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In one report, unambiguously titled ‘Overseas Degree May Open the Door to Top Jobs’, a personnel consultant at a local employment agency was quoted as saying, ‘It is true that many employers prefer overseas graduates to locals, especially for jobs that deal with people, like marketing, insurance, human resources, or public relations’ (Lee, 2001, n.p.). In another report, a consultant with HR Business Solutions Asia made the same emphatic point that ‘multinational corporations’ have an overt preference for the ‘overseas educated’ to the detriment of locals (Fenton, 2003, n.p.). International law firms are reportedly ‘throwing out up to 75% of resumes from Hong Kong-trained graduates […] and are increasingly looking overseas to fill the posts’ (Moir, 2000, n.p.) whereas Hong Kong graduates with overseas exchange experience can expect to earn around HK$13,000 more than those without it (Yeung, 2003).2 The problems faced by local business school graduates described by Hui (2003) are, it would seem, commonplace in Hong Kong. Steve DeKrey, MBA programme director at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), reportedly said that it was ‘the business school’s “biggest headache” to convince multinationals to assess their graduates on the same footing as their counterparts from renowned overseas universities’ (Hui, n.p.).
These depictions—valorising the overseas education—would seem to sit uncomfortably alongside claims that, in Korea at least, going overseas for education is seen as a means of escaping a highly competitive and difficult local academic environment, providing an easier route to university (Gluck, 2001; Ko, 2003). Somewhat paradoxically, an overseas education can, in fact, represent a way out of a highly competitive local education system and a more valuable form of cultural capital. I highlight this in the following extract, taken from an interview with a Canadian-educated graduate in Hong Kong.
Natalie works as a human resources consultant for a multinational firm. She was born in Hong Kong in 1974 and was educated in the local school system up to form four, or 9th grade, when she moved to Vancouver, Canada on a student visa. She stayed, initially, with her uncle (_I consider him a Canadian’), who had immigrated to Canada 10 years previously (Natalie, personal communication, February 2003).