Other factors boosting enrolment include new programmes, practical disciplines and the ability to attract more local and non-local students
Hong Kong Metropolitan University has reported a 23% jump in the number of first-year students. Photo: Edmond SoHong Kong Metropolitan University (HKMU), the first in the city to obtain an applied sciences status, has seen a 23 per cent spike in first-year student enrolments to 3,100 pupils.
The school’s management also attributed the increase to the addition of new related programmes, the renaming of the university, and the rise of student preference for practical disciplines.
The schools also pledged to hire teachers who were experienced and reputable professionals in different industries to introduce students to the latest trends and developments in applied science.
According to the university, its number of first-year students stood at 3,102 for the 2024-25 academic year, up from 2,520 in the previous one.
“Is it [the surge] due to the title of UAS, I do not want to attribute the increase to a single reason, it is only one of them,” president Paul Lam Kwan-sing told the media.
“We have a new hostel, we have new programmes and students can now go to HKMU to learn to become pilots. All these make students become interested in our university.”
He was referring to a new programme jointly offered by the university and the Airport Authority’s International Aviation Academy offering graduates commercial pilot licences.
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Lui Yu-hon, the senior adviser to the president, also said renaming the school from Hong Kong Open University in 2021 and a shift in students choosing practical and professional programmes had boosted the institution’s popularity.
“People now know we are no longer a university only for adults for distance learning, which only takes up around 10 per cent of the programmes that we have,” Lui said.
The university qualified as the first for applied sciences in the city in March after Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu proposed creating UAS institutions in his policy address last year as part of an effort to change negative perceptions about vocational education.
Lam said the university would hire professors who were veterans in their fields to provide students with the latest developments in their areas of study.
“They are not the ones with university backgrounds of doing research and publishing journals, but we will hire them, as these professional professors could help our students grasp society’s latest developments,” he said.
The university also revealed the number of admissions of non-local students was at a record high, jumping from 668 in 2023-24 to 818 in 2024-25, a 23 per cent rise.
Non-locals now made up 19 per cent of all undergraduates, just under the government cap of 20 per cent.
“I hope the government can relax the cap,” Lam said.
But Lam also warned that the number of non-local applicants using fraudulent academic qualifications was “on the rise”. The university had been strictly screening potential students, including by checking applicants who had graduated from mainland Chinese universities and asking overseas institutions to verify academic records, he said.
University provost Kwan Ching-ping revealed its verification procedures had caught applicants using fake qualifications and said the university would report serious cases to police, adding the number of applicants using fake qualifications was now higher than 100.
With more non-locals being enrolled, the university earlier acquired a hotel with 255 rooms, formerly known as Urbanwood Hotel in Ho Man Tin. About 200 out of 3,000 non-locals, mainly from the mainland, have been offered a place at the hostel.