Arts and humanities academics fear changes to the way university funds are allocated could see their disciplines lose out as yet greater emphasis is placed on science and medicine.
The changes are planned for the 2012-13 academic year and will see HK$750 million per year taken out of a total block grant of HK$10.8 billion for the city's eight publicly-funded universities.
At present, each university receives a fixed block grant for their operational costs, and has total discretion in deciding how the grant is allocated between faculties.
The HK$750 million in funding taken out will be put into a central bidding pool and the Research Grants Council will decide on the final allocation.
The dean of the Faculty of Arts at Baptist University, Professor Chung Ling, said the proposed change would weaken universities that thrived on the arts.
'It's totally unreasonable. A big chunk of money that we use to pay for overhead costs like staff salaries and utilities would be withdrawn. It's reasonable for universities to bid for grants to conduct research due to scarcity of resources. But the block grant is mostly used to sustain the operations of a university.