Student Alienation in Higher Education Under Neoliberalism and Global Capitalism: A Case of Community College Students’ Instrumentalism in Hong Kong

Introduction

This paper argues that student alienation—students’ alienated experiences of learning—in higher education should be understood against a much wider social-historical context of neoliberalism and global capitalism, and offers an empirical analysis of the experiences of community college students in Hong Kong. The idea of community college was borrowed from the United States in the Year 2000 to make its future labor force more competitive against the global context in meeting the needs of economic reconstruction or a proclaimed emerging knowledge economy in a new century. The first Hong Kong Chief Executive proposed a series of education reforms at the end of the last century. The community college policy was one major move in higher education. The community college policy was meant to inject diversity, if not vibrancy, into the post-secondary sector of education. Through this policy, the Hong Kong government sought to provide a greater proportion of the relevant age with a liberal-arts education by offering a rather distinctive sub-degree vis-a-vis the existing vocational-oriented higher diploma: an associate degree. Community colleges in the United States are inexpensive, open to all, and multi-functional (Cohen & Brawer, 2003); by contrast, their Hong Kong counterparts charge very high tuition fees, set entrance requirements, and are mainly taken up because of the transfer function of an associate degree (Wong, 2015b).

In what follows, the relevance of the context of neoliberalism and global capitalism to understanding student alienation in higher education will be firstly underscored. An illustration is based on an ethnographic study of community college students in Hong Kong. An overview of the development of higher education in Hong Kong since the education reform launched in 2000 and a discussion of the study’s research design will be provided. Finally, the experiences of community college students will be analyzed within this context, with reference to the concept of student alienation.

Neoliberalism, Global Capitalism, and Student Alienation

Neoliberalism has various definitions. In this study, the term refers to market-oriented policies; public services are regarded as commodities whose provisions are regulated by market principles advocated in any capitalist society. Given the fluidity of capital, the operation of capitalism is not confined within any national borders but across the globe. In view of individualism and competition embedded in neoliberalism, higher education is treated in many capitalist societies not as a public good but as a commodity for individual students’ private consumption or for their career investment so that they will be advantaged for future competition in the—local or even global—labor market (Mello & Nunez, 2011; Scott, 1995). Within the context of neoliberalism and global capitalism, student alienation is about students’ instrumentalism toward a higher qualification (i.e., its value of leading them to a well-paid advantaged job) in that such a concern is so overwhelming that students ignore the intrinsic values of higher education (e.g., knowledge acquisition and personal development) and become alienated from their learning (Zelizer, 2011).

There is no lack of discussion on the impact of neoliberalism and global capitalism on scholarship and credential inflation (Bérubé & Nelson, 1995; Giroux, 2014). Nevertheless, its potential impact on learning in higher education and thus student alienation is under-explored. Alienation is a sociological concept first coined by Marx to make sense of the labor process facing factory workers or workers on assembly lines in general in a modern era. In view of mass production, conceptualization and execution of work are separated, resulting in alienation where workers are alienated from their product as well as the process of production, alienated from themselves (as a species being), and alienated from their community (Elster, 1986; Lukes, 1967). Student alienation as a concept extended from the broader concept of alienation was initially applied to understand the disengagement and disaffection of students at school and their eventual dropping out of school (Hascher & Hadjar, 2018; Heath, 1970; Hufton et al., 2002).

I argue that student alienation remains an issue in higher education. Given the emphasis on competition and individualism within the context of neoliberalism and global capitalism, I postulate that what students are concerned about is not the content that they learn at university, or in a tertiary institution more generally, but the qualification awarded by the institution that will lead them to a well-paid job (Mello & Nunez, 2011). This is particularly the case in the de-industrial context of many so-called developed capitalist societies where the availability of high-paid high-skilled jobs—existing or newly created—that require a high qualification is in steady decline. In a global capitalist context, capitalists move nearly all low-paid low-skilled jobs to so-called developing societies where manual labor is much cheaper (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Krinsky, 2008). A bachelor’s or higher degree becomes a must for university students to compete for a limited—if not decreasing—number of high-paid, high-skilled jobs in developed capitalist societies; in getting such a degree, students do not care much about whether the curriculum of their degree studies is of relevance to their prospective jobs or whether they learn anything out of their degree studies (Arum & Roksa, 2010; Mann, 2000).

