Hong Kong education secretary defends HK$1b scholarship fund for One Belt, One Road students
Eddie Ng Hak-kim says scheme will help local students ‘expand their scope, contacts and network’
The government has come under fire for its proposal to inject HK$1 billion into a scholarship fund to attract students from countries included in the One Belt, One Road initiative to come and study in Hong Kong, with critics saying the cash would be better spent on local education.
In response, officials yesterday promised that only the annual investment returns from the HK$1 billion fund would be used to fund overseas students.
They added there would be a system in place ensuring scholarship recipients would keep a “continuous relationship and contact” with Hong Kong once back in their home countries.
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But critics said it would be difficult to keep track of these students once they returned home and that the government should not prioritise overseas students when local students were facing a shortage of government-funded places on degree courses at Hong Kong universities.
Secretary for Education Eddie Ng Hak-kim said so far the government had only subsidised 10 students from Indonesia to study at local universities, costing a total of HK$1.2 million a year.
He said there were various scholarships open to local students including a programme for tertiary students backed with HK$100 million and one for self-financing students costing HK$70 million a year.
He said the government had added 2,000 publicly-funded tertiary places.