing. Describing an example from a listening paper examination, Ho said: “Two people are arguing with each other [in the audio file students are listening to]. One is using irony. The audio stops. Students open their set of examination papers. Which woman was not being sincere? Which one’s language use was a deviation from reality?” Of this type of study, Ho asked: “What do students learn by being able to answer such questions? Why can’t we let them read a piece by Li Bai (李白)? Why can’t we ask about Li Bai in exams?” This dire situation has been partially redressed by the reinstatement of some literary texts into the Chinese language curriculum in secondary school, so that, as Ho pointed out, even though of the sixty thousand or so students taking the Diploma of Secondary Education, only two thousand or so take the elective of Chinese Literature (with the number of students taking the elective of Literature in English even lower than that), at least students get some exposure to literary texts from their own culture through the Chinese language curriculum. Ho argued that there needed to be greater understanding in Hong Kong that “longer-term, more gradual and subtle (‘潛移默化’) benefits of [humanities] education are more important than short-term skills or training.” This needs to counter the utility-driven mindset prevalent in Hong Kong that was referred to earlier: How do we do something so that within a week we will be able to reap returns? How do we choose a major subject to study so that in four years’ time we can find a good job with a high income? We don’t just suppress consideration of factors beyond utility—we almost destroy it. Our society as a whole finds it very difficult to accept alternative values. […] This is something we need to advocate in Hong Kong society through education and promotion: that deeper level cultural awareness is more important than utility and practical skills.

Only by changing educational policies that are rooted in the drive to utility “will we have the opportunity to provide better cultural education” to students. But it is not all doom and gloom. Ho said: “I am not extremely pessimistic. I think many developments right now are heading into a sensible direction, for instance our reinstatement of the study of Chinese history [in secondary schools], and the reinstatement of twelve literary texts [into the Chinese language curriculum at the senior

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secondary school level].” And although families in Hong Kong might still be discouraging top students from studying humanities subjects at university (a phenomenon that Stambler also mentioned), the admission scores of our Chinese department have been rising. In our admission interviews many young people state very clearly that they really wish to study Chinese literature despite their parents’ opposition and advice that they should be studying business with such grades. So it wouldn’t be true to say that values seemingly so entrenched in society cannot change. We can still see young people having these hopes. […] We need to grasp every opportunity to change the skewed judgement arising from entrenched utility-driven values here in Hong Kong.

And in fact, as we have seen from the interviews in Chap. 1 (for instance in such themes as “tempering excessive materialism and instrumentalism” [Sect. 1.2.5.8]), some humanities graduates also saw themselves as attempting to provide alternative methods of evaluating what is worthwhile in life to those driven by the ideology of the marketplace, making some difference in their own ways. Ho thought the lack of emphasis on practical skills in the humanities “is the biggest obstacle in promoting the humanities.” He said: “Education in general these days is about utility. We hope to know, after having studied something, what we can do with it. The problem with the humanities is that after studying them, the benefits are not immediate but come over a much longer period of time. In your life journey, they exert a gradual and subtle influence (‘潛移默化’). In such a utility-driven society as Hong Kong, promoting this kind of aspiration can be difficult.” Ho here used the same Chinese idiom “潛移默化” as did four of the graduate interviewees, as we described in the theme on “the intangibility of the values of humanities education” (Sect. 1.2.4.4). Zhang similarly pointed out that “Hong Kong, like many other places in the world, puts emphasis on the practical and the immediately useful. Like Ho, he thought that this “myopic view of education” has led to “some serious policy mistakes in education,” for instance “making courses in history elective rather than mandatory in high schools right after Hong Kong’s return to China.” He said: “Hong Kong is now suffering from such policy mistakes, and the situation will only become worse if the humanities are not getting the attention they deserve in the eyes of the government and the legislators.” Although he viewed “the situation of humanities education in Hong Kong [as] not satisfactory,” he believed “it can be improved.” Christie also pointed out the big difference between funding for the humanities and the business, high tech, and applied science sectors. Like Erni, however, he emphasized that “the arts and humanities in Hong Kong have not been without their supporters.” His added critique here was that such support for the humanities might take the form of seeing them “as merely a kind of “superstructural” inducement— Marx’s term—toward achieving a better quality of life in relation to a still more highly-valued and privileged economic base.” But this emphasis on the “economic base” is “deeply problematic”: how about “the all too often overlooked cross-cultural, homegrown and locally organic properties of the more populous and promiscuous base, its diverse peoples and many languages, its ‘structures of feeling’ (Raymond Willliams’s term) with the capacity not only to create wealth for a few, but to create

