Universities are opening their doors to more mainland students, who will for the first time be expected to pay fees.
The move is intended to raise the proportion of non-local students here. It follows an agreement reached in April between the Secretary for Education and Manpower, Fanny Law Fan Chiu-fun, and her mainland counterpart, Chen Zhili, on raising the intake of first year mainland students, presently less than 200, to 560.
That figure is equivalent to about four per cent of the total number of first year places offered by local institutions - the official quota for non-local students. Currently, only about 2.7 per cent is filled, largely by mainlanders.
Mainland students studying on local campuses have mostly come on the Hong Kong Jockey Club scholarship scheme introduced in 1998. The three-year scheme allows for 150 mainlanders to be sent here each year through designated mainland institutions. The $135 million scheme has just been extended for another year.
But top universities in China are preventing their best students from coming. Sun Laixiang, vice-president of Fudan University, said they had not sent the best to Hong Kong to avoid losing top talent abroad, especially as mainland students can now stay here to work after graduation.
'Rather than choosing the first, second or third students to go to Hong Kong, we send the fourth in a class instead,' said Professor Sun. 'Some top students complained and asked me why they were not given the scholarship even though their grades were the highest. It may be unfair, but we can't think of other things to do to retain our best students.'
