Representative of St. John's College Students' Association 聖約翰學院學生會代表 Wong Suet Kei 黃雪崎

I support the motion that the maximum intake of non-local students should be reduced due

to the following reasons:

The increasing intake of non-local students deters Hong Kong students from receiving

tertiary education to some extent. As there are only 9 institutions, vacancies are very

limited. It creates an even more competitive environment for students to compete for seats

in university. Universities should cater the needs of local students first, otherwise it violates

the original rationale of setting up an institution.

Besides, apart from studying, students will also need to extend their social circles and build

connections by such a diversified platform. However, the composition of non-local students

is not diversified, a large proportion of non-local students are from Mainland China. Ideally,

students should have chance to meet different non-local students from all over the world so

that they can learn from their cultures. This cannot be achieved if most of the students are

of the same nationality as local students.

Concerning the allocation of resources, with more and more non-local students, local

students’ benefits will somehow be harmed. For example, there are not enough vacancies

in residential colleges to provide rooms for local students since a certain proportion of

vacancies will be left to non-local students. However, halls are set up to facilitate students so

that they can go to school more conveniently. With more people sharing the resources, local

students’ benefits are infringed.

With limited resources, we should act according to the constraints we have .The university

should limit the intake so as to create more vacancies for local students and resources can

be better utilized on local students. Overall, local students should be given the first priority

when allocating resources.