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specific and enabling conditions for securing the patrimony, history, and well-being of the many?” Repurposing the humanities based on “[t]he prevalent association of the base with Hong Kong economy alone, as if distinct from broader and more inclusive notions of culture attending it, is woefully inadequate.” Instead, Christie’s vision for the humanities in Hong Kong is one where the excesses of the economic drive are tempered, while the focus on human beings is greatly boosted: “[h]umanistic value gathered and attributed to Hong Kong, in its own place and moment, and when embracing the world in partnership, should serve the people, first, and the accumulation of wealth for profit-making subsequently,” ideally with both driving humanistic work. Such visions for the contributions that humanities work can make in Hong Kong have been paired, throughout this subsection, with scholars’ criticisms of the way in which administrative decisions at all levels impact detrimentally on humanities work and on the potential of humanities education to improve society. The strength of humanities work—its more subtle, long-term influence that usually goes beyond any immediate practical applications—has also become its weakness in the face of funding pressures that seek to measure and quantify the impact made by work in various disciplines. The scholars interviewed, however, did not think that the solution lay in a radical change in humanities work so that it is tailored to the immediately instrumental or vocational. Instead, what is needed is much better understanding of the nature and benefits of humanities work—provided, for instance, by the explanations offered by the scholars on the nature of the humanities in this part of the report—and concomitant changes in educational and funding policies in response to such a better understanding.

3.4 Conclusion The unique and pervasive contributions that the humanities make to the individual and to society—to name just a few examples from the second subsection, the humanistic values it teaches; the growth in personhood it leads to; and the crucial alternatives it provides to economic models of society—come hand in hand with the breadth of the scope of the humanities that the scholars described in the first subsection, where scholars clearly expressed that it was not possible or desirable to pin the humanities down to more narrow definitions. The views and observations scholars shared call for more subtle ways of evaluating humanities work than models currently applied, which, as the scholars pointed out, are better suited to other disciplines such as the sciences, where the impact of work done is more readily visible and quantifiable. We suggest such alternative ways of evaluation might include the type of interviews conducted with graduates in this report, where instead of focusing on quantitative changes, beneficiaries of humanities work are provided with the space to expound on the impact of the humanities on them. The values of humanities higher education listed in Chap. 1, in particular the less straightforward, less skill-based themes such as in Sects. 1.2.1.2 and 1.2.5, could also provide useful starting points and themes for