An instrumental concern about qualification over learning is arguably manifested in three distinguished approaches to student learning. A surface approach is characterized by a focus on rote learning, a lack of reflection, and a preoccupation with task completion (Marton & Saljo, 1976). A strategic approach emphasizes meeting assessment requirements and lecturers’ expectations and carefully managing time and effort (Marton et al., 1984). A deep approach to learning is characterized by an engagement of students’ own being and desires in relation to the subject of study (Kirkpatrick & Mulligan, 2002). Given their overwhelming instrumental concern about getting a qualification, it is unsurprising that many university students adopt a surface or strategic approach rather than a deep approach to learning (Mann, 2000). The former two approaches could be seen as alienation from the subject and process of study (Mann, 2001).

I argue that student alienation is not confined only to student learning (cf. meaningless and powerless); other aspects of student alienation in higher education—alienation from their selves (cf. self-estrangement) and from others (cf. isolation)—are also relevant to understanding students’ instrumentalism under neoliberalism and global capitalism (Tsang, 2018). This is rather different from an alienating feeling resulting from adaptation problems in the first year of university studies (Clydesdale, 2007; Thomas & Quinn, 2007). The nurturance of citizens and the educated workforce are two major goals of higher education: With a liberal-arts education, students are expected to become critical citizens required by any democracy, and team players required by prospective employers in the global capitalist labor market (Couldry, 2011; Wagner-Pacifici, 2011). We could certainly debate whether the qualities cultivated are the same, or at least compatible, for turning students into critical citizens for a democracy and team players for a capitalist society, but it is not difficult to imagine that the two intended goals, given the prevailing values of individualism and competition in capitalist societies, might lead to distorted consequences because of students’ instrumental concern (Mitchell, 2003). Students’ instrumentalism in higher education is empirically under-explored; this paper seeks to fill this gap and explore how far such instrumentalism could be conceptualized as student alienation. The need for contextualizing student alienation brings us to the social and research context of an ethnographic study reported in this paper.

The Community College Policy Launched in Ever More Competitive Hong Kong

In line with what is promoted in neoliberalism, most people in Hong Kong buy into an achievement ideology: Hong Kong is believed to be a land of opportunity for any talented and hardworking individuals to get ahead (Wong, 2011b). Hong Kong has been undergoing de-industrialization since the 1980s. In tandem with the relocation of its manufacturing sector to the People’s Republic of China and other developing south-east Asian countries, there is a continuous expansion of its service sector that now takes up more than 85% of the working population (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2016). Without many natural resources and the rising cost of land, there is not much job variety in Hong Kong; at present, its labor market is polarized, whereby there are a limited number of high-paid high-skilled jobs and a large quantity of low-paid low-skilled jobs. Blocked social mobility has arguably become an issue for the new generations (Wong & Koo, 2016). Consequently, students are encouraged by the government to become competitive for the future labor market—locally or globally—through acquiring higher qualifications.

Over the last few decades, the Hong Kong education system has been on its way to becoming a mass system of higher education (Mok, 2012). There were only two universities in 1967 when less than 5% of relevant-age students could get into university. There are now 22 degree-awarding tertiary institutions, 8 of them funded by the University Grants Committee (UGC), providing university education for a fixed quota annually of 15,000 students (about 20%–25% of relevant-age students), making a bachelor’s degree more accessible. This expansion, however, is accompanied by an emergence of a new and complicated educational hierarchy—where a bachelor’s degree is ranked by its offering university and by its subject and/or program (Brown et al., 2010)—and also accompanied by credential inflation whereby the average monthly income for fresh graduates has remained frozen at around HK$10,000 (US$1 = HK$7.8) since 2000, when the reported median monthly income was frozen at around HK$10,000, although it gradually increased to HK$15,000 in 2015 (Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department, 2006, 2016). This is perhaps why the general atmosphere in Hong Kong for fresh university graduates is vaguely demoralizing. Even if they succeed in obtaining a bachelor’s degree, most do not see the prospects of fending for themselves, let alone having a career or raising a family.

