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

Unofficial-History section · Module 16. This piece is a structural data analysis. It states only traceable official figures and juxtaposed viewpoints; it makes no value judgment and takes no side. Politically sensitive contested events are handled per §6.2 as link-only.

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

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# How Many of HKU's Postgraduates Come From the Mainland? A Data Overview

HKU (The University of Hong Kong) 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 across the university stood at 45,303, of whom 20,366 (45.0%) were TPg and 4,834 (10.7%) were RPg. Non-local students numbered 25,051 in total, 55.3% of total headcount, 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 proportions are the highest in the years for which data is available (basis: HKU Quick Stats, 2025/26 enrolment).

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# How Has This Proportion Changed Over the Past Five Years?

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

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

The table shows that the TPg mainland share rose by roughly 14.6 percentage points cumulatively over five years, and the RPg mainland share rose by roughly 8.5 percentage points. Both curves rise monotonically, with no year of notable decline (data basis: HKU's annual reports and Quick Stats for each year, all headcount enrolment figures).

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# Why Has TPg Expanded So Quickly?

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 Times Higher Education report^※, HKU's taught-postgraduate intake "nearly doubled between 2018/19 and 2024/25, growing about 14% 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 — especially self-financing taught programmes — have historically not been subject to the same cap. According to the HKSAR government's 2024 Legislative Council reply (LCQ4)^※, "postgraduate programmes generally do not have a cap on non-local student places," which created institutional room for TPg's rapid expansion. Rising demand from mainland students for one-year master's programmes in Hong Kong over the same period is the direct source driving this numerical growth.

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# Why Do Mainland Students Concentrate So Heavily in Taught Master's Programmes?

Behind the numerical rise is a set of overlapping push and pull factors; multiple sources point to broadly the same few drivers:

Programme-length efficiency. Most of HKU's taught master's programmes are one-year full-time, saving a year of time and living costs compared with the two-year master's programmes common on the mainland and in the West. For students who want to obtain a qualification quickly and return to the mainland job market or apply for a PhD, this "time calculus" is a direct draw.

An alternative outlet from admissions and competitive pressure. According to a 2024 Young Post report^※, some mainland students have attributed their turn toward Hong Kong universities in part to "avoiding gaokao competition" and "being deterred from the US amid US-China tensions"; according to a 2025 Times Higher Education report^※, scholar Ka Ho Mok notes that rising visa barriers at Western universities and parental concerns about sending children far away to Europe or America have pushed a segment of high-achieving mainland applicants toward Hong Kong, which is geographically and culturally closer. This is presented as attributed to its sources; this piece does not adjudicate the relative weight of each factor.

Qualification recognition and household-registration convenience. The mainland Ministry of Education classifies full-time taught master's degrees from Hong Kong universities under the "returned overseas students" category; graduates can use their qualification and the associated Certificate of Study Abroad to apply for household registration (hukou) in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen — this institutional recognition gives a Hong Kong master's degree tangible, cashable value in the mainland job and hukou markets (this is a summary of policy as compiled by mainland study-abroad service organisations, an operational-level generalisation; specific hukou rules vary by locality and year).

A pathway to work in Hong Kong. Upon graduation, taught-master's graduates are immediately eligible to apply under the Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG), allowing them to stay in Hong Kong to job-hunt before deciding whether to remain (see "After Graduation" below). Short duration, a route to stay in Hong Kong, and mainland recognition together make the one-year Hong Kong master's a product of highly concentrated demand — this also explains why TPg's mainland share is even more extreme than RPg's. On the adaptation tensions around language and culture, see the overview welcome.md and the piece on organisational networks mainland-student-associations-and-networks.md.

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# What Are the Structural Reasons Behind RPg's High Proportion?

Unlike TPg, RPg (research master's and PhD) places are mainly funded through government-subsidised quotas rather than tuition revenue. According to the UGC's 2023 statement responding to the Policy Address^※, the government is gradually increasing publicly funded RPg places from 5,595 to 7,200 per academic year, while simultaneously raising the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme (HKPFS) quota to 400. These fellowships are open globally and are strongly attractive to applicants from top mainland universities.

RPg's high mainland share is closely tied to this attractiveness: HKU's RPg programmes use English-medium instruction and academic norms, the stipend (roughly HK$13,000–18,450 a month for RPg students) is competitive for mainland PhD candidates, and HKU has consistently ranked within the global top 30 in the QS World University Rankings. A 2023 qualitative study published in Frontiers in Psychology (via PMC/NCBI)^※ interviewed mainland PhD students at HKU and other Hong Kong universities and found that respondents' motivations for going to Hong Kong centred on "an internationalised academic experience" and "an English-medium academic environment"; the absence of a hard cap on non-local places, together with intense competition for Hong Kong PhD fellowships, together shape a RPg population heavily concentrated in mainland students.

