Education-sector lawmaker Chu Kwok-keung said he understood that fees would rise by around 7 per cent each year.

The proposal to push up fees for the first time since 1997-98 comes as the city reviews public service charges to boost government revenues amid a serious deficit, which ballooned to more than HK$100 billion in the previous financial year.

Undergraduates at the eight publicly funded universities currently pay HK$42,100 (US$5,380) a year. They would pay between HK$2,947 and HK$3,374 more each year under an annual 7 per cent increment, pushing fees up to HK$51,574 in 2027-28.

Kiwi Ma, a second-year student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), described the potential increases as “quite substantial”.

“It is manageable for me, but it is not ideal, as you are suddenly adding several thousand dollars to my school fees,” the 21-year-old said.

Lucy Ng, a third-year undergraduate at HKU, said she hoped the increases could be more gradual to ease students’ financial burden.

The University Grants Committee, which allocates funding to institutions, said the cost recovery rate – the portion of costs incurred by universities and covered by tuition fees – slipped from 18 per cent in the 2012-13 financial year to 13.3 per cent in 2022-23.

The 18 per cent recovery rate was set in 1991 and meant students would pay almost a fifth of the cost of their programmes.

With the cost of education increasing, tuition fees would need to be raised to at least HK$58,000 to achieve an 18 per cent recovery rate. But it is not known whether it will continue to be a target for the Education Bureau to hit.

A member of the government’s key decision-making Executive Council said there was no controversy in discussions with the bureau on Tuesday as the fee had remained unchanged for more than two decades. They believed the financial burden on students would be limited.

Chu, the lawmaker, also said the decision to increase the fee was “understandable”, but wished the increment could be kept at around 4 per cent each year until the 18 per cent recovery rate was met, which students and parents would find more bearable.

He said the about 7 per cent increment was quite high compared with the 2.1 per cent inflation rate in 2023.

“When adjusting tuition fees, it’s important to take into account the affordability of students and parents, and avoid the mentality of achieving the goal in one step,” he said.

Chu also expressed concern that the rise would further increase the burden of students on non-means-tested loans, warning that some had gone bankrupt after graduation as their salaries were not big enough to repay their debts.

Economist Simon Lee Siu-po, despite understanding the need to introduce an increase, said it was not in line with the fiscal discipline principle to raise tuition fees amid the deficit and sluggish economy.

“There should be a clear mechanism to decide the tuition fee adjustment. It would be way more reasonable to increase the fee by 1 or 2 per cent every year, than doing it all in one go,” said Lee, an honorary fellow at the Asia-Pacific Institute of Business at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“This is also unfair to new students.”

In the long run, the government should charge students based on the cost of their programme, rather than a standard rate, to ensure public funds were spent well and fairly, he said.

In the 2021-22 academic year, the disciplines with the highest expenditure were medicine, dentistry, physics and biological sciences, while those with the lowest were social science, architecture and town planning, languages and humanities.

Victor Kwok Hoi-kit, assistant research director at the policy think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation, said a gradual increase was important for the city to develop into an international education hub.

“It is not ideal when about 90 per cent of the cost is borne by taxpayers,” he said.

“Higher education institutions have to achieve a balanced budget before expanding enrolment of overseas students, otherwise some hidden costs will be borne by institutions themselves.”

In a previous interview with the Post, education minister Christine Choi Yuk-lin had pledged that planned increases in university tuition fees would be carried out gradually, taking into account the financial burden placed on students.

She said authorities would adopt a “very pragmatic” approach when gradually introducing the rise in bachelor’s degree fees at the eight universities.

Additional reporting by Harvey Kong