CUHK Tuition Fees, Scholarships and Financial Aid

Module: 02 Admissions · Sub-file: Tuition Fees / Scholarships and Financial Aid Last updated: 28 September 2026 · All amounts in Hong Kong dollars (HK$). This article covers local and non-local undergraduate tuition fees, hostel fees, admission scholarships of all kinds, and government financial assistance at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Shatin campus. Tuition figures date extremely quickly, so each is tagged with the academic year it applies to; always check the latest official announcement. The current academic year is 2026/27 (HK$47,000 for local students, HK$214,000 for new non-local students), with 2025/26 and 2027/28 shown alongside for comparison.

CUHK's money can be split into two currents flowing in opposite directions: one is what students pay in (tuition, hostel fees), the other is what the University pays out / the government subsidises in (scholarships, government assistance, loans). For local students these two currents very nearly cancel out — government subsidies keep tuition extremely low. Non-local students pay almost the full cost themselves, and the steep increases from 2025 have pushed "how much does it cost to study in Hong Kong" back onto the discussion table. This article takes the micro view: how much an individual student pays, and how much they can get back. For the macro financial mechanics — how UGC funding is calculated, how surpluses from self-financing programmes are booked — see Module 08, Tuition Fees and Self-Financing Programme Finances.

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# 1. Tuition Fees: barely moving for local students, a three-year leap for non-local students

# 1. Local undergraduate tuition — frozen for a quarter-century, then nudged up over three years from 2025

Local students at CUHK are enrolled in UGC-funded programmes, whose tuition is set centrally by the government and has long sat far below the actual cost of provision. According to the Government press release (20 June 2024)^※, tuition at UGC-funded universities will rise by an average of 5.5% a year across three academic years, 2025/26 to 2027/28:

A note: the freeze is often dated in popular accounts to "1996/97" or "from 2001", and press wording varies; the official position is that tuition has been frozen since the 1997/98 academic year. The core fact is consistent — this is a sum of money that has not moved in nearly thirty years. CUHK undergraduate tuition is also listed on the CUHK Admissions Office "Fees" page^※.

# 2. Non-local / international undergraduate tuition — first increase in seven years, the steepest of the eight universities

Non-local students (international students, self-financing mainland Chinese students and so on) are the contrast: they take the same courses but pay almost the full cost themselves, and 2025 brought the first increase in seven years — and the largest yet.

According to a 14 January 2025 report in HK01^※, in January 2025 Hong Kong's eight universities raised non-local undergraduate tuition across the board for the first time, by between 6.3% and 22.8%; CUHK went from HK$145,000 to HK$178,000, a rise of about 22.8% — the largest of the eight. The University said this was its first adjustment in seven years, intended to address inflation.

# 3. One dinner, two prices: the local/non-local gap

Stack the two tables together and the gap is stark: same courses, same professors, same campus, yet a local student pays 44,500 in 2025/26 and a non-local student pays 178,000 — roughly 4 times as much. By the 2026 intake, the non-local figure of 214,000 is almost 4.8 times the local 44,500. That gap is precisely the weight of the words "UGC-funded": for local students, more than nine-tenths of the cost is paid on their behalf from the public purse, while non-local students must make it up themselves (and are the first to have rising costs passed on to them).

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# 2. Hostel Fees and Other Costs

