Exposed: A Cruel CityU Bonus System for Slave Drivers

A major reason for forcing the so-called PBPR system on CityU’s rank-and-file workers is to enable President K to accumulate a huge amount of money by denying basic salary adjustments and COLA to us.  Where will all this money go?  Obviously part of it will pay for the hiring of unqualified personal friends such as the “Invisible Professor” as our senior “professorial role models” (there are many other similar cases, and hopefully each of these cases will be factually exposed in the coming months).  However, much of it will be used to finance a “bonus system” designed by CityU’s central administration.

This system works as follows.  Each academic administrator is given a “ranking” goal and an “output” goal.  For example, administrator A is supposed to raise his/her academic unit’s ranking by N places, and is supposed to whip his/her “subordinates” to produce M “Catogory-1” papers over the next evaluation period.  The administrator will be given a huge bonus if the two goals are attained.  The prevalent attitude is: do whatever it takes, by hook or by crook, to achieve the goals and earn the bonus; nothing else matters; the goals justify the means.  In the past two years administrators were hired primarily for their promised willingness to crack their whip over their subordinates, regardless of how poor these administrators’ own personal research records are.  For example, a number of department heads hired as Full Professors and Chair Professors by President K’s administration do not even meet the very clear and explicit requirements imposed on Assistant Professors for continual employment (again, hopefully our colleagues will expose in detail each of these cases in the coming months).

In short, the central administration is cultivating a frightfully repressive and terribly unjust slave-society mentality among us.  That is, a slave-owner’s “reward” comes from his ability to crack the whip and squeeze as much as possible out of the slaves.  That the slave-owner is not capable of doing the work he imposes on the slaves is a totally irrelevant point, because it is taken as a matter of course that slave-owners do not have to prove that they are capable of doing the work of the slaves (in fact, the major reason for wanting to be a slave owner is not to have to do slaves’ work).  That also explains why some notorious department heads and deans have been rewarded for being nasty and rude to their staff, because nastiness and rudeness are valued by President K’s administration as effective means for whipping employees to achieve higher ranking and publication count for the university.

It then becomes obvious to every “slave” that the only salvation is to wiggle his/her way into the “slave owner” class.  This is so different from the visionary university spirit outlined in the recent article by the President of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (http://inews.mingpao.com/htm/inews/20110101/gb61123i.htm)

城大搞環保不成，搞烏龍。廚餘製魚糧標書批俾冇牌包商。臨時取消簽約儀式，令到校董主席冇面。呢哋濕水嘢搞唔掟，仲搞乜獸醫學院？既然咁廢，千祈唔好再浪費公帑、誤人子弟。

星島日報教育版一月十九日頭條：致力推動校園環保，計畫成為本港首所將廚餘加工製成魚糧的城市大學，原定上周一舉行簽約儀式，但其後臨時取消簽署活動。據了解，由於獲批承辦商綠色環保發展有限公司，於簽約前三天被發現並無食環署批出的「加工處理魚糧」牌照，以致城大在今次審議標書事宜仍未定案。「綠色環保」對本報承認，中標後才獲城大提醒須領取上述牌照，刻下正向食環署申請。 http://www.singtao.com/yesterday/edu/0119go01.html

PART 2 of
AN INVISIBLE PROFESSOR AT CITYU. 

Or perhaps, following the President’s assertion that teachers use universities as social welfare institutions, he sees fit to confirm and endorse his hallucination by creating the first solid and real example (and simultaneously benefiting his personal friend?).  After all, the appointment does fit an on-going pattern; i.e., you have to work like a slave to publish only if you are a rank-and-file worker, but if you are admitted to the President’s “team,” you don’t need to have a viable scholastic record.  This mysterious Professor-Director case goes one step further – it demonstrates that you don’t need to have a scholastic record at all!

A TOTALLY INVISIBLE “PROFESSOR”
The preceding comments were valid only in last December.  What is even more intriguing (or is it “amusing”?) is that, by January 2011, Professor Ho no longer exists in CityU’s internet information sources on its employees.  Firstly, his name and position no longer appear on the “Office of the Provost” webpage (http://www.cityu.edu.hk/provost/staff.htm).  Secondly, the powerful software supporting CityU’s “Communication Directory” enables a user to locate any CityU employee by typing EITHER the employee’s (i) surname, (ii) given name, (iii) name in Chinese, (iv) e-mail id, (v) phone, OR (vi) post (i.e., just any one of the above 6 items suffices).  Today, however, inputting any combination of one or more of the above 6 items will yield no result for this mysterious “Professor.”  The fact that entering item (v) (i.e., the phone number) yields no result is particularly significant, because it legally means that the CityU phone number “3442-5398” is not currently assigned to anybody.  In other words, CityU’s official public records indicate clearly that Professor Ho is no longer a CityU’s employee AND that the post “Director of PEP and CD (Frac)” either does not exist or is unfilled.

