Lingnan University’s Taught Postgraduate Programme, the Master of Social Sciences in Comparative Social Policy (International), or IMCSP, focuses on five key areas: social security, employment, health, education and housing. The programme aims to equip students with the tools they’ll need to have a positive impact on society, and the type of topics they will tackle during their studies range from possible solutions to Hong Kong’s shortage of long-term care places for the elderly, the alleviation of income poverty among families with children, to practical measures for combating climate change.
The comparison of social policies in Hong Kong and other societies, and an understanding of the differing contexts these policies operate within, are central to the programme. Programme Director Professor Stefan Kühner says that without these insights, simplistic calls for Hong Kong housing policies to become more Singaporean, or Hong Kong family policies to be become more Scandinavian, for example, are doomed to failure.
The programme is an ideal building block for career advancement in a wide variety of public and private sector fields and a pathway to further academic opportunities.
Having been successfully admitted to the IMCSP programme, Lau Lit Kwan Alit has been accepted onto the University of Oxford’s MSc course of study in Sustainable Urban Development and awarded a Kellogg College Scholarship. This scholarship is highly competitive as only one student is selected worldwide, and it funds the total course fees and provides Mr Lau with an additional study support grant. Those eligible for consideration are graduate students demonstrating exceptional academic excellence, professional experience, motivation, and potential future contributions to urban and housing studies.
Mr Lau, who will begin his studies at Oxford in October 2021, enrolled on Lingnan’s IMCSP programme via Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee TPG Fellowship Scheme and university scholarship scheme. He was the top student of the year in the IMCSP programme and graduated with a Certificate of Distinction, awarded by the IMCSP programme for exceptional academic achievements. Before pursuing the master programme in LU, he acquired housing studies and political economy undergraduate qualifications from City University of Hong Kong with first-class honours and the University of Oxford. He says comparative social policy postgraduate studies require unique, high-quality graduate-level research training, so one can see the University of Oxford would also offer a programme of this kind. He adds that only universities committed to delivering high-quality teaching would do so by his observation. The IMCSP programme provides students with a prestigious learning experience and one that concentrates primarily on ways to successfully facilitate an environment in which students’ different perspectives are valued and that allows students to connect concepts from books to real-life situations. Research methods, the use of data analytics, and tools to disseminate research findings via effective social media strategies are all covered.
With his classmates coming from various backgrounds and being willing to share their unique, and very practical perspectives, on the topics being discussed, Mr Lau says it wasn’t only Lingnan’s faculty that he was able to learn from. He always recalls when some insightful and meaningful perspectives were shared during evening classes and international academic conferences. “The people I met in LU know, better than I, how to turn social aims into practice. “ he added.
And, despite the problems the COVID-19 pandemic has created for educational institutions, he praised the steps Lingnan has taken to ensure the learning experience on the IMCSP course has only been further strengthened. “The frequent interactions between both learners and learners, (and) learners and teachers, adds value to the classroom culture,” he noted. “The most precious perspective is not just coming from books.”
Mr Lau said his experience on the programme had made him more open-minded when thinking about policy implementation.
Taking this interview opportunity, he emphasized that he must express his heartfelt thanks to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government and LU for providing the fellowship and scholarship for his continuous learning in IMCSP. He would also like to give credits to the housing manager grade of the Housing Department for their subtle but exceptional commitment in improving the execution of housing policies, who assisted him in completing his research dissertation.