Another 13 are self-financing, including the Open University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Shue Yan University. The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, is publicly funded.

More than 8,000 petrol bombs primed ‘found in weapons factory at Chinese University’

HKU, established in 1911, is the city’s oldest university. The newest is UOW College Hong Kong, a self-financing institution added to the list of degree-awarding institutions from the 2019-2020 academic year.

How many university students are there?

More than 100,000 students were enrolled in the eight UGC-funded universities in the 2018-2019 academic year. Some 86,000 were undergraduates, about 10,800 were in graduate programmes and the rest were in sub-degree programmes.

Nearly 83,000 were local students. The number of non-local students has risen over the past five years, from 15,151 in 2014-2015 to 18,060 in 2018-2019, according to the UGC.

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Most of the non-local students in 2018-2019, were from mainland China (12,322), followed by 1,479 from South Korea, 731 from Taiwan, 669 from India, 565 from Indonesia and 406 from Malaysia. There were 108 students from the United States and 34 from Britain.

The main university entrance examination for local students is the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (HKDSE). Most take four core subjects – Chinese language, English language, mathematics and liberal studies – and two or three elective subjects.

How did campuses become protest flashpoints?

The exact circumstances of how Chow fell remain unclear, but protesters accused police of firing tear gas into the area during a dispersal operation and obstructing paramedics from reaching Chow in time. His death prompted protesters to go on a rampage on the HKUST campus, vandalising university president Wei Shyy’s residence, and trashing cafeterias, a Starbucks outlet and a Bank of China branch.

Protests then spread to more campuses, and escalating clashes on November 11 led to police entering and firing tear gas at CUHK, PolyU and HKU – the first time such mob dispersal methods were adopted in tertiary institutions.

Which campuses were worst hit?

At HKU in Pok Fu Lam, protesters set fire to the MTR station, piled up barricades at the campus gates and threw petrol bombs from a footbridge at people trying to clear the roads.

Are Hong Kong’s universities becoming ‘weapons factories’?

The situation was the worst at PolyU in Hung Hom. On November 17, after a day of violent clashes, police locked down the campus, blocking all exits. More than 1,000 masked radicals and their supporters engaged in fierce clashes with police that day. An officer was pierced in his calf by an arrow shot by someone in the mob, and an armoured vehicle was set ablaze after being pelted with petrol bombs.

Established in 1937, and ranked fifth among Hong Kong universities and 31st in Asia in 2019 QS rankings, PolyU has been shut down since November 17. Police ordered everyone on campus to come out and face arrest, while several protesters tried various methods to escape. About 75 secondary school heads and teachers, as well as political and legal heavyweights stepped in to help, persuading the majority to leave. But dozens continue to hold out on campus, including radicals who vowed to fight to the end.

Is campus activism something new in Hong Kong?

The city’s universities are peaceful places of learning most of the time, but they are not new to student activism and protests.

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In 1989, Hong Kong university students supported students in Beijing who were protesting for democracy and against corruption at Tiananmen Square. In May that year, thousands of Hong Kong students took part in a massive demonstration in the city. Hong Kong students also raised funds and travelled to Beijing to support the protesters there. Beijing’s bloody military crackdown in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, left several hundred protesters, or more, dead. In Hong Kong, HKFS-affiliated students boycotted classes. University students have been prominent since then at the annual June 4 vigil held at Victoria Park to remember those who died in the crackdown.

Will protests hurt the universities’ reputation?

The strong anti-mainland aspect of the ongoing protests has left mainland Chinese feeling vulnerable. When campuses became flashpoints, mainland students feared for their safety and many decided to leave Hong Kong. A group of mainland students fled the CUHK campus by police boat on November 13.

Zhou, 28, a CUHK doctoral student from the mainland, is still in Hong Kong. Asking to be identified only by his surname, he said he chose to come to Hong Kong because of the city’s high academic standards, but the campus protests had disrupted his studies and research. Most of his mainland classmates have already gone home.

Police surround university campus occupied by radicals after day of fierce clashes

“Universities should create an environment for students and scholars to ensure that they can contribute to society,” he said. “The protests have seriously affected our use of libraries and other resources. It has hurt the spirit of the universities.”

Educator Tai Hay-lap, a former Education Commission member, said universities were the places where human talent was cultivated. He said the protests on campuses will make Hong Kong’s universities less attractive to students and scholars from the mainland and elsewhere. He expected to see a decline in the number of non-local students in the next academic year.

He said Hong Kong’s universities had been losing their diversity and inclusiveness, with xenophobia and cultural conflict springing up on campuses. “The physical damage will be restored sooner or later, but the cultural divide will take time to recover,” he said.