Unfortunately, the shocking fact is that, when the previously listed phone number “3442-5398” is dialed, the good professor answers the phone and acknowledges himself to be “Professor Ho.”  Moreover, if one goes to the second floor of the Central Administration Building (i.e., CYC) at CityU, the good professor can be physically seen occupying an office there.  His name is clearly displayed on the office door.  That is, the phone number remains unchanged, but his office has been moved from the 6th to the 2nd floor of the CYC-Building.

Even if the President of a publicly-funded university is allowed to hire anybody he likes as a “Professor,” can he legally hide such an employee from the official records?  The implications are wide-ranging and are best left unsaid.

We are at a loss at what the President wants us to learn and emulate from these “role-modeling” scenarios.  Should we all cheat?

AN INVISIBLE PROFESSOR AT CITYU.  Subtitle: A public question to the UGC on whether the President of a UGC-funded university can hire an invisible “professor.”

In December 2010, CityU’s webpage for the Provost’s Office indicated that it included a “Director of PEP and CD (Frac)” with the position-holder’s name AND professorial designation clearly specified.  The corresponding December-2010 entries in CityU’s official “Communication Directory” for this employee are reproduced below verbatim (author’s note:  (#1) “XXXX” is used instead of the actual data to protect privacy.  (#2) “PRVT” means “Provost’s Office”):
Start of Record:
Preferred Name:  Prof. HO “XXXX” (#1)
Legal Name:  HO “XXXX” 1
Name in Chinese:  何“XXXX” 1
Post: Director of PEP and CD (Frac)
Department: PRVT (#2)
Office Address:  CYC-6119
Office Tel.:  3442-5398
End of Record.
 
AN ACADEMICALLY INVISIBLE “PROFESSOR”
It is well known that any Tom, Dick or Harry can use or be accorded the title of “Professor” in American universities.  However, the norm in Hong Kong (as in UK) is drastically different.  Through the years, many of us have witnessed how our administrators and “Professors” often rudely chastise us for addressing our assistant-professor and associate-professor colleagues as “Professor So-and-so.”  A Hong Kong “Professor” is, God forbid, NOT an assistant professor or an associate professor.  S/he is supposed to have been judged, via due process, as having attained a level of scholarship above that of an associate professor in his/her field.  In CityU’s official “Communication Directory,” the “Preferred Name” of an assistant or associate professor is never shown as “Prof.” So-and-so, but always and only as “Dr.”, “Mr.” or “Ms.” So-and-so.

Therefore, forget about the mystery of the alphabet soup “PEP’ and ‘CD (Frac).”  Much more intriguing is the field and level of scholarship of this newly anointed “Professor.”  These days, even a fresh assistant professor in most HK academic departments often comes with considerable internet academic visibility; e.g., Google-Scholar publication listing, conference attendances and previously-held academic appointments; not to mention ISI publications/citations.  However, this “Professor” attached to CityU’s Provost’s Office is completely invisible on the academic internet.  Our President and our former Provost are merely “pseudo” zero-count “professors; i.e., they only have a zero count in Category-1 papers, but they do have a respectable count of Category-2 and Category-3 journal papers.  However, this newly anointed “Professor” seems to be a genuine zero-count “professor” – no journal paper (of ANY Category) can be found under his name.
 
It is now well known that CityU’s President appointed an infamous former class-X tabloid editor as his senior public relations officer; but that is absolutely within his rights (to be fair, the appointee is indeed a perfect match to the President’s operations).  Similarly, not only has the President the right to appoint anybody as a “Director of CD (Frac)”, he can also appoint anybody as a “Director of DVD (Crac)” (whatever those titles may mean).  In short, a university president has the legal right to appoint anybody that meets his personal fancy to be his personal administrative attendant.

