The Policy of "Developing Hong Kong’s status as an International Education Hub"

The 2023 Policy Address has set out clearly the strategic directions and objectives for enhancing the quality of education in Hong Kong, with a view to developing Hong Kong into an international post-secondary education hub and a cradle of future talents.

To fully leverage the distinctive advantages of the post-secondary education sector in Hong Kong under “One Country, Two Systems”, and to press ahead with the development of Hong Kong as an international hub for post-secondary education, the Government is taking forward a series of specific policy initiatives, such as raising the enrolment ceiling of non-local students for publicly funded post-secondary institutions; increasing the annual quota of the B&R Scholarship; gradually expanding the quota of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme; continuing with the implementation of the Hong Kong Scholarship for Excellence Scheme; and injection of additional funding into the Funding Scheme for Mainland and Global Engagement and Student Learning Experience by the UGC to support local students to participate in learning experience activities outside Hong Kong. In connection with the above policy objectives, the 2024 Policy Address has announced to further step up efforts on this front in promoting talent nurturing and building the “Study in Hong Kong” brand.

To promote internationalisation, we –

• Starting from the 2024/25 academic year, the enrolment ceiling of non-local students in publicly-funded post-secondary institutions (applicable to taught programmes) has been doubled from 20% to 40% (of local student places);
• Increasing the annual scholarship places for the Belt and Road Scholarship from 100 to 150 per year starting from the 2024/25 academic year;
• have relaxed employment and immigration restrictions for non-local students (e.g. Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates); and
• have implemented the PhD Fellowship Scheme offering a monthly stipend plus travelling sponsorship for top research students from around the world.

On diversification, we have introduced various measures to support the development of the self-financing post-secondary sector, including granting land sites and leasing vacant government premises at nominal premium and nominal rent respectively, interest-free start-up loans, quality assurance subsidies and a HK$3.52 billion (about US$ 450 million) Self-financing Post-secondary Education Fund to provide scholarships to outstanding self-financing students and supports worthwhile initiatives and schemes to enhance and assure the quality of self-financing post-secondary education.

We will build on these measures and endeavour to attract more quality non-local students to study in Hong Kong, as well as welcome overseas institutions to set up campuses in Hong Kong. We will work with our post-secondary education institutions to step up exchange and promotion efforts overseas so as to encourage more students to regard Hong Kong as a destination for education.

Our achievements in the 2023/24 academic year -

• About 73,700 non-local students coming from over 100 countries or regions studied in post-secondary education programmes in Hong Kong
• About 5,100 incoming and 5,500 outgoing students on exchange

For more details of the Policy, please take a look at our detailed factsheet.