Subsidy scheme to cover students at private Hong Kong universities
Some vocational grants would make them cheaper than public institutions
More than 900 students in private undergraduate degree programmes will receive subsidies of up to HK$70,000 a year under a new government scheme.
The HK$965 million pilot scheme, which the Education Bureau announced yesterday, has the capacity to subsidise 1,000 students a year from the academic year starting next year.
Most of its slots are for nursing and the creative industries.
Run by Chu Hai College, Hang Seng Management College, the Open University, Tung Wah College and the Vocational Training Council, individual subsidies last four to six years.
The three-year pilot scheme will support students who start in the academic years of 2015, 2016 and 2017. They will receive the subsidy for the duration of their programmes.
In the first year, 940 students will receive the grants, which give HK$70,000 for laboratory-based courses such as nursing and design and HK$40,000 for all others.
Acting Deputy Secretary for Education Pecvin Yong Pui-wan said the scheme would be reviewed after three years and more programmes might be added to fill the 60 places left in the quota of 1,000.
"We will see how different stakeholders respond to the pilot scheme in the review, and see whether they have any specific issues with it," she said.
The programmes, which cover architecture, supply chain management, nursing, design and engineering, fit Hong Kong's needs, she said.
Students will apply for places through the Joint University Programmes Admission System, with the subsidy deducted directly from the tuition fees.
After the subsidy, some students may pay less than those in publicly funded universities. For example, a design student at the Vocational Training Council will pay about HK$10,000 after the HK$70,000 subsidy, compared to more than HK$42,000 in a publicly funded course.
Yong acknowledged this was the case but noted that cost was only one of the many factors a student considered when applying to a programme.
There are about 15,000 government-subsidised first-year degree places. Some 79,572 students took the Diploma of Secondary Education this year, with 27,943 scoring the minimum necessary to enter university.