Students in Hong Kong perceive education instrumentally (Cheung & Rudowicz, 2003). Amidst the polarized labor market of Hong Kong, most students believe that a higher qualification does not necessarily guarantee a high-paid job, but without such qualification one is doomed to get a low-paid job; whether this is the case should be examined further. In Hong Kong, community colleges are self-financing institutions whose ultimate concern is their survival (i.e., student enrollments). In order to attract students to ensure their survival, many community colleges underscored in their promotional pamphlets the transfer function of an associate degree as their selling point, although initially there was neither articulation between community colleges and universities nor corresponding measure taken by the government in reserving places in UGC-funded universities for transfers. Before the launch of the community college policy, getting into a UGC-funded university was done through the public examination(s). Because of the transfer function of an associate degree, the community college policy seemed to offer an alternative route to a UGC-funded university. This alternative is, however, believed to be seen as second rate because it is essentially taken up by students who fail to get straight into a UGC-funded university and want to seek a second chance (Ng & Cheng, 2001). Given the annual set quota, more than 70% of relevant-age students are doomed to fail to get into a UGC-funded university. These students have become targets for post-secondary institutions, including community colleges, ever since the launch of the community college policy.

Clark (1960) argues that community college serves a cooling out function in the United States, where students are essentially discouraged from pursuing a bachelor’s degree through a transfer but are encouraged to take an associate degree as a terminal degree. However, the transfer rate has been one major concern in understanding the roles of community colleges (DiRamio, 2017; Wickersham, 2020). In view of students’ instrumentalism toward education in Hong Kong, it is unsurprising that the option of community college in Hong Kong is essentially taken up by students who desire to get transferred to a bachelor’s degree rather than to take an associate degree as a terminal degree (Ng & Cheng, 2001). These students would have left the education system in the existing quota system. But their strong desire for a bachelor’s degree could arguably be reflected in a boom of community colleges since the launch of the community college policy (Wong, 2015b).

The transfer rate was extremely low at the beginning, unofficially estimated as low as 3% in 2007 (Ming Pao, 2007). The transfer rate gradually increased over the years because the number of places at UGC-funded universities reserved for transfers has increased. In 2014 the government announced that the target number of places in UGC-funded universities reserved for associate-degree holders would be set eventually at 5,000 annually (Hong Kong Policy Address, 2014). The transfer rate has also risen because an increasing number of non-UGC-funded degree programs have become available. What remains unknown is the impact of students’ instrumentalism toward education on college life.

In competing for students who seek a second chance, community colleges are believed to attempt to distinguish themselves from secondary schools with regard to curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment through their offer of subjects not available at school (especially liberal-arts subjects), their objection to drilling for the public examination(s) commonly adopted at school, and their adoption of continuous assessment rather than having students sit one standardized high-stakes public examination; how widespread is such attempt practised could be examined further. Given the liberal-arts orientation of community colleges and their emphasis on students’ learning (as opposed to scoring), it was believed that community college students would have a totally different learning experience from their schooling experiences, although this is an empirical question to be examined further. But, as mentioned at the outset, within a neoliberal and/or global capitalist context where the values of competition and individualism are strongly advocated, the intended consequences of such well-meaning arrangements might well be distorted. It is, then, necessary to find out if community colleges in Hong Kong live up to their promise in reality.