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# What Effect Does a Mainland-Majority Graduate School Have on Lab Staffing and Supervisor Ratios?

With mainland students an outright majority of RPg, at the lab level this means: research groups in STEM disciplines are often composed almost entirely of mainland students, and the language of group meetings, paper discussions, and day-to-day communication is sometimes predominantly Mandarin, even where formal academic requirements are in English. The 2023 qualitative study cited above^※ documents mainland PhD students' lab adaptation: "physical proximity is the primary way social networks form, with most friendships forming within the research group," which further reinforces the self-clustering of mainland-student communities within labs.

On supervisor ratios, according to HKU's 2023/24 annual report^※, HKU had about 5,411 academic and professional staff (headcount) and about 4,134 enrolled RPg students (2023/24), giving a staff-to-student ratio of roughly 1:0.76 (i.e., fewer than one RPg student per academic staff member) — but this figure mixes administrative and professional staff into the denominator, so the actual number of professors who supervise research students is smaller; HKU has also not published department-by-department data on the number of RPg students per supervisor. A Times Higher Education report^※ quotes the head of a department at a Hong Kong university saying the taught postgraduate programme has "too many mainland students," and calling for "more effort to be put into recruiting international students, particularly from Belt and Road countries." This is presented as an internal observation from university management, attributed to its source; this piece does not adjudicate it.

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# What Substantive Effects Does the Concentration of Mainland Students Have on HKU's Academic Ecosystem?

At the level of the academic ecosystem, multiple viewpoints are juxtaposed below:

Research-output viewpoint: Mainland undergraduates generally have strong training in mathematics and experimental work, and some of HKU's STEM departments, after admitting high-calibre mainland students, have shown this reflected in the volume and quality of publications in international journals. HKU's official 2023/24 annual report^※ shows RPg enrolment reaching 4,134 across the university, a substantial research workforce.

Language and cultural-ecology viewpoint: The qualitative study cited above^※ found that PhD students from mainland provinces in the north face greater difficulty communicating in Cantonese — "when you talk with locals, sometimes they don't understand, but they still tend to speak in Cantonese" (stated by interviewee Jianing) — whereas students from Guangdong province face fewer such barriers. This linguistic stratification indicates that the "mainland students" group is not internally homogeneous — this piece states the finding and takes no position.

Diversification viewpoint: A Times Higher Education report^※ quotes HKU professor emeritus Mr. Gerry Postiglione as saying, "Harvard doesn't insist on getting 80% of its students from Boston" — used in context to point to the potential risk of Hong Kong universities' over-reliance on a single source. A department head at The Chinese University of Hong Kong publicly stated that the department has "too many mainland students" and needs to "put more effort into recruiting international students, particularly from Belt and Road countries." The above quotations are juxtaposed as attributed to their sources and do not represent this piece's position.

Admissions-strategy viewpoint: According to a Times Higher Education report^※, scholar Ka Ho Mok notes that US-China geopolitical tension, rising visa barriers at Western universities, and parental concern about children going "far from home" have driven demand from high-achieving mainland applicants for Hong Kong universities; Hong Kong's English-medium academic environment and geographic convenience make it a relatively distinctive option.

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# Is HKU an Isolated Case, or a Microcosm of Hong Kong as a Whole?

Zooming out, HKU's graduate-school "mainlandisation" is not unique to one university but a facet of a Hong Kong-wide wave of postgraduate expansion. According to a 2025 Times Higher Education report^※, the share of total enrolment in UGC-funded programmes has fallen from about 66% in 2018/19 to about 61% in 2023/24 — with the gap filled mainly by self-financing programmes, in which postgraduates make up the bulk; the same report records that the number of private universities in Hong Kong has "quadrupled" over seven years, reflecting a structural shift of the higher-education system as a whole toward self-financing and toward postgraduate education.

The pace of postgraduate expansion differs slightly across universities but points in the same direction: according to the same report^※, CUHK's postgraduate enrolment grew about 5% and 8% in 2023/24 and 2024/25 respectively, while HKU's taught-postgraduate intake nearly doubled between 2018/19 and 2024/25. The simultaneous concentration of the student body toward mainland origin has also prompted reflection within management: according to that report^※, Alan Cheung, head of CUHK's Department of Educational Administration and Policy, stated directly that his department has "too many mainland students" and argued for directing more recruitment resources toward international students "from Belt and Road countries"; HKU professor emeritus Mr. Postiglione likewise used the phrase "Harvard doesn't insist on getting 80% of its students from Boston" to flag the potential risk of over-reliance on a single source. Both quotations are juxtaposed as attributed to their source and point to a structural issue common across Hong Kong, not unique to HKU; this piece does not adjudicate it. On undergraduate-level expansion and spillover effects such as housing, see also, in the same module, numbers-and-policy.md.

