Message from the Principal

With the passing of the exam season, students are now at the end of their one year or two years of studies at the College.  Looking back, and with the experience of those public exams and coming to this College not so long ago, I am sure the impact on your young minds must have been rather complex and difficult to be described clearly in words.  However, I am sure you must have benefited from the two years of college life, both in terms of attainment of knowledge and personal development in life.  What you have received here was not just knowledge of a specialized field but also a wide coverage of general education plus consolidation of various generic skills like languages, mathematics, ways of thinking, and communication techniques.  I do believe that a wide, deep, and multifarious approach to learning will ultimately benefit both your further education and future career.

Unfortunately, there are still doubts cast on the value of sub-degree programmes. Nevertheless, my advice is that you should not allow such unfounded judgment to have any impact on your self-evaluation. One just cannot simply deny the outstanding performance of yourself and many past students of the Community College. In the past ten plus years, about 80% of our students have successfully made their way to university education, and among them, more than 40% were admitted to UGC funded universities. And out of those, nearly 20% made it to the University of Hong Kong. Two years ago, Professor Chung Yue-ping of the Chinese University of Hong Kong published a report on the competitiveness of high-school graduates in the workforce and it was indicated that the competitiveness of Associate Degree and Higher Diploma graduates was between that of university and high-school graduates. And, according to my own observation and that of various external assessors (including some professors from universities), the majority of graduates from the Community College do demonstrate excellent attitudes towards learning. As the College Principal, I am indeed proud of it.

For those who have completed the first year of Associate Degree or Higher Diploma studies, the coming year is a crucial period for you to contemplate on the possibilities of further studies or joining the workforce. Either way, you must use this year to establish a firm base for your future development. And, for those who have already completed the two year programme, I believe you are now fully equipped and ready to meet challenges of university life or the job market.

Dear students, while brand name universities and multinational corporations are enticing in their own ways, one mustn’t forget that your own choice of a special subject or type of work is equally significant in terms of one’s experience and personal development. Hence, whatever direction you have decided on, you should follow your own belief, interests, and inclination towards a better future.

For those who are about to join the workforce, I hope you always bear in mind that in this day and age, things do move on very quickly and new knowledge becomes available at a speed unprecedented. Therefore, whilst working hard to meet current goals, you should at the same time be always ready to learn and improve, and never fall behind the world.

Reading my message until this point, you might perhaps have a feeling that there is nothing new in what I have said so far. Well, for sayings that tend to be repeated again and again in the history of mankind, there must be some truth in them.

Dear students, summer holiday has already started. I sincerely hope that you will make good use of this holiday to relax well, do things that you didn’t have time or opportunity to do during semester time, and truly enjoy the life of a student.

Professor T M Wong

(Former College Principal)