Career Counseling in Hong Kong: Meeting the Social Challenges

The article describes and examines the recent development of career development and counseling in Hong Kong in 3 major settings: school, university, and community. Convergence and divergence in career counseling between Hong Kong and the United States are discussed, in reference to a number of areas, including the freedom to choose and compromise, collectivism and individualism, school-to-work transition, use of tests, and types of career intervention. Areas of collaboration between the 2 regions are identified and discussed. In the latter part of the twentieth century, counseling as an academic and applied discipline has enjoyed a period of growth and development in many countries in Asia (e.g., Leung, 1999b; Leung, Guo, & Lam, 2000). Hong Kong is a case in point. Hong Kong had been a British colony for most of the twentieth century until it was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. The development of social services and education in Hong Kong had been relatively slow until after the social riots in 1967 (Leung, 1999c). These social riots were triggered by the Cultural Revolution in China during the 1960s, and the colonial government realized that maintaining social stability and cohesion was vital to the development of Hong Kong. Since then, more efforts and resources were directed toward upgrading social services and education, including career guidance and counseling. In this article, I describe and analyze the development of career counseling in Hong Kong in three settings: school, university, and community. A second objective of this article is to discuss similarities and differences in the practice of career counseling in the United States and Hong Kong. Finally, I also offer some suggestions on how researchers and practitioners in both regions could collaborate to advance the development of career counseling. To accomplish these objectives, I review relevant career development and counseling literature in Hong Kong, which at this point is still limited both in terms of quality and quantity. Career Counseling in Hong Kong: A Descriptive Overview Educational System and Career Interventions Understanding the status of career counseling in Hong Kong requires some background knowledge about the educational system. In Hong Kong, elementary school, high school, and colleges are called primary school, secondary school, and university, respectively. To be consistent, I use terms used in Hong Kong as I refer to different levels of the schooling system. The Hong Kong educational system was modeled after the British system. Students in Hong Kong have to take many school and public examinations before they can secure a place at a university. The layers of schooling resemble that of a pyramid structure. After 9 years of compulsory education (6 years of primary school and 3 years of junior secondary school), about 80% of students continue into senior secondary schools (2 years). At the end of 2 years, students have to sit for a public examination. The results from this public examination are used to select students for the 2-year preuniversity course, and only about 20% of senior secondary school students further their education in a preuniversity course (Zhang, 1998). Only half of the preuniversity students successfully gain university admission (Zhang, 1998), with the remaining students either choosing to attempt the entrance examination again, going abroad to study, or seeking entrance into vocational oriented diploma programs. The Hong Kong educational system practices tracking and streaming (Leung, 1999d). Many primary schools group students into classes based on abilities (i.e., test scores). Primary school students are assigned to junior secondary schools through a centralized allocation system based mostly on test scores. Secondary schools are divided into five categories based on student abilities. Schools with a high concentration of students with low learning abilities often have to deal with an array of problems, including students' lack of motivation to learn, student discipline problems, and the effects of labeling (Leung, 1999d). …