CUHK Tuition Fees and Scholarships

Module: 02 Admissions · Sub-file: Fees / Scholarships & Financial Aid Last updated: 10 July 2026 · All amounts in Hong Kong dollars (HK$). This article covers The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shatin campus) tuition and hostel fees for local and non-local undergraduates, along with entry scholarships and government funding. Fee figures date quickly — every amount below is tagged with the applicable academic year; always check official publications for the latest. The primary year is 2025/26, with subsequent years listed alongside.

Money at CUHK flows in two opposite directions: one stream is what students pay in (tuition, hostel fees); the other is what the University pays out / the government tops up (scholarships, government grants, loans). For local students the two streams almost cancel out — government subsidisation keeps tuition remarkably low. Non-local students, by contrast, pay almost the full cost out of pocket, and a steep increase starting in 2025 has put "how much does it really cost to study in Hong Kong" firmly back on the discussion table. This article takes the micro view: what an individual student must pay, and what they can get back. The macro mechanisms — how UGC block grants are calculated, how surpluses from self-financing programmes are booked — are covered in Module 08, Fees and Self-Financing Programmes.

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# 1. Tuition fees: local students barely budge, non-local students face a three-year leap

# 1.1 Local undergraduate tuition — frozen for a quarter of a century, then a three-year nudge from 2025

Local undergraduates at CUHK enrol in UGC-funded programmes, with fees set centrally by the government at a level that has long sat far below the actual cost of delivery. According to the government press release (2024-06-20)^※, fees for UGC-funded universities will rise by an average of 5.5% per year over the three academic years 2025/26 to 2027/28:

A note on dates: popular accounts variously describe the freeze as having begun in "1996/97" or "from 2001"; reports differ in their wording. The official line is that the fee was frozen from the 1997/98 academic year. The core fact is the same — this was a sum that went untouched for nearly three decades. The CUHK undergraduate fee is also listed on the CUHK Admissions "Fees" page^※.

# 1.2 Non-local / international undergraduate tuition — first adjustment in seven years, and the biggest of the eight universities

In direct contrast, non-local students (international students, self-financed students from mainland China, etc.) pay for the same programmes almost entirely out of pocket — and 2025 brought their first fee increase in seven years, the steepest of any university in the city.

According to an 18 January 2025 report by HK01^※, January 2025 saw all eight UGC-funded universities raise non-local undergraduate tuition for the first time, with increases ranging from 6.3% to 22.8%. CUHK's fee went from HK$145,000 to HK$178,000, a rise of about 22.8% — the steepest of the eight; the University said this was its first adjustment in seven years, taken to keep pace with inflation.

# 1.3 One dinner, two bills: the local/non-local gap

Lay the two tables side by side and the gap is striking: the same courses, the same professors, the same campus — yet a local student pays HK$44,500 in 2025/26 while a non-local student pays HK$178,000, roughly four times as much. For the 2026 entering cohort, the non-local figure of HK$214,000 is nearly 4.8 times the local HK$44,500. This gap is the weight of the phrase "UGC-funded": more than nine-tenths of a local student's cost is borne by the public purse; non-local students must cover it themselves (and are the first to feel the pass-through of rising costs).

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# 2. Hostel fees and other costs

• Hostel fees: CUHK runs a collegiate system, so hostel fees vary by college and room type. The newer colleges founded after 2006 operate a full-residence, communal-dining model, guaranteeing accommodation and shared meals for all years, at a correspondingly higher cost; the older colleges generally charge less but hostel places are fiercely competitive. Exact fees are published annually by each college, so check the relevant college page (for the collegiate system generally, see Module 10, The Colleges). To take one example: per the United College 2025/26 notice to freshmen applying for hostel places^※, a standard place at United College costs roughly HK$17,182 for 2025/26, plus a hostel association fee of HK$40 and a HK$1,000 deposit; rooms converted to double or triple occupancy are cheaper. Drawing across the colleges, annual undergraduate hostel fees generally fall in the HK$12,000–27,000 range (excluding the costlier tiers such as the international students' hall and the medical-school hostel at the professional faculties). A single year of accommodation at just one college is already worth a quarter to three-fifths of a local student's entire annual tuition — an indication that housing carries almost as much weight as fees in a local student's total outlay.
• Miscellaneous fees / caution money: Non-local tuition is normally payable in two instalments per year; at the 2026-entrant rate of HK$214,000/year, that is about HK$107,000 per semester. Other deposits, student-union fees and the like are as published on the CUHK Admissions "Fees" page^※.
• Rough total cost: Add tuition plus a standard hostel place and the 2025/26 annual outlay for a local student (tuition 44,500 + hostel ~17,182) is about HK$61,700; for a non-local student (tuition 178,000 + hostel) it approaches HK$195,000 — before books, living expenses or flights home. That back-of-envelope sum explains why non-local students almost must stack an entry scholarship or government award on top before their total outlay comes back down to the same order of magnitude as a local student's.

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# 3. Entry scholarships (money the University pays out)

Most of CUHK's entry scholarships require no separate application; the University assesses them automatically on the basis of admission results.

# 3.1 University Admission Scholarships

Per the CUHK Admissions Office^※, University Admission Scholarships for JUPAS local students range from a one-off minimum of HK$8,000 up to HK$699,500 (covering full tuition in instalments, plus a one-off study allowance and an award for overseas/local study exchange). No application is needed: the University identifies eligible local students after admission offers are made and notifies them.

