Hong Kong’s education minister has warned self-financing post-secondary institutions against admitting more mainland Chinese students than their permitted quota as it could negatively affect their academic accreditation.
Advertisement
Christine Choi Yuk-lin issued the warning after statistics revealed that some institutions had a mainland student intake exceeding 60 per cent of their total enrolment, which is as much as six times the allowed limit.
Choi said warning letters had been sent out offending institutions, demanding that they rectify the situation.
“We have also alerted the Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications and this will be taken into account when the council looks into the institutions’ academic and quality accreditation in its regular review,” she said in a television interview aired on Sunday.
But the government would adopt a pragmatic approach and grant the institutions in question time to correct the imbalance, she added.
Advertisement
“We have liaised with these institutions to understand the admission situation and have requested them to provide explanations and to strictly adhere to the prevailing requirements,” Choi said. “We will not ask them to cut down the student numbers all at once, because the students are already studying there, and we can’t just expel them.
“Neither can we ask the institutions not to take in non-locals to their first year courses or else there could create a gap.”