Hong Kong is experiencing a boom in private and self-funded higher education as global tensions and buoyant demand fuel the territory’s ascension as an international education hub.

The number of private universities in Hong Kong has quadrupled in seven years. Hang Seng University’s 2018 conversion from a management college has given it equal billing to Shue Yan University, which pursued a similar trajectory 12 years earlier. Since then, two other private institutions have attained university status: Hong Kong Metropolitan University in 2021 and Saint Francis University in 2024.

Meanwhile, self-funded enrolments have soared in the city’s eight public universities. Statistics from the University Grants Committee (UGC), which only tallies government-subsidised enrolments, understate the true numbers of students by tens of thousands – and the gap is rising.

UGC-funded programmes accounted for 61 per cent of enrolments in 2023-24, down from about 66 per cent in 2018-19, according to the annual reports of the universities that routinely publish their full student numbers.  

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Gerry Postiglione, emeritus professor at the University of Hong Kong, said the sector’s growth was no surprise. Hong Kong’s universities had been the “stars” of the pandemic period, improving their rankings at a time of severe economic upheaval – partly because they had benefited from an influx of top academics fleeing a crackdown on mainland Chinese scientists during the first Trump presidency.

He said that while Hong Kong universities will increasingly seek enrolments from abroad, mainland China is a natural source. Its students are enticed by the territory’s lifestyle, its highly ranked universities and its one-year master’s programmes – unlike the two-to-three-year duration typical on the mainland.

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And while Hong Kong is renowned for its financial and legal systems, its universities are key to the territory’s role as a “super connector to the rest of the world. It’s a small but powerful higher education system in the only city in China that has an official policy of bilingualism.”

Postiglione said Hong Kong’s longstanding policy of reserving university places for locals had made sense in a system overwhelmingly funded by the territory’s taxpayers, but institutions rising towards the top of the global rankings needed to look further afield. “Harvard doesn’t insist on taking 80 per cent of its students from Boston,” he noted.

In late 2023, Hong Kong chief executive John Lee announced that the cap on non-local enrolments in publicly funded undergraduate courses would rise from 20 to 40 per cent.

Universities are already hoovering up self-funded postgraduates, who are not covered by the cap. Taught postgraduate enrolments at the University of Hong Kong almost doubled between 2018-19 and 2024-25, growing at about 14 per cent per annum over the past four years.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) does not publicise its self-funded enrolment figures but said its postgraduate student numbers had grown about 5 per cent in 2023-24 and 8 per cent in 2024-25.

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Hiroshima University international education expert Futao Huang said the “proliferation” of unsubsidised master’s programmes, particularly in “strategic” areas such as finance and artificial intelligence, is more than a revenue grab. It aligns with labour market demands and Hong Kong’s desire “to enhance its role as a talent hub”.

Alan Cheung, chair of CUHK’s Department of Educational Administration and Policy, said the “challenge” for Hong Kong was “diversifying the pool” by recruiting “real” international students from beyond mainland China.

“Don’t get me wrong. They are wonderful students [but] we have way too many. It’s time…to put more effort into recruiting international students, especially from the Belt and Road region.”

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He said some public Hong Kong universities are “very aggressive” in enlisting students from South-east Asia and Kazakhstan.

Cheung said private universities are accommodating demand from locals as well as mainlanders and foreigners. Despite recent population decline, Hong Kong still lags well behind neighbours such as Taiwan in higher education participation, with perhaps 40 per cent of local school leavers passing the “high stakes tests” for admission into public universities. The emerging private institutions give them more options.

But the government has also allowed “mature” private universities to enrol up to 30 per cent of their students from mainland China, Macau and Taiwan, and unlimited numbers from other regions, according to Hang Seng provost Ka Ho Mok.

Mok said a cocktail of factors – lingering health concerns since Covid, geopolitical tensions, visa issues in Western countries and parents’ discomfort about their offspring putting down roots in distant places – mean that Asians with study abroad aspirations are increasingly considering destinations closer to home.

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He said the territory had sidestepped the concerns over housing availability that has torpedoed Western support for international education. “Hong Kong has always been a [bridge] between the East and the West. We welcome people from all around the world.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com