An Ethnographic Study of Community College Students in Contemporary Hong Kong

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study of students in a community college to illustrate student alienation in Hong Kong. This study was initially started as an exploratory study when I taught in a community college in 2005 to 2006. Because of my research interest as a sociologist in social/educational inequality, and because of my physical proximity, given that no scholarly attention had been directed to the experiences of community college students, I began an exploratory study of community college in that academic year. I continued this study and recruited more students for it in 2008 to 2009; in total, there were 85 participants (32 males and 53 females; 60 students of mine and 25 graduates referred to me by colleagues), aged between 18 and 24 (when interviewed). Out of ethical concern whereby I did not want to make participants feel under pressure to join this study, my students were recruited after our professional relationships ended, and the graduates were referred to me after their graduation. Their stories on life in the community college, as well as other aspects, such as their educational expectations and future plans and their support from parents, were collected through individual in-depth interviews in 2006 and 2009. Thirty-nine respondents were successfully contacted again in 2010 to 2011 for a second interview; the focus of this follow up (also included in the interviews with the 25 graduates) was on whether the respondents got transferred and to where, how they fared after graduation, and how they evaluated their experiences of studying in the community college. This added a longitudinal perspective to the exploratory study.

One may wonder if the experiences of community college students from this study (particularly their instrumentalism toward community college) were still valid because it was conducted more than a decade ago. This ethnographic study ended in 2011. From 2012 onwards, the education system changed from a model of 5-2-3 (5-year secondary education and 2-year matriculation and 3-year university education) to a model of 3-3-4 (3-year junior secondary education and 3-year senior secondary education and 4-year university education). In order to get into university, students previously had to sit two public examinations but since 2012 are required to take only one public examination at the end of their secondary education. Despite the fixed annual quota of 15,000 students getting a place in UGC-funded universities, an increasing number of private universities make a bachelor’s degree more accessible. Nevertheless, many students who fail to get straight into a UGC-funded university do not opt for a bachelor’s degree in a private university but still opt to study for an associate degree in order to seek a transfer. Their preference of seeking a second chance through a transfer to being admitted into a private university may be related to the perceived ranking or status of private universities, which could be explored further empirically. Put simply, many students still opt for a community college to seek a second chance when their first attempts fail. They do it probably because they consider that community college students now enjoy a higher chance of getting transferred when the number of places in UGC-funded universities reserved for transfer students and the number of non-UGC-funded degree programs (including those offered at UGC-funded universities) have been on the rise.

Whether these changes would lead to any differences between community college students a decade ago and their contemporary counterparts are open to empirical scrutiny. However, it is generally observed that community college students still take it instrumentally to study for an associate degree for its transfer function rather than for its liberal-arts orientation as a terminal sub-degree. At least, this is a comment on community college students in academic meetings by teaching staff from which I get while serving as an external examiner (since 2016) for the domain of social sciences for this particular community college. Besides, this instrumental orientation to community college and the learning experiences of my respondents (from this particular community college) are also strikingly similar to those of transfer students (who are from different community colleges getting transferred to the same university) from an ongoing qualitative study of mine started in 2017, suggesting that such instrumental orientation to community college is perhaps true of community college students in general. It is beyond the scope of this paper to compare findings of this ethnographic study and the ongoing study of mine; but, my point is that the data collected a decade ago remains valid and telling regarding the instrumentalism toward learning of community college students. For the present purposes, I shall base the following analysis on the detailed descriptions by all the 85 respondents of this study in the first interviews and 39 of them in the second interviews on their learning experiences, and on my participation and observations as a teacher there and personal exchanges with some former community college colleagues.

This qualitative study is essentially constituted of individual interviews with students of a particular community college, generating material from their own perspectives. All students recruited for the interviews signed a letter of agreement. They agreed that their interviews would be taped and were promised anonymity; and, they understood that the interview material would be kept strictly confidential and used for academic and teaching purposes only. All its individual in-depth interviews ranged from 45 minutes to 3 hours and were taped and then transcribed and translated to English from Cantonese, the major local dialect in Hong Kong. Each interview was guided by a semi-structured interview schedule; following the flow of conversation with each respondent, I probed further wherever necessary and/or appropriate. Probably because of their trust in me as their former teacher or a teacher of that community college, respondents all generously shared with me their experiences and their views on a number of issues, including some student secrets.