• Hostel fees: CUHK runs a college system, and hostel fees vary by college and room type. Some of the newer colleges founded after 2006 are full-residence with communal dining, offering a hostel place for the whole programme plus a communal dining culture, at correspondingly higher cost; older colleges generally charge less but have fierce competition for places. Exact fees are published each year by each college — check the college pages (for the college system, see Module 10, ../10-colleges/README.md). Take one college as an example: according to the United College 2025/26 notice to freshmen applying for hostel places^※, a standard place at United College cost about HK$17,182 in 2025/26, plus a hostel residents' association fee of HK$40 and a hostel deposit of HK$1,000; places converted into two- to three-person rooms cost less. Across colleges, annual undergraduate hostel fees generally fall in the range of HK$12,000 to 27,000 (excluding higher-end accommodation such as the International Student Hall and medical student hostels run by professional schools). A single year in one college's hostel amounts to between a quarter and three-fifths of a local student's entire annual tuition — a reminder that accommodation weighs on a local student's total spending no less than tuition itself.
• Miscellaneous fees / caution money: Non-local tuition is normally paid in two instalments a year, one per semester; on the 2026 intake figure (HK$214,000 a year), that is about HK$107,000 per semester. Other deposits, students' union fees and sundries are as published on the CUHK Admissions Office "Fees" page^※.
• Rough total outlay: Adding tuition to one standard hostel place, a local student in 2025/26 spent about HK$61,700 a year (tuition 44,500 + hostel fee about 17,182); a non-local student (tuition 178,000 + hostel fee) came close to HK$195,000. Converting to current 2026/27 tuition (47,000 local, 214,000 for new non-local students) and estimating the hostel fee on the previous year's basis, that is about HK$64,200 for a local student and about HK$231,000 for a new non-local student — before books, living costs and flights. This rough calculation explains why non-local students almost always need to stack the admission scholarships or government scholarships described below on top, just to bring total spending back to the same order of magnitude as a local student's.

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# 3. Admission Scholarships (money going out)

Most CUHK admission scholarships require no separate application — the University assesses eligibility automatically on the basis of admission results.

# 1. University Admission Scholarships

According to the CUHK Admissions Office^※, University Admission Scholarships awarded to local JUPAS students range from a one-off minimum of HK$8,000 to HK$699,500 (full tuition paid in instalments, plus a one-off study allowance and an overseas/local exchange scholarship). No application is needed; the University identifies eligible local students after admission and notifies them.

# 1b. Fenghuang Scholarship (new in 2026)

According to the CUHK press release announcing its strategic plan on 6 August 2026^※, CUHK launched the "Fenghuang Scholarship" in 2026 for students who achieve outstanding results in local and overseas public examinations, offering scholarships and overseas exchange opportunities, with the aim of attracting top students with an international outlook and capacity for innovation. As of 28 September 2026, no public details of the amount, number of places or whether a separate application is required have appeared; whether it can be stacked with the admission scholarships above also awaits an announcement from the Admissions Office. For the strategic background, see A Look at CUHK's 2026–2030 Strategic Plan.

# 2. Vice-Chancellor's Scholarships for Excellence

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

# 3. Admission scholarships for mainland gaokao students ("top-scorer" scholarships)

CUHK offers mainland gaokao students several tiers of admission scholarship, with no separate application — assessment is automatic on the basis of the admission score (excluding bonus points). According to CUHK's simplified-Chinese undergraduate admissions site^※:

Each tier of scholarship generally carries additional hard requirements (such as a minimum score in the English component) and is granted only for the duration of study, for a maximum of four years. What is popularly called the "top-scorer scholarship" corresponds to the Full Scholarship tier.

# 4. Admission scholarships for non-local / international students

Non-local students face the steepest tuition increases, and CUHK's response is likewise to "pay out as fees go up". According to the CUHK Admissions Office Admission Scholarships page^※, admission scholarships for new non-local and international undergraduates are tiered by academic and non-academic performance and may cover 25%, 50% or 100% of tuition, with the top tier adding a living allowance of up to HK$66,000 a year — the same allowance amount as the mainland top-scorer scholarship, both reflecting the University's single top-standard living grant. Assessment also requires no separate application: the admissions committee assesses candidates automatically from academic results, interview performance and the overall quality of the application, and those selected are told alongside their offer.

