Facing challenges in this era of internationalization, the University of Hong Kong (“HKU”) had
admitted its first non-local student1 in 1999. The number had grown exponentially to around
3,5002in year 2013/14, which is 16% of total. From the perspective of students, having non-
local students in HKU does foster cultural interactions and cultivate local (and non-local)
students different soft skills, which are undoubtedly important qualities for their future
career development. This builds HKU a strong network with overseas universities which
facilitate the mobility of foreign talents and researchers, making HKU more competitive,
internationally.
Yet, how should we allocate our much-limited resources to maximize the benefits given an
increase local demand for tertiary education? Is the current policy effective to attain a
healthy composition of non-local students?
HKU had around 15% of non-local student enrolments since year 2010/11 With 16% of total
enrolments in year 2012/13(Appendix 1), HKU has the highest proportion of non-local
student intake among other tertiary education institutes. This percentage shall be optimal,
balancing the local demand and benefits of having non-local students, at the same time
making HKU internationalized enough, given a high scores in this perspective in different
ranking of universities.
However, the university’s goal of having 50% of non-local UG from Mainland China is
debatable. This goal does not fully fulfill the objectives of admitting non-local students. This
may not be a healthy composition even with consideration of attracting talents and aiding the
less wealthy from our motherland. Although the percentage had drop from 82% to 65% from
2009/10 to 2012/13(Appendix 1), the university goal had never been achieved once since
the first enrolment of non-local student. Additional information, say admission criteria other
than academic merits, from HKU is needed to justify the situation.
Despite of the fact that HKU follows the government policy to have its non-local students
intake less than 20% of the total intake quota, the intake situation varies among different
programmes. For example, business and management related programmes admitted 479
(61% of total intake) non-local students, whereas medicine, dentistry, and health related
programmes had admitted only 39 (3% of total intake) non-local students in year 2012/13
(calculated from Appendix 2 and 3). It is understandable that different faculties adopt
different admission criteria and proportion for local and non-local students intake,
considering the popularity of individual programmes and/or other factors, yet it is not
convincing to have more non-local students than local students for the fore-stated benefits of
having non-local students, even the cap for HKU is not reached.
In a nutshell, in terms of the big number, HKU is enjoying the benefits of having non-local
students. However, in terms of the composition and diversity, as well as ratio of local and
non-local students of individual programmes, HKU shall justify its intake policy with
additional information.
1 "Non-°©‐local" UG intakes are counted based on UGC's Definition of "non‐local" students, i.e. those without a
right of abode in HK (for 2004/05 and before); and those with a student visa (for 2005/06 and after).
2 Under UGC Funded full‐time undergraduate programmes
Appendix 1:
Non-local Student Enrolment (Headcount) of UGC-funded Undergraduate Programmes by
Institution and Place of Origin, 2009:10 to 2012:13
Appendix 2:
First-year Student Intakes (Headcount) of UGC-funded Programmes by Institution, Level of
Study, Mode of Study and Academic Programme Category, 2012:13
Appendix 3:
Non-local Student Enrolment (Headcount) of UGC-funded Programmes by Institution, Level of
Study, Mode of Study and Broad Academic Programme Category, 2012:13
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