The experiences of respondents were in line with my observations in classes as well as outside of class and my discussions with colleagues about our students while I was teaching there (in 2005–2006 and 2008–2009). Indeed, this qualitative study was also integrated with my perspective as an insider derived from my personal experiences with students and lecturers in this community college and observations of them; arguably, this exploratory study conducted in its natural context where I observed the respondents and interacted with them could be regarded as an ethnographic study. This insider perspective enables me to make sense of the interview material collected from respondents and to capture well the respondents’ authentic presentations of their educational experiences. If what is valued in respondents’ accounts of their own experiences is validity and authenticity, then my insider perspective could be seen as a confirmation or triangulation of their accounts, making my analysis of their experiences at community college more credible and trustworthy. Moreover, this insider perspective also provides this study with additional material in the form of observations—of all kinds—and an additional analytical angle. Given the issues addressed in this paper, I sought to include my first-hand teaching experiences and observations—in addition to the interview material—to substantiate my claims and arguments and use this ethnographic approach to analyze the material at hand. Such management of a study of students in a particular community college is aligned with the design of ethnography:

Ethnography is about telling a credible, rigorous, and authentic story. Ethnography gives voice to people in their own local context, typically relying on verbatim quotations and a “thick” description of events. The story is told through the eyes of local people as they pursue their daily lives in their own communities. The ethnographer adopts a cultural lens to interpret observed behavior, ensuring that the behaviors are placed in a culturally relevant and meaningful context. . . Ethnography is thus both a research method and a product, typically a written text. (Fetterman, 2010, p. 1)

In this study, I started with an exploration of community college students’ educational experiences. With several general domains (e.g., educational aspirations, learning experiences, parental assistance, self-evaluations, and views on education and equality) in mind, the coding of this study has been manually done with reference to such general concepts as “capital” and “aspiration.” On one hand, I sought to do the coding inductively, generating common themes from my analyses of the collected material (Denzin & Lincoln, 2013). And, on the other hand, I also returned to the relevant literature in order to find appropriate/relevant concepts to analyze such material and thus to do the coding deductively. As an example, I got from the interview material that respondents expressed a sense of inferiority, which was consistent with my observation of students in classes and my interaction with them outside of class, while highlighting relevant interview material on this theme on the transcripts. I then returned to the literature on psychological theories on self-evaluation and self-explanation as well as on sociological theories on social legitimation. Then, I referred to the concept of “legitimacy” with reference to the ideas of self-explanation and self-evaluation to do the coding again. This process—from data to concepts and then from concepts to data—goes on for several rounds and for a number of themes; indeed, a number of concepts have been taken advantage of to address a variety of theoretical issues derived from this project (Wong, 2010, 2015a, 2020b).

Similarly, the theme of instrumentalism was generated from the interview material, which was in line with my observations as a teacher in this community college. With the theme of instrumentalism in mind, I went back to the literature on the concepts of “alienation” and “learning” and subsequently to the related literature on “student alienation” and “learning strategies.” Then, I did the coding again with reference to these concepts, and sub-themes were further identified. My experience of doing this study is that literature review and coding and data analysis are not separate stages of the research process. They could go together. The major theme addressed here is student alienation; different aspects of student alienation—alienation from themselves, their studies, their classmates, and their teachers—as sub-themes are referred to in my further coding. The following analysis of this ethnographic study of a community college—substantiated with selected quotations of its respondents in fictitious names—is framed by the concept of student alienation and is thus presented thematically rather than chronologically.

Another Competition After All: Alienated Labor in Community College

In promoting itself to prospective students, this community college, as an extension arm of a top-ranking UGC-funded university, stresses its link to the university and thus its promising prospects for transfer, not merely to the university but also other UGC-funded universities and universities abroad. The community college prides itself on its liberal-arts orientation (thus an all-around education for nurturing citizens) and the use of English as the medium of instruction (thus a better preparation for university education). Besides, the community college portrays itself (in its promotional pamphlets and prospectuses) as an institution attaching great importance to learning and turning students into cooperative team players, and insists on the use of student-centered interactive teaching, group work assignments, and continuous assessment (including peer assessment in some cases; throughout the entire semester in most courses students are usually required to do an individual essay, a group project, and a final examination). All these characteristics of this community college are commonly found in other community colleges.

