Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Kevin Yeung, at a media session after officiating at the launch ceremony of the Citi-HKCSS Community Intern Program today (June 26):
Reporter: Mr Yeung, the privately run tertiary institutions have got a sharp increase, but the number of students is going downwards. How does the Government cope with this situation and will the Government consider cancelling some institutions' licences if the privately run institutions are not up to standard?
Secretary for Education: I think that it involves two issues here. The first one is that we already know the number of students or DSE (Diploma of Secondary Education) graduates will be decreasing in the coming years. All self-financing institutions already know this fact, and we are expecting that there will be some sort of consolidation anyway in the coming years.
But the question posed by the Task Force (on Review of Self-financing Post-secondary Education) is whether we should have a requirement on the quality of the institutions after registration, whether they have achieved what they have already planned. So that is another issue. From that angle, it is more about the quality issue rather than an issue about the number of candidates.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
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