University Grants Committee

The University Grants Committee (UGC) is appointed by the HKSAR
Chief Executive to advise on the development and funding of higher
education and administer public grants to eight publicly-funded
institutions. It comprises 11 non-local academics, four local academics
and four local professionals and businessmen. Its secretariat is staffed by
civil servants.

When the UGC was established in 1965 to administer grants to two
publicly funded tertiary institutions, there were only 4 100 full-time
equivalent students. With the addition of the Hong Kong Institute of
Education (HKIEd) in 1996-97, the number of UGC-funded institutions
increased to eight and the number of full-time equivalent students
increased to 69 516 (see tertiary education).

The UGC published a report on the review on the development of higher
education in Hong Kong in November 1996. The UGC's
recommendations include the overall student numbers at different levels
during a period of consolidation in growth, the number of non-local
students, the funding of continuing education, the provision of student
hostels, the normative length of undergraduate study, language
proficiency and the target of reducing student unit costs by 10 per cent
by the end of the 1998-2001 triennium without detriment to quality, while
further improving standards and meeting the changing needs of Hong
Kong. The government accepted most of the recommendations in the
review, except on the number of taught post-graduate places. To reduce
student unit costs, the government agreed that half of the annual savings
should be ploughed back into tertiary education for meeting new
expenditure requirements and to encourage special developments,
including areas of excellence.

The UGC plays a major role in monitoring quality assurance in its
institutions. In order to ensure that mechanisms for promoting and
improving the quality of teaching and learning in the institutions are
operating properly, the committee has undertaken a first series of
Teaching and Learning Quality Process Reviews (TLQPR) of its
institutions between January 1996 and April 1997, and is planning to
undertake Management Reviews of the institutions starting in early 1998.

The UGC also conducted a second Research Assessment Exercise in
November 1996, which aimed at assessing the research output
performance of the UGC-funded institutions (except the HKIEd, which
joined the UGC in December 1996). The findings will be used as the basis
for allocating some of the research portion of the institutional recurrent
grant for the 1998-2001 triennium.

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