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targeted analyses of the impact of humanities higher education on both the individual and society. Scholars’ views on the contributions that the humanities can make to society in general have been paired with views on the ones they can make to Hong Kong as a special cultural and geographical habitat, for instance in light of its colonial history, and as an intercultural space combining Chinese and Western values. Such subtle distinctions are important in order to more fully understand the benefits the humanities can provide to Hong Kong. As some of the humanities scholars noted in their interviews with us, a combination of educational policies that are in part the legacy of colonial times and the powerful forces of instrumentalism in Hong Kong has created a secondary school curriculum that focuses narrowly on functionality in some respects, with language education in secondary schools, for instance, concentrating only on functionality and communication, and not on the rich historical, cultural, and literary contexts in which languages are ensconced. The phenomenon some scholars mentioned whereby students feel compelled to choose subjects to study at university primarily with future income and not often with interest or ability in mind—or in other words, where they look at their education solely from a vocational, job-oriented perspective—may have its roots in students’ much earlier education. Although our report is focused on the results of humanities higher education, the benefits of humanities education cited in this report, which mostly go beyond basic skills and reach into humanistic aspects such as the discovery of the self and of one’s values, can extend to secondary school education—if more space for a greater variety of compulsory, instead of elective, humanities education could be created throughout the secondary school years. Even if students then do not continue on to humanities studies at university, the foundation these earlier years build can still provide some of the benefits of humanities education as described by the scholars interviewed, such as deeper self-knowledge and self-understanding, the formation of an individual value system, greater emotional resilience, and better knowledge of the society and the world in which the self is ensconced. The humanities in Hong Kong undoubtedly share many characteristics with the humanities in other contexts, and are the result of larger forces, such as the drive to neoliberalism, also found elsewhere—which scholars’ views have confirmed. However, without more subtle views of what attributes make the humanities in higher education in Hong Kong special, it will also be difficult for them to escape from the shadow of humanities programmes in other much larger countries such as the US and the UK, although Hong Kong is a leading university city in its own right. In spite of the critical work on the humanities in other countries that we have cited throughout this report, the dual view of Hong Kong as part of a global humanities community yet also distinct in its own right is an important point arising from the views shared by scholars. Despite the fact then that many appeals to the value of the humanities can often appear to make grand, universalist claims, we need to remain mindful of the specific historical and cultural aspects of the humanities in Hong Kong. The work of scholars such as Collini, Harpham and Nussbaum cited throughout this report stress how American British and European practices of the humanities are deeply rooted in their respective national traditions. The translatability of these to other contexts

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such as Hong Kong has been both assumed and questioned. So, for instance, while Collini (2012) has noted how “The British Empire led directly to the establishment of universities around the world modeled on the ‘home’ institutions,” Nussbaum (2010) has drawn problematic distinctions between the American “liberal arts system” and the practice of the humanities in Asia and Europe by writing that a “problem” for European and Asian universities is that “new disciplines of particular importance for good democratic citizenship have no secure place in the structure of undergraduate education” (p. 126). Either approach would neglect the unique contributions that the humanities in Hong Kong have to offer, of which its interculturality would be a prime example— an interculturality that offers distinctions from the humanities in China, which may be seen as “divided (Chinese vs. Western) rather than unified (humanity as a whole)” (Guo and Su 2016, p. 92). As we have discussed in our previous studies (O’Sullivan 2014; Chan and O’Sullivan 2016), the examination of the humanities in cross-cultural communities such as Hong Kong and Ireland requires an openness to exploring how different humanities traditions have fed into, and informed rather than dictated, the practice of the humanities in these former British colonies. Indeed, Shumway (1998) goes so far as to suggest that there are so many different humanities traditions that they should be described as “nationalities” and not humanities. Regions such as Hong Kong must work to unravel the different influences of these various feeder traditions while also being mindful of the unique aspects of the humanities here. Seeing such unique contributions provides yet another argument for alternative, more fitting, ways of evaluating humanities work in Hong Kong, so that the visions shared by the scholars interviewed on how the humanities can shape Hong Kong society can be better realized.

References Chan, E. T. Y., & O’Sullivan, M. (Eds.). (2016). The humanities in contemporary Chinese contexts. Singapore: Springer. Coleman, D., & Smaro, K. (2011). Retooling the humanities: The culture of research in Canadian universities. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Collini, S. (2012). What are universities for?. London: Penguin. de Marenne, E. T. (2016). The case for the humanities: Pedagogy, polity, interdisciplinarity. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Delbanco, A. (2012). College: What it was and should be. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Guo, Y., & Su, L. (2016). Problems with the humanities in Mainland China: A translational perspective. In E. T. Y. Chan & M. O’Sullivan (Eds.), The humanities in contemporary Chinese contexts (pp. 91–111). Singapore: Springer. Jiang, Y. G. (2016). Humanities and liberal arts in the Chinese universities: A new connection and dialogue. In E. T. Y. Chan & M. O’Sullivan (Eds.), The humanities in contemporary Chinese contexts (pp. 113–132). Singapore: Springer. O’Sullivan, M. (2014). The humanities and the Irish University. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nussbaum, (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shumway, D. R. (1998). Nationalist knowledges: The humanities and nationality. Poetics Today, 19(3), 357–373.

