The Graduate School's "Mainlandisation" — How the Share of Mainland Students in HKU's Taught and Research Postgraduate Programmes Has Changed

Unofficial-history section · Module 16. This is a structural data analysis, presenting only traceable official figures and multiple perspectives; it does not render a value judgment or take a side. The sensitive events noted in §6.2 are handled link-only, per site policy.

One-line conclusion: According to HKU's official annual reports, between 2020/21 and 2025/26, the mainland-student share of Taught Postgraduates (TPg) rose from 80.5%^※ to 95.1%^※, and the mainland-student share of Research Postgraduates (RPg) rose from 84.3%^※ to 92.8%^※. A mainland-majority pattern in the graduate school has become structurally established over five years.

# How many of HKU's postgraduates come from the mainland? An overview

HKU divides postgraduates into two categories: Taught Postgraduate (TPg, covering full-time master's and professional programmes) and Research Postgraduate (RPg, covering MPhil and PhD). According to HKU's official Quick Stats for 2025/26^※: total enrolment was 45,303, of whom 20,366 (45.0%) were TPg and 4,834 (10.7%) were RPg. Non-local students numbered 25,051, or 55.3% of the total, of whom 21,739 were from mainland China (86.8% of non-local students). Within TPg, mainland students numbered 13,453, or 95.1% of TPg non-local students; within RPg, mainland students numbered 3,889, or 92.8% of RPg non-local students. Both figures are the highest in the years for which data is available (basis: HKU Quick Stats, 2025/26 enrolment).

# How has this share changed over the past five years?

The table below is compiled from HKU's official annual reports and shows the trend in the mainland-student share of TPg and RPg across six academic years, 2020/21 to 2025/26. The "mainland share of non-local students" figures are drawn from the student-profile pages of HKU's annual reports for each year.

Note: full-year data for 2024/25 has not yet been published; the two most recent anchor points in the table are the 2023/24 annual report (HKU AR2024) and the 2025/26 Quick Stats. TPg figures include all enrolled students, not only new intakes. The share is consistently calculated as "mainland students / all non-local students in that category."

The table shows the TPg mainland share rising by roughly 14.6 percentage points over five years, and the RPg mainland share rising by roughly 8.5 percentage points. Both trend lines rise monotonically, with no year of decline (basis: HKU's annual reports and Quick Stats for each year, headcount enrolment).

# Why has TPg expanded so quickly?

The expansion of taught postgraduate programmes is more pronounced in absolute numbers. According to HKU's official annual report series^※, TPg enrolment rose from 11,100 in 2020/21 to 20,366 in 2025/26, an increase of roughly 83% over five years. According to a 2025 report by Times Higher Education^※, HKU's taught postgraduate intake "nearly doubled between 2018-19 and 2024-25, growing by about 14 per cent a year over the past four years."

One institutional factor: the government's cap on non-local student places at UGC-funded universities applies to undergraduate places; postgraduate programmes — particularly self-financed taught programmes — have not historically been subject to the same cap. According to the HKSAR Government's 2024 Legislative Council reply (LCQ4)^※, "there is generally no quota on non-local student intake for postgraduate programmes," which has provided institutional room for TPg expansion. Rising demand among mainland students for one-year master's programmes in Hong Kong over the same period is a direct source of this numerical growth.

# What are the structural reasons behind the high RPg share?

Unlike TPg, RPg (research master's and doctoral programmes) funding is primarily drawn from government-funded places rather than tuition revenue. According to the UGC's response statement to the 2023 Policy Address^※, the government is progressively increasing publicly-funded RPg places from 5,595 to 7,200 per academic year, while raising the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) quota to 400. These fellowships are open globally and are attractive to applicants from leading mainland institutions.

The high mainland share within RPg is closely linked to this appeal: HKU's RPg programmes use English-medium instruction and academic norms, the stipend level (RPg monthly stipends of roughly HK$13,000–18,450) is competitive for mainland PhD applicants, and HKU has consistently ranked within the global top 30 on the QS World Ranking. A 2023 qualitative study published in Frontiers in Psychology (PMC/NCBI)^※, which interviewed mainland Chinese PhD students at HKU and other Hong Kong institutions, found respondents' motivations for coming to Hong Kong centred on "an internationalised academic experience" and "an English-medium academic environment." Combined with the absence of a hard cap on non-local places and strong competition for Hong Kong PhD fellowships, these factors together shape an RPg population heavily concentrated among mainland students.

