W e spend many billions of tax payers' dollars on higher education. I sometimes wonder what real benefits are we getting from it.

To be sure, some of our universities have achieved high rankings among their Asian counterparts, and they have become magnets for many talented mainland high school graduates. Good as they may be, I don't recall hearing any great ideas from our universities that could help shape our economic policies or solve pressing problems arising from unexpected external threats.

Bold thinking and originality are never strong suits of our universities. The economic policy, which many Hong Kong people still consider sacrosanct, was formulated by British bureaucrats back in early colonial times. Since the return of sovereignty in 1997, there have been numerous calls by local politicians and economic commentators for fundamental changes that they deemed necessary for coping with new challenges.

The bureaucrats of today were inventive only to the point of changing the policy's rather charming and quintessentially British slogan of "positive non-interventionism to a decidedly dead-beat title of "small government, big market".

Or is it "big market, small government?" Well, it doesn't matter. Nobody is taking it seriously anyway. Most Hong Kong people are comfortable with keeping their government small. Any suggestion of a big government taking away a bigger share of their earnings and telling them what to do with their lives will certainly give them a fit.

But the small government we have has bred what more and more people have come to see as growing economic and social injustice, manifested in the widening wealth gap between the minority rich and the majority poor. What's worse is that the economic structure built on the capital-intensive financial industry and property developments tacks up unfairly against working class people, posing insurmountable barriers to their advancement. Swelling public discontent is focused on the surge in property prices, widely seen to be controlled by an oligarchy of no more than five developers. Many lower-middle class families find it increasingly difficult to buy their own homes.

Unsurprisingly, the calls for the government to take positive actions to narrow the wealth gap have become louder and shriller. In response, our bureaucrats did the only things they knew best, building more affordable homes for young families and handing out fatter subsidies to the elderly. Handouts are good. I am very happy with the tax rebates I received in the past several years. But they don't come close to addressing the real problems arising from a woefully unbalanced economic structure that is shaped by the big market. People want steady jobs paying decent salaries and promising reasonable prospects. It is disheartening to read a story in a local newspaper quoting Polytechnic University's professor Zheng Yongping for saying that we have been wasting big money on training well-qualified scientists and engineers who can't find jobs in the city. "I just feel sorry for Hong Kong," the professor said.

To rebuild a real economy that can provide jobs people want, will need an overhaul of the traditional economic policy. We can understand the risk involved, and have waited in vain for our universities to contribute to the debate with authoritative analysis and grand ideas that can inspire the public and guide the listless bureaucracy. Instead, the universities have locked themselves up in their cozy ivory towers, emerging only when necessary to beg for more grants. Echoing what professor Zheng said, "I just feel sorry for Hong Kong."

The author is a current affairs commentator.

(HK Edition 07/31/2012 page3)