Lingnan University will be hard pressed to raise money from a dollar-for-dollar government scheme designed to spur the community to donate to universities, its president, Professor Edward Chan Kwan-yiu, has said.
A small alumni base and liberal arts heritage meant it would have difficulty attracting money for the $1 billion Matching Grant Scheme started in July. The scheme involves the government matching money raised by the institutions with a sum of $500 million set for the first six months.
Lingnan did not have a large pool of former students to draw on for support, Professor Chan said. A spokeswoman said it had 9,000 graduates registered on its alumni base. This compares with about 60,000 at The University of Hong Kong.
Lingnan's specialisation in the arts rather than science also counted against it. 'Few people think the arts and the humanities are worth the effort, and both are underrated by the public,' Professor Chan said, adding that high-tech, bio-tech and medical research tended to attract more public support.
Jeff Leung Wing-yan, deputy secretary-general of the UGC, said the new scheme took into consideration the disadvantages facing smaller institutions. Universities were each guaranteed a minimum matching grant of $20 million in the first six months of the scheme so the larger institutions did not eat up the entire fund by Christmas.
An upper limit of $150 million had also been set to make the scheme more equitable, he said.