Cap on mainland and foreign students may be raised

The Hong Kong government is consulting with heads of universities in the city on raising the cap on foreign students and those from mainland China as it faces a continued exodus from the city and a demographic downturn while attempting to build Hong Kong into a global innovation hub integrated with mainland China.

According to one proposal from the University Grants Committee which is being discussed in the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, the cap could be lifted from the current 20% of total undergraduate student numbers to 40% from the 2024-25 academic year. The cap on the number of non-local undergraduate students was last raised from 10% to 20% in 2008. There is no cap on the recruitment of foreign and mainland postgraduate students.

Given the sensitivity in Hong Kong of raising the number of undergraduate mainland students at publicly funded universities, Hong Kong authorities have insisted that mainland students will pay full international student fees. This is despite mainland universities charging Hong Kong students the same fees as domestic students and sporadic calls by mainland students for reciprocal treatment.

Officials have also said there would be no cut back in the total number of government-subsidised places for Hong Kong students.

Tuition fees for local students are around HK$42,100 (US$5,400) per year compared to those for international and mainland students who pay between HK$140,000 (US$18,000) and HK$182,000 (US$23,300) at government-funded universities such as the University of Hong Kong.

Additional mainland students come to Hong Kong as part of joint-degree programmes between mainland and Hong Kong institutions. Hong Kong universities have a number of partnerships and branch campuses on the mainland, and many of these students do not pay the full international student fees.

However, Hong Kong students who spoke anonymously to University World News said the proposed numbers “do not add up”. They said that increasing the cap on non-local students would inevitably mean reducing local student numbers unless the total student intake is increased.

“The greater competition for a smaller number of [local] places will push more Hong Kong students to go abroad, while mainlanders will take up more places in Hong Kong’s tax-funded universities,” a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong said.

Hong Kong has seen a major exodus of professional families since the National Security Law came into effect three years ago. Some 12% of Hong Kong school leavers left the city for higher education last year, while large numbers also dropped out of their Hong Kong university courses to go abroad in the past two years.

However, government officials have insisted the general exodus is now ‘stabilising’.

Hong Kong attractive for mainland students

Hong Kong has emerged as one of the most attractive destinations for mainland students behind only the United States and United Kingdom, according to a recent survey of mainland students carried out by Joshua Ka Ho Mok, vice-president of Lingnan University in Hong Kong and an expert on China’s higher education.

Mok told University World News recently: “My university in the last few years has tripled applications, particularly from mainland students for our masters programmes,” and noted that the masters programme numbers had grown significantly.

Mok said that according to his latest research interviewing Chinese students on their intentions to study abroad, including Hong Kong, “many of them indicate that they see future development opportunities [will be] in the region, in Asia, and also in Hong Kong, as Hong Kong is well connected to China. They see potential collaboration between mainland institutions and Hong Kong and choose Hong Kong to jumpstart their careers”.

According to documents submitted to the Hong Kong legislature, some universities had already overshot the 20% limit for non-local undergraduate recruitment in 2023. Given the post-COVID rebound in applications and China’s ongoing tensions with the United States, the universities had to seek permission from the authorities to enrol the extra numbers.

According to University Grants Committee figures, 8,622 mainland students were enrolled in undergraduate programmes at Hong Kong’s eight government-funded universities in the last academic year. These are the highest numbers since 1997 when there were just a handful of mainland students and are up 13% compared to 2020-21.

Straitened accommodation situation

Universities have been restricted in the past from increasing non-local student numbers due to lack of space in the densely populated city to expand student dormitories and the very high price of accommodation in Hong Kong’s private rental market.

However, since 2018 a plan for an extra 13,470 student hostel places is currently being implemented, according to government documents submitted to the Hong Kong Legislative Council’s Panel on Education, with the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong adding some 550 hostel places in 2022, and other construction works already commenced to add thousands more places by 2027.

Attracting more foreign students, including from the mainland, and building higher education links is a key government policy.

The University Grants Committee has allocated around HK$40 million (US$5.1 million) for 2022-25 to the Hong Kong Heads of Universities Committee’s Standing Committee on Internationalisation to fund a new programme to promote Hong Kong’s higher education to countries along the ‘Belt and Road’, for overseas recruitment, and academic and exchange activities as well as cementing university alliances between the mainland and Hong Kong.

These include the Shanghai-Hong Kong University Alliance, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao University Alliance, the Beijing-Hong Kong Universities Alliance, and the Jiangsu-Hong Kong-Macao University Alliance, supporting them with annual conferences and presidents’ forums, symposiums and executive workshops to promote cross-border higher education cooperation and exchange.

University World News Asia Editor Yojana Sharma contributed to this article.