Hong Kong has moved from elite to mass post-secondary education in a very short space of time and at little cost to the Government. Most of this spectacular expansion in participation has come through enrolments in 2 year associate degrees in recently founded community colleges, which have self-financing status. The achievement has been clouded by complaints from associate degree graduates that the articulation envisaged by the government is not working; so they are unable to obtain places for undergraduate degrees in UGC-funded universities. The value of an associate degree as a suitable terminal award for employment in a knowledge-based economy is yet to be clearly established. There must be doubts as to neither employment nor places in undergraduate degrees in UGC-funded universities. In an attempt to deal with the lack of articulation, some community colleges, in conjunction with overseas universities, have started to offer top-up degrees to enable associate degree graduates to convert the award to a degree. However, the resulting qualifications are seen as inferior to undergraduate degrees from the UGC-funded universities.