Since the initiation of absorbing fee-paying students from the Chinese mainland last year, eight Hong Kong universities will join hands to enlarge their enrollments this year, said the university sources in Hong Kong Tuesday.
Robert Lam, Academic Registrar of Hong Kong Baptist University, also serves as the Task Group on Joint Roving Exhibition for the Recruitment of Fee-paying Mainland Students, formed by representatives from the eight universities in Hong Kong which have been granted the green light of recruiting fee-paying mainland students.
He noted that the eight universities plan a total enrollment of no more than 580 students this year, with a view to actively fulfilling the quota set by the Hong Kong government of non-Hong Kong students occupying for no more than 4 percent of all these universities' recruitment for the Bachelor's degree.
According to Jeff Leung, secretary general of the University Grants Committee which funds the eight universities, the rate stood at 1.7 percent for the 2002-03 school year, when 633 students pursuing their learning at the eight universities for different kinds of degrees come from the Chinese mainland.
The eight universities cooperating in attracting inland students this year, the first of its kind, can make better use of their resources and improve work efficiency, Lam said, adding that the universities will work together to publicize enrollment information and put forward unified written test for the applicants.
Lam said that Hong Kong universities taking in mainland students constitute a positive influence to local students, as the two sides can complement each other in appreciating and learning from the other's strong points.
Thus, the recruitment of inland students will improve the quality of college students in Hong Kong and quicken the pace of internalization of these universities, according to him.
Lam said that students eligible for applying for universities in Hong Kong are high-school graduates from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and Fujian Provinces and two cities of Beijing and Shanghai. The tuition fee for each student is HK$42,000(US$5,385) a year.
The applicants for Hong Kong's universities must take the mainland's college entrance examination scheduled in the first half of June. In addition, they are required to take written tests and interviews organized by the eight universities, who will take into consideration the combined performance of mainland students before making final decisions in early July.
The eight universities are University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, Lingnan University, Open University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Institute of Education.
(Xinhua News Agency April 23, 2003)
