Self-financing tertiary institutions can help Hong Kong become global education hub, bureau says

Head of one self-financing postsecondary institution also calls on government to relax cap on non-local admissions

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Hong Kong Metropolitan University in Ho Man Tin. While self-financing institutions face a cap on the intake of students from the mainland, Macau and Taiwan, no such restrictions are in place for the admission of students from other places.
Photo: Edmond So

Published: 7:11pm, 24 Oct 2024

Self-financing tertiary institutions can play a more important role in helping Hong Kong become a global postsecondary education hub, authorities have said, as the head of one such body urged the government to relax the cap on non-local admissions to the same level that public universities enjoyed.

The Education Bureau said in a paper presented to the legislature on Wednesday that private institutions had been bolstering the drive for the internationalisation of universities and their number of non-local students had been consistently increasing.

“In this connection, the self-financing sector has the potential to play a more important role as Hong Kong develops into an international postsecondary education hub,” the bureau said.

The government last year doubled the quota for non-local admissions at the city’s eight publicly funded universities to 40 per cent of local student places, but a corresponding step has yet to yet to be taken at self-financing institutions.

The latest data showed that the number of non-local students was 14 per cent of the total of local students at the city’s self-financing institutions, but over 95 per cent of them were from mainland China.

While self-financing institutions face a cap on the intake of students from the mainland, Macau and Taiwan, no such restrictions are in place for the admission of students from other places.