University Affairs Secretary I 大學事務秘書一 Tsang Chung Hei 曾頌熙

Stance:

I would not support to reduce the maximum intake of non-local students.



Reasoning:

There must be a reason for this topic to be chosen as the topic of the Annual Debate. I guess

it is a respond to the phenomena that many non-local students are surrounding us, and it is

giving us a pressure to change our habit. Also, as the number of non-local students has

increased, someone may think non-local students are depriving local students of resources.



As a student, I do see the positive impact brought from the non-local students. Most of the

non-local students have a different study style when compared to us, they are more

concentrate in class than local students, and they can often think creatively, reflect and give a

different perspective apart from the existing view. The University has mentioned the benefits

to have more non-local students in campus in their provided documents, so I will make this

part short. Based on the above reason, I would like to insist that the maximum intake of non-
local students should not be reduced.



Some may argue that the increasing number of non-local students may take the resources

which can be arranged to local students originally. But I would like to say it is already

reflected in the difference of tuition fee between local and non-local students. Non-local

students now pay $135,000 but local students only pay $ 42,100, which is a third of the

amount of non-local students. So, this argument should not be a valid reason for us to reduce

the maximum intake of non-local students. And from the document provided by the

University, local students including JUPAS and non-JUPAS always contribute more than 80%

among the newly admitted students in the past ten years and the figure keeps over 85%

before the year of 2010 – 2011. So I would say the University has provided sufficient places

for local students.



However, I would like to recommend the University to reduce the in-take of mainland

postgraduates among postgraduate level. The ratio of mainland students in undergraduate

level is fine under the governing of current university policy, but it is a bit over in

postgraduate level. According to the document provided by the University, there are

currently no policies governing the ration of in-taking international students. Admission now

is working on academic merit basis nowadays. However, from the statistics provided by the

University, there is a stunning growth of the number of mainland students admitted in the

self-funded full-time taught postgraduate program from 2002 - 2003’s 39 to 2012 -

2013’s 1022. While from the annual report of the University in the year of 2012-2013, we

can see that mainland students take over 70% of all non-local postgraduate seats. It shows us

that how massive is the amount of mainland postgraduate students is surrounding us.


Although I understand that nationality should not be a concern for a University to consider

the admission of a student, but it is getting more obvious that more and more mainland

students are walking around the campus. So, I would like to suggest the University to set up

policy for postgraduate level like the current one working on undergraduate students on the

ratio of admitting non-local students from Mainland China and other parts of the world.