Freedom to Excel: Performativity, Accountability, and Educational Sovereignty in Hong Kong’s Academic Capitalism

Abstract

This chapter examines key issues surrounding changes in the academic profession of Hong Kong, including academic excellence, accountability, and educational sovereignty against the backdrop of academic capitalism. Analyses and discussion are based on in-depth interviews with academic professionals and postgraduate students in a leading university in this Asian entrepreneurial city which has inherited a predominantly Western academic culture. Review of newspaper reports is supplemented for analyzing the latest trends of the Hong Kong’s rapidly changing academic profession. Special focus is put on the way academic freedom is understood, expected, and practiced when pressure for performance dominates the everyday tasks of academic life which is increasingly commercialized. It takes universities in Hong Kong as a case study and argues that academic freedom is under siege by performativity as a means to a political end, escalating intrusions from diversified stakeholders, and “mainlandization.”