# 3.2 Vice-Chancellor's Scholarships for Excellence

Per the CUHK Admissions Office^※, 8 non-renewable awards of HK$50,000 each are made every year to outstanding new students admitted to any full-time undergraduate programme (regardless of admission route or residency status). Selection weighs both academic and non-academic achievement, including admission grades, first-semester results, language ability, record of leadership and service, and awards received; students are invited by their colleges to compete after the academic year begins.

# 3.3 Entry scholarships for mainland gaokao students ("top-scorer" scholarships)

CUHK runs several tiers of entry scholarships for mainland China candidates taking the gaokao (the national university entrance examination). No separate application is required — awards are assessed automatically on submitted gaokao scores (excluding bonus points). Per the CUHK mainland admissions site (in Simplified Chinese)^※:

Each tier generally carries additional hard requirements (such as a minimum English-language score) and is tenable only during the period of study, for a maximum of four years. The award popularly known as the "top-scorer scholarship" (状元奖学金) corresponds to the full-scholarship tier.

# 3.4 Entry scholarships for non-local / international students

Non-local students face the biggest tuition rises, and CUHK's response has been to hand money out in step with the increases. Per the CUHK Admissions "Admission Scholarships" page^※, entry scholarships for non-local and international undergraduates are tiered by academic and non-academic performance and can cover 25%, 50% or 100% of tuition, with the top tier adding a living allowance of up to HK$66,000 per year — the same figure as the mainland top-scorer scholarship, reflecting a single university-wide ceiling for living support. Assessment is likewise automatic, with no separate application: the admissions committee evaluates applicants on academic grades, interview performance and overall application quality, and successful candidates are told along with their admission offers.

At the 2026-entrant non-local tuition of HK$214,000, a recipient of the 100% award pays zero tuition and receives an extra HK$66,000 living allowance; even the 25% tier pulls the year's effective tuition down to about HK$160,500 — below the standard non-local fee for the same year. In other words, there is already an implicit scholarship discount layered between the "official sticker price" for non-local students and what most of them actually pay — though the discount varies by individual, and only a limited share of students reach the top tier.

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# 4. Government grants, loans and scholarships (money the public purse pays out)

# 4.1 The TSFS and the NLSFT

Local students in financial difficulty have a further public safety net, mainly through two schemes run by the Hong Kong government's Student Finance Office (SFAS):

• The Targeted Subsidy Scheme on Tuition Fees for Subsidised Full-time Tertiary Programmes (TSFS): subject to income and asset assessment, this provides eligible local students on full-time subsidised tertiary programmes with a combination of a grant (not repayable) and a low-interest loan, covering tuition, study expenses and living costs.
• The Non-means-tested Loan Scheme for Full-time Tertiary Students (NLSFT): as the name says, no income test applies; any local full-time student on a subsidised programme may borrow to cover tuition, repaying with interest after graduation.

Both are territory-wide government schemes rather than CUHK-specific; exact amounts and interest rates are as published by the Student Finance Office. Popular chatter about "student loans becoming student debt" or "graduating in the red" belongs in the low-reliability archive and points to the wilder-history pages; this article makes no factual judgment on it.

# 4.2 The HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund — open to local and non-local students alike

Unlike the two schemes above, the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund is a cash prize that does not need to be repaid. Both local and non-local students (including international students and non-local undergraduates at CUHK) are eligible, and all applicants must be nominated by their institution. Per the Education Bureau's official description^※, the Fund comprises five categories:

Per the government press release (2026-04-23)^※, in 2025/26 the Fund distributed a total of about HK$210 million to more than 6,600 students. That year the Belt and Road Scholarship was awarded for the first time to 150 students from 33 countries along the Belt and Road, with quotas increased by 50% from the 2024/25 academic year onward. One detail stands out: the Scholarship for Outstanding Performance gives non-local students twice the local amount (HK$80,000 vs HK$40,000) — a gap running the same direction as local/non-local tuition ("nearly free" vs "almost full price"), another layer of government top-up for gifted non-local students beyond the fee schedule.

Unlike the CUHK-internal scholarships above, the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund is administered by the Student Finance Office and routed through institutional nomination. CUHK students should note the internal application deadline, which generally falls earlier than the government's published official deadline; specific arrangements are announced through CUHK's student financial aid and international affairs offices.

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# Data reliability and gaps

• Official hard data: the local tuition schedule (42,100 → 44,500 → 47,000 → 49,500), the 5.5% average increase, the 1997/98 freeze, the cost recovery ratio of 12.5% → 13.4%, CPI +40%, non-local fees of 178,000 / 214,000, the Vice-Chancellor's Scholarships (8 × 50,000), University Admission Scholarships (8,000–699,500), non-local entry scholarships at 25%/50%/100% of tuition plus up to 66,000 allowance, the mainland scholarship thresholds with the 66,000 allowance, and the five HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund categories with the 2025/26 totals (HK$210 million to over 6,600 students; 150 Belt and Road scholars from 33 countries) — all taken directly from government press releases, Education Bureau pages and CUHK admissions pages.
• Media compilation (the eight-university comparison): drawn from HK01 and Dot Dot News; these are secondary aggregations, and each university's exact figures are as published by that university; some institutions (e.g. HKU) tier fees by faculty, and this table lists only the verifiable figures.
• College hostel fees: the United College figure of HK$17,182 and the HK$12,000–27,000 range come from that college's official housing notice and are illustrative only; the other eight colleges publish their own fees, which move year to year, and they are not individually listed here to avoid going stale.
• Figures not listed: TSFS/NLSFT award amounts because they vary annually and are not CUHK-specific; this article describes the mechanics only, deliberately avoiding amounts that would soon be out of date, and flags official sources as authoritative.

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