In contrast, an academic appointment (even an assistant professorship) in a self-styled “research” university should be supported by “scholastic” merit.  And scholastic achievements should always be public knowledge.  At least, the mysterious “Professor” should have an identifiable field of “research.”  Is he a “Professor” of accounting?  Or of zoology?  Where was he an “assistant professor” and an “associate professor” before he attains the august rank of “Professor” at our top-ranking CityU?  What scholastic entity at the CityU judged his scholarship as having reached a “professorial” level?  Even our “zero-count” scholars such as the President and the former Provost have traceable previously-held assistant and associate professorships at solid universities.  Note also that all academic appointments/promotions at HKUGC-funded universities should have been evaluated by appropriate search/staffing committees.
Since CityU’s President is from the United States, two American examples may be relevant.  First, after Jimmy Carter completed his US presidency (arguably the world’s most important political position), he was employed to teach political science at Emory University (a prestigious but probably not a “top” American university); his job title was “Special Lecturer.”  That is, it has no “professorial” implication, for the simple reason that a US presidency is not “scholastic work” and “President Carter” of the might United States did not have the required scholastic credentials.  This is by no means a slight against Jimmy Carter or the U.S. presidency; it is simply a matter of principles.  In any case, the Special Lecturer’s salary was probably higher than that of most senior professors at Emory.  Second, Henry Kissinger was already a tenured full professor at Harvard (with obviously commensurate scholastic achievements) when he resigned to assume the post of Secretary of State (the highest non-elective U.S. governmental position).  Nevertheless, some years later Harvard refused to take him back because Harvard felt that being a “Secretary of State” does not count as “scholastic work” AND Kissinger’s previous scholastic achievements had become outdated.  Note that these are examples from the U.S., where even an instructor is often addressed administratively as “Professor So-and-so.”

Moreover, our President has publicly belittled universities that “mix business enterprising, government and academia together” (see his article “The President of CityU says: teachers use the university as a social welfare institution,” at “http://edu.ifeng.com/news/detail_2010_10/28/2925646_0.shtml”).  So people like Jimmy Carter and Henry Kissinger are clearly unsuitable professorial material at CityU.  Since our President wants everybody to be a “role model,” shouldn’t we all get a chance to gawk at the sterling research record of this newly-installed professorial role model?

Way Kuo would certainly NOT be substantiated if he were recruited as an assistant professor at City U’s College of Business. The current standard set by the College’s mighty senior managers for substantiation is: 3 Category A journal papers based on UGC’s journal categorization. As a matter of FACT, the IEEE Transaction in Reliability (the highest ranked among all journals that published Way Kuo’s papers) is NOT a Category A journal. For the past 2-3 years, the College has been implementing a policy that recognizes ONLY Category A journals when it comes to tenure consideration, promotion and even change in title. There have been many examples of colleagues failing to get promoted or substantiated due to an insufficient number of A papers, even though they have published numerous other papers in Category B journals that are arguably as good as the IEEE Transaction in Reliability.

How can Way Kuo be our role model if he can’t even meet this very basic standard ?

大學沒有明確且現實上可行的發展方向。大學沒有充分發展己有之學術強項，強行發展沒有優勢之領域，大學沒有重視員工之意見，管理混亂，目標含糊。

I’ve work here for 15 years and Way Kuo is definitely the worst of all presidents. He has led City U to chaos, and is unfit for the post.

Do you remember earlier this year, a judge strongly criticized CityU for creating the conditions that allowed a fraud to be carried out.  Judge Toh described the university and the finance office in particular as “incompetent and disgraceful.”

On March 26, 2010, the Secretary to the Council issued a statement: “the Council Chairman has formed a committee to look into the matter and the surrounding circumstances, and to make recommendations to the University if its examination finds that our procedures and policies need improvement and/or modification to avoid any similar issues arising in the future. Members of the Committee are:
1.  Mr Wong Kwai Huen, President, Law Society, Chairman of the Committee
2.  Mr Vincent Chow, Treasurer and Council member
3.  Mr K M Wong, Council Member

Eight months have gone by.  But has anyone seen the report?  Who is responsible for damaging the image of the university?  What is the penalty?

郭位說： 「我的碩士論文已破例被出版成書，可見學術水平不低啊！它也是我的第一本書，再版也賣到絕版了！」

敝帚得自珍，唔得自吹自擂，唔得公關拍馬，唔得五毛黨通街叫賣。

PRESIDENT KUO’S ZERO-COUNT RECORD EXPOSED

The person (“Mr. Just”) who defended President Kuo’s scholastic record exposes the sorry state of the President’s clique – he couldn’t even find a minimally qualified person to come up with a credible defense, since any properly-trained researcher would know that a person’s publication record can be easily checked.  Mr. Just has also done a big disfavor to his patron, because his argument that the President is a Fellow of various bodies is an indirect confirmation of the insinuations on the President’s zero-count publication record.  This is because, otherwise, the easiest and most convincing way to refute the insinuations would have been to simply state the President’s actual Category-1 publication record.