Recognizing the instrumental role of education for social mobility, respondents believed that a bachelor’s degree is necessary, but not sufficient for securing a decently paid job in ever more competitive Hong Kong. In deciding to seek a second chance, they ruled out the option of repeating a grade in a secondary school and then re-taking the public examination(s), as also reported elsewhere (Wong, 2011a); many bought the above-mentioned selling points promoted by the community college and believed that they would enjoy an inquisitive process of learning at community college, as Alice expressed.

The learning mode of community college would be very different from secondary schools. . . No more stuffing with loads of facts. . . I felt that I finally found a mode of learning that suited me. (Alice)

Soon after the beginning of their first-year studies, respondents realized that this new route to university was just another competition. Only three respondents underscored that they valued their learning experiences at community college and appreciated the intrinsic values of a liberal-arts education. But, nearly all respondents took an instrumental attitude toward their studies and adopted a surface or strategic approach to learning within the competitive environment of community college; and, some respondents were strategic or even manipulative in dealing with their classmates and/or teachers.

Conclusion

Under neoliberalism, competition in capitalist societies promises winners an escape from poverty and even upward mobility (Brighouse et al., 2018). Nearly all respondents of this community college believe that a bachelor’s degree is an entrance ticket to a decently paid job in ever more competitive Hong Kong, and that each of them has to compete for such a qualification in order not to become disadvantaged in the capitalist labor market, local or global. To this end, respondents who may have ended their educational pursuit before the launch of the community college policy sought a second chance of getting such a qualification through the transfer function of an associate degree in a community college. This pursuit is not simply a matter of warming up, as opposed to cooling out (Clark, 1960), but it could arguably be seen as accentuating students’ instrumentalism toward education. The literature suggests that such instrumentalism should lead to alienated experiences of learning, particularly manifesting in students’ approach to learning (Mann, 2001). The illustration above showed that student alienation was manifested not only in students’ adoption of a surface/strategic approach to learning, but also in an instrumental orientation to their selves and distorted relationships with their classmates or teachers.

Despite all the idealistic reasons initially stated for choosing to study for an associate degree at community college, given their overwhelming concern about transfer, most respondents prioritized scoring over learning in order to make a transfer a possibility within an intensely competitive environment; consequently, many respondents opted for, and indeed some were finally transferred to the so-called refuge programs rather than programs of their interest (Wong, 2017, 2020a). The immediate concern about scoring and the ultimate concern about transfer alienated many respondents from their selves or their studies. They did not take an associate degree for the sake of knowledge or interest, neither did they take it for developing their potential (Zelizer, 2011); rather, they simply took it as a stepping stone to a bachelor’s degree, which would supposedly enable them to guard against a poorly-paid job in Hong Kong (Mok, 2012). Throughout the course of achieving this goal, some respondents and many of their classmates even turned themselves into multiple-face strategic individuals being alienated from their classmates or teachers. They did not trust their classmates, let alone developing a friendship with them; and wherever necessary, some would attack their stronger peers (through peer assessment or lending them notes with inaccurate information in an extreme case) or take advantage of them (through capitalizing on their strengths in doing group works), marginalize their weaker peers (through avoiding them for group works), or manipulate their teachers (through getting their teachers to do an essay or a presentation for them or to write them a good reference) (Wagner-Pacifici, 2011). Given the polarized labor market of Hong Kong and the increasing severity of its social competition, especially through inflated credentials, many respondents were resigned that the qualities of calculating, instrumental, distrusting, callous, manipulative, and above all ruthlessly selfish were necessary for securing their survival—if not their success—at community college specifically and made sense in the working world in a cruel dog-eat-dog capitalist society generally (cf. Giroux, 2007).