# What effect does a mainland-majority graduate school have on lab staffing and supervisor ratios?

Mainland students form a large majority within RPg, which at the lab level means that the postgraduate teams in many STEM research groups are made up almost entirely of mainland students; the working language of group meetings, paper discussions, and day-to-day communication is sometimes predominantly Putonghua, even where formal academic requirements are in English. The 2023 qualitative study cited above^※ documented mainland PhD students' lab adaptation: "physical proximity was the main way social networks formed, with most friendships developing within the research group" — a pattern that reinforces self-clustering of mainland-student communities within labs.

On supervisor ratios, according to HKU's 2023/24 annual report^※, HKU had approximately 5,411 academic and professional staff (headcount) against approximately 4,134 enrolled RPg students in 2023/24 — a ratio of roughly 1 staff member to 0.76 RPg students (i.e., fewer than one RPg student per staff member). This figure, however, mixes administrative and professional staff into the denominator; the number of professors actually supervising research students is smaller, and HKU has not published a department-by-department breakdown of RPg students per supervisor. A Times Higher Education report^※ quotes a department head at a Hong Kong university as saying taught postgraduate programmes had "too many mainland Chinese students," and calling for "more effort... put into recruiting international students, especially from Belt and Road countries." This is presented as attributed to the source — an internal observation by university management — and this article does not adjudicate it.

# What substantive effects does the concentration of mainland students have on HKU's academic ecosystem?

At the level of academic ecosystem, several perspectives are presented side by side, without adjudication:

Research-output perspective: Mainland undergraduate graduates generally have strong training in mathematics and laboratory methods; some of HKU's STEM departments, after admitting a high-calibre mainland student cohort, show corresponding results in international-journal publication volume and quality. HKU's 2023/24 annual report^※ shows a total of 4,134 enrolled RPg students university-wide — a substantial pool of research labour.

Language and cultural-ecosystem perspective: The qualitative study cited above^※ found that PhD students from mainland northern provinces reported greater difficulty communicating in Cantonese — "when you talk to local people, sometimes they don't understand you, but they still tend to prefer speaking Cantonese" (as stated by a respondent identified as Jianing) — while students from Guangdong reported fewer such difficulties. This linguistic stratification indicates the "mainland students" category is not internally homogeneous; this article states this without drawing a conclusion.

Diversity perspective: A Times Higher Education report^※ quotes remarks attributed to Mr. Gerry Postiglione, professor emeritus at HKU: "Harvard doesn't insist on 80 per cent of its students coming from Boston" — a statement made in the context of the potential risk of Hong Kong universities relying too heavily on a single source region. A department head at the Chinese University of Hong Kong is reported to have stated publicly that the department had "too many mainland students" and needed to "put more effort into recruiting international students, especially from Belt and Road countries." These quotations are presented side by side, attributed to their sources, and do not represent this article's position.

Admissions-strategy perspective: According to a Times Higher Education report^※, scholar Ka Ho Mok points to US-China geopolitical tension, rising visa barriers at Western universities, and parental concerns about children "going far from home" as factors driving demand from high-achieving mainland applicants for Hong Kong institutions; Hong Kong's English-medium academic environment and geographic proximity make it a relatively distinctive option.

# How might UGC policy affect the future trajectory?

According to the 2025 Policy Address and the corresponding UGC announcement^※, the government is progressively expanding RPg-funded places to 7,200 per academic year (from 5,595), and expanding the HKPFS quota to 400; according to the government's 2024 Legislative Council reply^※, the non-local undergraduate admission cap will rise further from 40% to 50% starting 2025/26 — a policy primarily targeted at the undergraduate level, where TPg expansion room was already comparatively unrestricted. If the expanded RPg quota continues to be weighted toward leading institutions such as HKU, and the international scope of HKPFS recruitment sees no structural change, the mainland-student share of over 90% within RPg is expected to persist.

At the TPg level, constrained by admissions resources and faculty size, purely numerical growth will eventually reach a ceiling; some departments have begun discussing diversification of the student intake. A Times Higher Education report^※ documents Belt and Road scholarships and Southeast Asian recruitment being mentioned as a possible direction for structural adjustment — but as of the 2025/26 academic year, this trend has not yet appeared as a shift in proportions within HKU's official published data.