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# The Economics of the One-Year Master's: Who Is Paying for the Expansion?

One institutional root of TPg's ability to expand unconstrained by the non-local-student place cap is that the great majority of these programmes are self-financing — they do not draw on government-subsidised local-student places, and running costs are covered by tuition. This attribute turns TPg from "a question of allocating subsidised resources" into "a question of responding to market demand," and also makes it a substantial source of revenue for the university.

According to HKU's official taught-postgraduate fee page^※, tuition for taught programmes is set individually by programme and department, with local and non-local students charged the same self-financing rate (unlike the differential pricing for government-subsidised undergraduate programmes); total tuition for one-year master's programmes generally falls in the six-figure Hong Kong dollar range, and is especially high in popular fields such as business, finance, and data science. For the great majority of mainland students, who hold non-local status, this expense is paid entirely out of pocket, forming the direct financial support for TPg's expansion. According to a Times Higher Education report^※, the rising share of self-financing programmes in total higher-education enrolment across Hong Kong is precisely this "tuition-driven expansion" logic playing out at the system level. In other words, TPg's mainland share approaching 95% is both a demand-side result (an influx of mainland students) and a supply-side result (self-financing expansion with no hard cap) — the two sides are tightly coupled in the one-year master's as a product.

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# After Graduation: IANG, Seven-Year Permanent Residency, and Mainland Household Registration

Downstream of graduate-school "mainlandisation" is a stay-or-leave pathway that the institutional system has opened up, and this is a key piece for understanding why demand remains persistently high. According to the Hong Kong Immigration Department's Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates (IANG)^※, non-local graduates who complete a full-time undergraduate or higher programme in Hong Kong may apply to stay without first securing employment, and are typically granted a 24-month visa "limited to the stay period, without other stay conditions," which is subsequently renewed on a "2 years + 2 years + 3 years" pattern; after seven years of ordinarily continuous residence in Hong Kong, they may apply for Hong Kong permanent residency.

The scale of use of this pathway is already considerable. According to the HKSAR government's 2025 Legislative Council reply (LCQ19)^※, as of end-April 2025, IANG had cumulatively received 177,567 applications and approved 172,043; in 2024 alone, new applications reached 26,973, with 25,475 approved (2023 saw 27,295 applications and 26,089 approvals). The government has also extended the arrangement to graduates of Greater Bay Area campuses jointly run by mainland and Hong Kong universities, with 2,825 such applications approved as of April 2025. The IANG population is overwhelmingly recent non-local graduates, mirroring the mainland-majority structure of the postgraduate expansion described above. This pathway also spills over to the family level: according to the same Legislative Council reply^※, approvals for IANG dependant (spouse and minor children) visas rose from 4,702 in 2023 to 6,600 in 2024 — meaning that "one person stays, the whole family follows" has become substantial in the data, further amplifying the practical value of holding a Hong Kong master's qualification.

The other end of the stay-or-return choice is equally unobstructed: the mainland Ministry of Education classifies full-time taught master's degrees from Hong Kong universities under the returned-overseas-students category, and recent graduates can use their qualification to apply for household registration in first-tier cities (a summary of policy as compiled by mainland study-abroad service organisations; specific rules vary by locality and year). "Stay in Hong Kong and renew toward permanent residency, or return to the mainland with a recognised qualification and household-registration eligibility" — this pathway, with an exit at both ends, forms the institutional foundation for persistently high demand for the one-year Hong Kong master's, and connects HKU graduate school's enrolment figures to the larger board of talent mobility between the two places.

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# How Will UGC Policy Affect Future Trends?

According to the 2025 Policy Address and the corresponding UGC announcement^※, the government is gradually expanding RPg-funded places to 7,200 per academic year (up from 5,595) and expanding the HKPFS quota to 400; according to the government's 2024 Legislative Council reply^※, starting in 2025/26 the cap on non-local undergraduate places will be raised further, from 40% to 50% — this policy is mainly aimed at the undergraduate level, since room for TPg expansion was already generous. If the expanded RPg quota continues to tilt toward top institutions such as HKU, and the international recruitment scope of HKPFS sees no structural change, the mainland share of over 90% in RPg is expected to continue.

At the TPg level, constrained by admissions resources and faculty size, sheer numerical expansion will sooner or later hit a ceiling; some departments have already begun discussing diversification of student sources. The Times Higher Education report^※ records that Belt and Road scholarships and Southeast Asian recruitment have been mentioned as directions for structural adjustment — but as of the 2025/26 academic year, this trend has not yet appeared as a proportional change in HKU's official public data.

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