If student alienation in higher education is considered as worrying because most students are taking a surface or strategic approach to learning (implying that they are not learning what is conveyed in a liberal-arts education that is supposed to turn them into the educated workforce or critical citizens), then it seems even more worrying that student alienation is manifested in an instrumental orientation to their selves and others because students are observed to accept that the acquisition of the above-mentioned qualities is required for the future working world. It is perhaps debatable whether these qualities are required for the competitive workforce for the sake of the operation of a capitalist society, but this observation is arguably of relevance to the development of any democracy because these qualities do not necessarily make caring or critical citizens (Couldry, 2011).

One may doubt how widespread it is that community college students are alienated when such observations are generated from a small-scale ethnographic study; large-scale surveys based on randomly selected representative samples are called for. One may even view that the alienated experiences of respondents are transitional or specific to the extremely competitive setup of community college in Hong Kong. One may expect that students would get back to normal, so to speak, after leaving community college, especially after getting transferred to a university, or that community college students in other societies are not so alienated. This view is consistent with Mann’s (2001) hopeful analysis, suggesting that student alienation could be eliminated when some learning conditions that promote or accentuate student alienation are changed. However, under neoliberalism against a global capitalist context, when a bachelor’s degree becomes necessary but not sufficient for promoting social mobility or even securing a decent living in developed societies, students’ instrumentalism observed in a community college could also be true in a university; indeed, university students’ adoption of surface/strategic approach to learning has already been reported (Mann, 2000, 2001), as mentioned at the outset, and competition at university is expected to become more and more severe. Against the wider context of neoliberalism and global capitalism where the values of individualism and competition are more and more strongly promoted, it is doubtful if student alienation—students’ instrumentalism toward their selves and their studies and their classmates and teachers—is only specific to this particular community college or community colleges in Hong Kong (Bérubé & Nelson, 1995). More empirical effort is required to see if the observations reported here are also true of universities in Hong Kong as well as community colleges or universities in the West. This, then, opens up new lines of inquiry in higher education as to the impact of students’ instrumentalism at college/university, if it is found to be alienated, on the development of capitalism and democracy.

This study of students from a particular community college demonstrated that a well-meaning educational policy could still become distorted in a neoliberal capitalist society where the ethos of individualism and competition is strongly promoted. Such ethos arguably also leads academics at university to become instrumental about—if not alienated from—their work, especially teaching, in that given the motto of “publish or perish,” they prioritize research over teaching to the extent that teaching or work related to student affairs is side-lined, if not ignored completely (Giroux, 2014). It is somehow argued that such quality of teaching plays a part in university students’ alienated learning (Mann, 2001), but whether and how far academics’ existing practices could be regarded as alienation from research and teaching against the neoliberal context should be examined and discussed further. Sociologically speaking, any individual’s instrumental practices would remain unchanged if the wider context promoting individualism and competition and thus structural conditions conducive to such instrumental practices were the same. Whether the structural conditions should remain is a collective decision; it seems rather fruitless to make recommendations to any single individual or institution without paying attention to the structural context against which individuals and institutions are situated. Consequently, it is perhaps possible to recommend lecturers at community college or professors at university that they should pay attention to the design of individual and/or group assignments, or to recommend the institution of community college or university that they should adopt a specific grading policy or policy of course selection, so that students would be encouraged to appreciate the intrinsic values of learning, to adopt a deep learning approach, and to cooperate with their classmates. But, it is conceivable that such specific recommendations that are intended to make their students less instrumental about their studies and/or toward their selves and others would still be misused if the structural conditions conducive to their instrumental practices under the wider neoliberal context remain the same. Perhaps, what the findings reported in this paper could contribute is to urge us to rethink the ethos of competition and individualism promoted under neoliberalism at university; such a change could be possible if it is collectively agreed. Unless there is a collective response from the academia to the ethos promoted in neoliberalism, most students and academics would unavoidably remain instrumental about, if not alienated from, their learning and teaching, respectively.