For example, suppose a “Mr. X” claims that HKUST’s Professor KC Chan (who is currently HKSAR’s Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury and a former candidate of CityU’s presidency) does not have Category-1 publications.  One simply has to go to Professor KC Chan’s webpage http://www.bm.ust.hk/fina/staff/kcchan.html, from which the number of his Category-1 publications can be easily ascertained to be as shown in Table 1:

TABLE 1: Professor KC Chan’s Category-1 Publications

Name of HKUGC’s “Category 1” Journal     # of Papers by KC Chan

Journal of Business                       1
Journal of Finance                       6
Journal of Financial Economics                 2
Review of Financial Studies                 2
                      Total             11

Mr. X would then be completely discredited.  Incidentally, strange enough, Professor KC Chan’s webpage does not indicate that he is a Fellow of anything, even though the above-listed publication record puts Professor Chan near (if not “at”) the top among his Hong Kong peers.

Currently, our President Kuo and his minions are pushing everybody on campus to work on “Categorizing” publications for the so-called PBPR system.  This clique is also strictly enforcing stringent requirements on Category-1 journal papers for contract renewals and promotions for everybody outside his clique.  Moreover, in his recent article (http://edu.ifeng.com/news/detail_2010_10/28/2925646_0.shtml),President Kuo exhorts each of us to be “role models.”  In that same article, he also scorned people who mix scholastic endeavors with industrial/ governmental endeavors (perhaps somebody like Professor KC Chan?).  Wouldn’t it be uplifting for us to admire and emulate the shining example of our own President?

Unfortunately (and strangely), unlike (say) Professor KC Chan’s website, the section titled “Speeches and Publications” on President Kuo’s personal webpage http://www.cityu.edu.hk/op/biography.htm does not contain any information about his publications.  Nevertheless, as emphasized by Mr. “Hired-Gun Just,” the “Biography” section of President Kuo’s webpage boasts that he is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (“ASA”).  Surprisingly, he does NOT have a single paper in the Journal of the American Statistical Association (which is ASA’s flagship and also a HKUGC Category-1 journal; see item A in Table 2 below)!  President Kuo also claims to be a Fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Science (“INFORMS”), even though, again, he does NOT have a single paper in the three INFORMS journals of his field that are included in the HKUGC Category-1 list (see items (B) to (D) in Table 2).  Any properly-trained “researcher” knows how to use a standard database to check the correctness of the above statements and to verify that President Kuo has not published a single Category-1 journal paper in his entire life.

TABLE 2: President Kuo Way’s Category-1 Publications

Name of HKUGC’s “Category 1” Journal                   # of Papers by Kuo Way

(A). Journal of the American Statistical Association (ASA)  0 (Yes! Z-E-R-O!)
(B). Management Science (INFORMS)          0 (Yes! Z-E-R-O!)
(C). Operations Research (INFORMS)          0 (Yes! Z-E-R-O!)
(D). Mathematics of Operations Research (INFORMS) 0 (Yes! Z-E-R-O!)

                            Total   0 (Yes! Z-E-R-O!)

So there lies the real “scholarship” of President Kuo – i.e., his obviously murky skill of getting elected to Fellowships of scholarly societies without having published even a single article in the mainstream journals of these societies (or even a single Category-1 article in the academic fields of these societies).  Once you can dangle your Fellowships, most people won’t dream of looking into the details.  In contrast, a person like Professor KC Chan who has a solid Category-1 count does not need to use “fellowships” to fool people. 

By now, if you are in your right mind, you should condemn me for being so mean and insane in evaluating the President’s record in such a heartless and bean-counting way.  And you are absolutely right!  The problem is, this is exactly the attitude and procedures used by President Kuo and his minions in the so-called “PBPR” system and also in the contract-renewal and promotion requirements they impose on us.

Incidentally, President Kuo’s academic affiliation is “Industrial Engineering,” and the IEEE Transactions on Reliability he publishes in is never recognized as an Industrial-Engineering Category-1 journal anywhere.  He and his minions will certain not count it as Category-1 when they evaluate people like you and I who are not members of their clique. 

