STUDENTS will have a wider choice of universities under a plan to double the number to six by the next academic year. The University and Polytechnic Grants Committee (UPGC) will submit to the Executive Council that three institutions - the two polytechnics and the Hong Kong Baptist College - are ready to be upgraded. It is proposed the three institutions be retitled the Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and City Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. If the upgrading is approved, Lingnan College will be the only non-university institution among the seven funded by the UPGC. The decision follows the Government applying the university pay scale to degree-level teaching staff at the three institutions last year and awarding them with self-accreditation status last July. Baptist College president Dr Daniel Tse Chi-wai said: ''It is good for Hong Kong to have six universities which carry out different roles.'' Hong Kong Polytechnic director Professor Poon Chung-kwong said the institution would strive to maintain its academic standards. Professor Cheng Yiu-chung, director of City Polytechnic, said the change would mean a fairer judgment of students by society. Polytechnics and colleges were traditionally seen as having poorer standards than universities, although this was not necessarily true, he said.