At 2026 intake non-local tuition of HK$214,000, a student who receives the 100% full scholarship pays no tuition at all, plus a HK$66,000 living allowance; even the 25% tier brings the year's tuition payable down to about HK$160,500, below the standard non-local tuition for that year. In other words, there is a layer of scholarship discount between the "official sticker price" of non-local tuition and what most non-local students actually pay — though the size of that discount varies from person to person, and only a limited share receive the top tier.

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# 4. Government Financial Assistance, Loans and Government Scholarships (public money going out)

# 1. Tertiary Student Finance Scheme (TSFS) and Non-means-tested Loan Scheme (NLSFT)

Local students in financial difficulty have an additional public backstop, mainly through two channels run by the Hong Kong government's Student Finance Office (SFAS):

• Tertiary Student Finance Scheme (TSFS): means- and asset-tested, providing eligible local students on full-time funded tertiary programmes with a combination of a grant (not repayable) plus a low-interest loan, which can cover tuition, study expenses and living costs.
• Non-means-tested Loan Scheme (NLSFT): no means test; any local student on a full-time funded programme may apply for a loan to cover tuition, repaid with interest after graduation.

These are territory-wide Hong Kong government schemes, not specific to CUHK; exact amounts and interest rates are as announced by the Student Finance Office. Popular discussion of "student loans turning into student debt" and "graduating into debt" belongs to the low-credibility archive and points to the wild-history pages; this article makes no factual judgement on it.

# 2. HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund — open to both local and non-local students

Unlike the two loan/grant schemes above, the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund provides cash awards that need not be repaid, and both local and non-local students (including international and non-local undergraduates at CUHK) are eligible to apply, subject to nomination by their institution. According to the Education Bureau's official explanation^※, the Fund comprises five categories of award:

According to a Government press release (23 April 2026)^※, in the 2025/26 academic year the Fund awarded about HK$210 million to more than 6,600 students; the Belt and Road Scholarship was granted for the first time that year to 150 students from 33 Belt and Road countries, with its quota raised by 50% from the 2024/25 academic year. Notably, the Scholarships for Outstanding Performance provide twice as much to non-local students (80,000) as to local students (40,000) — a direction consistent with the local/non-local undergraduate tuition gap, where one group pays almost nothing and the other almost everything, and a further top-up by the government for outstanding non-local students beyond tuition.

Unlike the CUHK internal scholarships above, the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund is coordinated by the Student Finance Office and requires institutional nomination, so CUHK students should watch for internal application deadlines (generally earlier than the government's official deadline), with specifics as announced by CUHK's student finance / international offices.

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# Data Reliability and Gaps

• Official hard data: the three-year local tuition table (42,100 → 44,500 → 47,000 → 49,500), the 5.5% annual increase, the 1997/98 freeze, the cost recovery ratio of 12.5% → 13.4%, CPI +40%, the non-local figures of 178,000 / 214,000, the Vice-Chancellor's Scholarships at 8 × 50,000, admission scholarships of 8,000–699,500, non-local admission scholarships of 25%/50%/100% of tuition plus a living allowance of up to 66,000, the thresholds and HK$66,000 allowance for each tier of the mainland scholarships, the five categories and amounts of the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund and its 2025/26 figures of HK$210 million / more than 6,600 beneficiaries, and the Belt and Road Scholarship's 150 students from 33 countries — all are taken directly from government press releases, Education Bureau official pages and CUHK's official admissions site.
• Media compilations (the eight-university comparison): taken from HK01 and Dot Dot News, second-hand compilations, with exact figures for individual institutions as published by those institutions; some (such as HKU) are tiered by faculty, and the table lists only verifiable figures.
• College hostel fees: the United College figure of 17,182 and the range of 12,000–27,000 come from that college's official hostel notice and are illustrative only; the other eight colleges publish their fees separately, and these fluctuate year by year, so they are not listed individually to avoid becoming out of date.
• Where no specific figures are given: TSFS / NLSFT amounts fluctuate annually and are not specific to CUHK, so this article describes only the mechanisms and does not list easily outdated figures, expressly noting that the official pages govern.

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