In itself, there is nothing wrong for President Kuo (or the former Provost Ho) to have a zero count in Category-1 papers.  WHAT IS TERRIBLY IMMORAL, HOWEVER, IS THAT PRESIDENT KUO AND THE FORMER PROVOST HO (AND MANY IN THEIR CLIQUE) STRUT AROUND PRETENDING THAT THEY ARE WELL-PUBLISHED SCHOLARS, AND THEN ABUSE OTHERS FOR NOT ACHIEVING THE STANDARDS THAT THEY SET FOR OTHERS BUT WHICH THEY NEVER COULD ATTAIN THEMSELVES.  On top of that, they now have the gall to pretend that they are “role models”!  This kind of dishonesty and hypocrisy is unbecoming of any educational institution.

Mr. Just claimed that the President is “the author of a LARGE number of articles in the IEEE Transactions on Reliability - the top journal in his field of specialization published by a prestigious international society.”  I am not quite sure whether top journal in an area is always classified as Category A+.
Let us take a look at how many Category A+ journal papers the President has produced.  I shall run a search and report to you all later, including citation count and impact factors etc.  Then we know his academic standing!  If he does not have sufficient academic standing, how can he impose stringent criteria in evaluating us.

I don’t think it’s fair for you to badmouth Professor Kuo in public and it appears to me that you know only too little about Professor Kuo’s academic accomplishments.

It is INCORRECT to say that Professor Way Kuo published no top journal papers. He is the author of a LARGE number of articles in the IEEE Transactions on Reliability - the top journal in his field of specialization published by a prestigious international society. He is also a fellow of a number of professional organizations including INFORMS and the American Statistical Association (ASA). How many fellows of INFORMS and ASA do we have in Hong Kong ? Before bullying others please get your FACTS right !!!

Professor Kuo is very well-known in his specialized area and his papers are widely cited. He is highly respected by his peers. Do you think prestigious societies like INFORMS and ASA would name someone as mediocre as you described as fellows ? By the way, are you a fellow of any of these societies, and have you ever had an article accepted by IEEE or ASA journals?

蟈校長 開拓“政治管理學”新領域

眾所周知，蟈校長一生沒有發表過一篇“一級刊物”（Cat
egory-1
Journal）的學術論文。他的“被引用次數”(Citation
Count)也只足夠向“前任學術副校長”何伯
這等人誇耀。如此水準，竟可以竊據大學校長之位，
自有其過人之處。

在許多社會，一個人如果修煉好“厚”“黑”二功，別方面只要勉強過得去，也就可以身居高位，魚肉眾生。但是蟈校長的別方面（無論著作，儀表，口才）連“勉強過得去”也說不上。所以單憑“厚”“黑”是不夠的。幸虧因
為他大學本科成績低劣，只能遠赴西域Kazakhstan
State University (KSU) 鍍金，卻因此煉成第三功：cowardice.

“A coward”
這一觀念在中國傳統品行價值觀裡是不明確的，但是在西
域的文化價值觀裏卻是很重要；
中文譯詞“懦夫”根本無法表達這觀念的豐富含義。“Cow
ardice”
和“厚”大不相同。例子：大部分人不會鄙視一個男子厚著臉皮追求一位女子，但是如果搞出事情這男子不敢負責，這種“Cowardice”的行為就需要相當功力。李宗吾《厚黑學》裏把劉備捧成“厚”功大師。可是劉備就是因為沒有
“Cowardice”這一功，
硬要出頭為拜把子兄弟關羽報仇，結果不但把老本敗掉，
就連命也給自己提早鬱死了。

蟈校長在“厚”“黑”二功的修練，當然是登峰造極。但更重要的是他承先啟後，西學為用，在百年承傳的李宗吾
“厚”“黑”二功之上，融入西域的“Cowardice”。
去年蟈校長大砸眾人飯碗之後縮在何伯這個替死鬼後面，已見其功力。想不到今年又有幸再瞻仰蟈校長大發功，更
上一層樓。
今年為了要阻撓城大同仁對他的“1.44 分”評價曝光，
但因為已墮落到連一個如何伯之流的馬仔也找不到，而只
有一個被法官在全港媒體公開斥為“可恥”的
賬房佬願意出來“護主”。
我們校長“厚黑懦”功的世界大學排名，絕對是冠軍了。
有聯為證：
《假公濟私禮義廉，縮頭烏龜厚黑懦》。

最近 蟈校長 又發表宏文
（http://edu.ifeng.com/news/detail_2010_10/28/2925646_0.shtml），
鼓勵“人人做表率”。 顯然，蟈校長和“可恥”的
賬房佬，都是每個 城大人 的“表率”了。
蟈校長：您要咱們向您學習的，究竟是您的“厚黑懦”功呢，您的“零論文”功呢，抑或是“可恥”的賬房佬的“
馬屁-擦鞋”功呢？還請蟈校長示下。