U.S. and Non-U.S. Scholars

Fulbright New Century Scholars Program
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Post, David

• Professor
  
• The Pennsylvania State University
  
• Department of Education, Center for the Study of Higher Education
  
• United States

David Post has been active in the field of Comparative Education for many years, and he currently edits the Comparative Education Review, in addition to teaching sociology of higher education at Penn State.  Apart from his research on higher education in Hong Kong, he also studies the relation between child labor and education policies, especially in Latin America.  He authored a monograph on this topic, and he is currently investigating the varied associations between after-school employment and academic achievement worldwide.

Select Publications

• “Family Resources, Gender, and Immigration: Changing Sources of Hong Kong Educational Inequality, 1971–2001,” Social Science Quarterly 85(2004)1238-1258
• “Hong Kong Higher Education, 1981–2001: Public Policy and Re-emergent Social Stratification,” Oxford Review of Education 29(2003):545-570.
• “Post-Secondary Education in Hong Kong: Repercussions for Inequality and Civil Society,” Asian Survey 43(2003):989-1011.
• “Child Labor as a Human Rights Issue: The Potential for Progressive Change in Theory and Practice.” In Burns Weston, ed. on Human Rights and Child Labor (Boulder: Lynn Reiner, 2005).
• “Student Movements, User Fees, and Access to Mexican Higher Education: Trends in the Effect of Social Background and Family Income, 1984–1996”  Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 16(2000):141-163.

Student Access, Civil Society and the Transformation of Higher Education in
Hong Kong

Since the 1980s, part of my research has concerned the impact of higher education policy on equality of opportunity. I have written about this impact in the United States, in Latin America, and – in greatest detail – in Hong Kong following 1971.  I have explored the ways that social reproduction in education may, at least in certain cases, be surmounted by education policy. Much of my previous work in Hong Kong was necessarily technical, and involved “flattening” and then analyzing household-level census data from 1971 – 2001.

Many commentators have acknowledged the impact of Hong Kong’s reform on university administration and finance.  Far fewer have noted the implications of the reform for social cohesion, political pluralism, perceptions of equity, and for popular acceptance of the government as gatekeeper to occupational status.  In the wake of Hong Kong’s decision to create 2-year programs that would be self-supporting while offering opportunities for greater numbers of families, new political actors have engaged in debate over the future of higher education.  The dynamics unleashed in this process will have repercussions for many years to come. Although manpower planning considerations prompted the original plan for expansion, the transformation of the system (from an elite to a mass orientation), has consequences beyond increasing HK’s stock of human capital. The research will include the study of the following questions: How has civil society been affected through a debate involving an enlarged circle of stakeholders with diverging interests and constituencies?  In other countries, how do debates over higher education access and opportunity affect the politics of governance?  And what is the trade-offs between quality and equity or between govern ability and democracy, as the public demands a greater share of the resources formerly available to elite institutions? 

The research will conclude whether or not Hong Kong’s civil society will be enriched through the pluralism that is unleashed by reform and in response to demands for a greater equality of educational opportunity. It will consist of interviews with representatives of several key organizations and offices that will focus on the provision and finance of Associate Degrees. I will incorporate the underlying issues developed in my previous research.