Dozens of students who failed either Chinese or English have been offered university places despite a government warning that they would receive no subsidy for their tuition fees.
The students could be asked to pay the full tuition fees of more than $200,000 a year - five times more than those paid by subsidised students.
Most of the 14,500 first-year, first-degree places for the 1998-99 academic year were filled after yesterday's release of the Joint University Programmes Admissions System results.
A total of 12,903 offers were made in the main round. Successful students should collect their offer letters from individual institutions between today and Friday.
To maintain student quality the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Joseph Wong Wing-ping, urged institutes not to accept those who failed either Chinese or English at Advanced-level.
Mr Wong said the Government should not sponsor students who failed either language from the new academic year unless there were exceptional circumstances.