On December 2, the Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily News splashed a headline saying University of Hong Kong professors 'scooped tens of millions of dollars on top of their salaries'. A careless reader might have thought the medical professors were not doing their jobs properly, and taking advantage of their publicly funded positions for personal gain. But Ming Pao's allegations could not have been further from the truth.
The story was not one of its self-styled investigation reports, but merely a blown-up version of the secretary for education's reply to Kwok Ka-ki, the medical constituency representative.
Since May, HKU's medical faculty has been sharing part of the income generated from private consultations. According to government information, 65 medical professors received some HK$11.6 million in total. The five top earners received a total of HK$3.6 million, or about HK$700,000 on average.
There are some obvious questions about the Ming Pao report: nobody at the medical school had earned tens of millions of dollars, as the headline implied. It was sheer sensationalism. According to Dr Kwok, top earners in the university's medical faculty earn about HK$2.65 million per year, and the average of HK$700,000 in private consultation income raises that to HK$3.35 million. But this is not an outrageous sum deserving the kind of condemnation that the newspaper story sought to incite.
To put things in perspective, the government is offering HK$2 million a year for the new position of undersecretary. And a general practitioner operating a private clinic in a public housing estate can easily earn HK$2 million to HK$3 million a year. University medical professors contribute no less to society, so why should we be so harsh over reasonable pay that they well deserve?
These university professors are the best doctors in town, and extremely sought-after for their fine skills. If they were in full- time private practice, they could easily earn up to HK$10 million a year. But HKU's best medical professors are well respected because earning money is not their ultimate goal. Instead, they dedicate themselves to research, teaching and caring for patients. That HKU ranks among the world's top universities owes a lot to its fine medical faculty and their decades of hard work. If we genuinely appreciated their contribution, we wouldn't be so mean about their private consultation income, which is not a big figure anyway.
