University competition welcomed
Plans to make universities compete for a greater share of research funding and undergraduate places have won acceptance from the chiefs of all eight publicly-funded institutions.
But academic staff unions have warned of building discontent among members, while some university heads called for changes to make the new bidding exercises less damaging to smaller institutions.
The University Grants Committee (UGC) spelt out its plans to allocate half the cash from universities' research block grant through competitive bidding and increase the share of undergraduate places handed out competitively to 6 per cent from next year at a meeting of Legco's education panel yesterday. Outgoing chairwoman Laura Cha Shih May-lung said the HK$1.3 billion to be slashed from the research block grant progressively over nine years would be handed out competitively in accordance with universities' success in bidding for Research Grants Council funding schemes.
The UGC had agreed to conduct a new research assessment exercise in the 2012-2015 funding cycle, sharpen its assessment criteria and use it as another benchmark for the competitive bidding.
It had also introduced measures to soften the impact of the bidding exercises on the humanities and social sciences, following complaints from academics. These included a premium rate for research grants and HK$20 million for extra teaching relief grants and a new fellowship scheme in the two fields. It had also reduced the proportion of first-year undergraduate places for which universities would have to compete from 8 per cent to 6 per cent in response to universities' concerns.
Professor Tsui Lap-chee, vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong, said: 'We support the proposal and we would like more resources to be given by the administration to support further development. But we understand it can't be done in the short-term, so we have to enhance the use of available funding. Institutions have different situations and different student populations so the use of competition in the funding allocation is a correct approach.'
But Professor Rick Wong, vice- president (research and development) of Baptist University, said putting as much as 50 per cent of the research block grant on a competitive basis could 'seriously undermine the research capability and competitive edge of a few institutions'.
In a medium-sized university like HKBU, the 'top-slicing' of up to 6 per cent of undergraduate places meant entire programmes had to be eliminated. 'The negative impact on staff and student morale should not be underestimated,' he said.
Professor Shum Kar-ping, chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Higher Education Staff Associations, said: 'There's a lot of dissatisfaction.'