A Final Brief Summary

The graduate interviews have shown that humanities higher education does endow graduates with useful skills for the economy, as the themes in Sect. 1.2.1.1 have demonstrated; but crucially, the interview data also show that it does not only achieve this, but proves life-changing and (trans)formative for the individual in positive ways, as the themes in Sect. 1.2.1.2 have attested to. Whereas skills are important, they can be seen more as the byproducts of humanities higher education, with the ultimate aim of such education lying more in its (trans)formative potential, which is generally ascribed much greater personal significance across the interviews. Ways of evaluating humanities higher education that only aims to evidence the former without attempting to capture the latter will miss a large part of the benefits of such education. To remedy this, different evaluative methods can be devised in future, with the format of the interviews in this report providing a possible model. The themes in Sects. 1.2.1–1.2.4 of Chap. 1 could also provide initial pointers for clearly directed evaluative measures to be devised, so that the benefits of humanities higher education for graduates can be more fully described in future evaluation exercises. Humanities higher education is also seen by graduates themselves as crucial in significant ways to Hong Kong not just as an economy, but as a society, as Sect. 1.2.5 has shown, and as is discussed by humanities scholars in Chap. 3. It adds to the vibrancy, energy, variety, and heterogeneity of the city—benefits that may require alternative methods to capture and evaluate. The items that humanities graduates listed in Sect. 1.2.5 of Chap. 1 can provide an initial form or structure for future investigations into the benefits of humanities higher education for Hong Kong society to be based on, leading to a more complete and multifaceted picture of the contributions of humanities higher education to Hong Kong society. The analysis of graduate survey data in Chap. 2 shows that humanities graduates contribute significantly to Hong Kong’s GDP, in the sense that many of them find employment in the activity type that has been the second largest contributor to GDP in most years in the past twenty years, that of “public administration, social and personal services.” This quantitatively refutes the common perception, mentioned throughout

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. T. Y. Chan et al., The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7187-9

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the graduate interviews, that humanities higher education is not very useful to society. This is, however, not an argument for explicit vocationality in humanities curricula. Humanities higher education is not to train graduates to contribute to the employment sector of “public administration, social and personal services”; rather, it nurtures graduates who possess the skills to do so. Such a distinction is subtle but important, and is the reason why quantitative or macroscopic methods to capture the outcomes of humanities education can only ever shed partial light on the whole picture, with more interpretivist methods such as that used in this report’s Chaps. 1 and 2 necessary to understand more fully the spectrum of values humanities higher education holds for the individual and for society.

Appendix

Figure A.1 lists the number of interviewees mentioning the various themes on the benefits of humanities higher education to the individual and Hong Kong society in Sects. 1.2.1 and 1.2.5 of Chap. 1 of the report.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 E. T. Y. Chan et al., The Value of the Humanities in Higher Education, SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7187-9

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Appendix

Figure A.1 The number of interviewees mentioning the various themes in Sects. 1.2.1 and 1.2.5 of Chap. 1 of the report

Appendix

Figure A.1 (continued)

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Works Cited

Belfiore, E., & Upchurch, A. (2013). Humanities in the twenty-first century: Beyond utility and markets. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gay, V. (2009). Progress and values in the humanities: Comparing culture and science. New York: Columbia University Press. Harpham, G. G. (2011). The humanities and the dream of America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Holm, P., Jarrick, A., & Scott, D. (2014). Humanities world report 2015. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Menand, L. (2010). The marketplace of ideas: Reform and resistance in the American University. New York: WW Norton. Parker, J. (2008). What have the humanities to offer 21st-century Europe? Reflections of a note taker. Arts and humanities in higher education, 7(1), 83–96. The World Factbook 2016–17. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-worldfactbook/rankorder/2172rank.html.

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