Tuition Fees and Finances of Self-Financed Programmes: UGC Grants, Non-Local Student Tuition, and Self-Financed Programme Surpluses

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) finances its operations through recurrent grants from the University Grants Committee (UGC) — approximately HK$6,434 million in the 2023/24 academic year, or 48.9% of total income — alongside tuition and course fee revenue of HK$2,928 million (22.3%). For UGC-funded local undergraduates, the annual tuition rose to HK$44,500 from 2025/26, while non-local undergraduate tuition jumped 22.8% that same year to HK$178,000 — roughly a fourfold gap. Meanwhile, self-financed taught postgraduate programmes and the School of Continuing and Professional Studies must pay the University indirect-cost levies of 18% to 36%, governed by a strict ban on cross-subsidising UGC-grant resources.

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# 1. How does the UGC grant actually work?

Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee (UGC) distributes a recurrent block grant to the eight funded universities on a triennial (three-year planning cycle) basis. The allocation is driven by agreed student number targets, level of study, and subject discipline, covering three broad expenditure areas: teaching, research, and professional activities. According to the UGC FAQ page^※, teaching takes roughly 78% of the block grant, research about 20%, and professional activities about 2%. Universities have full autonomy over how the approved total is spent and do not need to seek item-by-item approval.

The current triennium runs from 2025 to 2028. As stated in the Government’s Budget response (February 2025)^※, the approved recurrent grant for the 2025–28 cycle across the sector is HK$68.1 billion, falling short of the institutions’ assessed need of HK$70.9 billion by about HK$2.8 billion (approximately 4%, achieved through a cumulative 2% annual reduction). Additionally, the Government required the eight universities to collectively return HK$4 billion from their General and Development Reserve Fund (GDRF) in the 2025/26 financial year. In 2023/24, CUHK received HK$6,434 million^※ in UGC grant (government subvention), making it the University’s single largest source of income that year.

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# 2. Why was local undergraduate tuition frozen for nearly 30 years?

The tuition fee for local full-time undergraduates was fixed at HK$42,100 per annum from the 1997/98 academic year, remaining unchanged for nearly 27 years. It was not until June 2024 that the Government announced a phased increase over three academic years, reaching HK$49,500 by 2027/28^※:

Government documents explain that the rate-setting target was for tuition to cover 18% of the cost of education; inflation had eroded the actual recovery ratio to around 12.5% after 1997. The administration noted that the Composite Consumer Price Index had risen by a cumulative 40% since 1997/98, describing the adjustment as “moderate.” Notably, the same rate applies to UGC-funded postgraduate programmes (both taught and research), not just undergraduate, and each student pays the fee prevailing in the given academic year rather than being locked into the fee of their intake year.

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# 3. Why is non-local undergraduate tuition four times higher than local fees?

Non-local tuition is a market-based fee set independently by the University; it does not fall under the UGC’s 18% cost-recovery constraint and is benchmarked against financial sustainability and peer norms. For the 2025/26 academic year, CUHK’s annual non-local undergraduate tuition surged 22.8% to HK$178,000^※, the highest percentage increase among all eight UGC-funded institutions that year. CUHK explained that this was “the first adjustment in seven years, to address inflationary pressure.” The fee will rise further in 2026/27 to HK$214,000^※, with an annual increase cap of 3% starting from that cohort.

Below is a comparison of non-local undergraduate tuition for 2025/26 across the main institutions (using the standard annual fee for non-local bachelor’s degrees):

Sources: Dot Dot News (January 2025)^※ and StudyIn HK (2025/26 tuition comparison)^※.

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# 4. How has tuition revenue grown after the non-local quota was raised?

To support the Government’s global talent strategy, the enrolment ceiling for non-local students on UGC-funded programmes was raised from 20% to 40% of local intake, effective from the 2024/25 academic year^※. Across the eight UGC-funded institutions, the first-year intake of non-local undergraduates reached about 17,000, around 23% of local places — still well below the 40% cap, leaving significant room for expansion. A LegCo paper disclosed that in 2023/24 the total number of non-local students at UGC-funded universities was approximately 23,100, of whom about 14,800 were undergraduates (19.9% of local places); roughly 73% came from mainland China, Macao, or Taiwan.

In terms of fee income, an analysis by StudyIn HK^※ estimated that the eight institutions’ combined revenue from self-financed taught postgraduate programmes exceeded HK$12 billion in 2023/24, accounting for about 58% of their total tuition income; non-local tuition across all levels contributed roughly 22.3% of total tuition revenue. CUHK’s own annual report notes that as much as 60% of tuition and course fee income in 2023/24 came from non-UGC-funded (i.e., self-financed) programmes^※, highlighting the dominant financial role of self-financed operations.

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# 5. Who sets tuition for self-financed postgraduate programmes, and how high can it go?

Taught postgraduate programmes are CUHK’s most important source of self-financed revenue. Each faculty sets its own fees, with the Business School’s suite standing out in particular. Taking the 2027 intake as a reference:

Source: CUHK Business School Masters page^※. Fees are stated as “subject to University approval.” Self-financed master’s programmes in other faculties (such as Education or Science) vary widely, typically falling between HK$80,000 and HK$250,000. Overall, CUHK’s self-financed taught postgraduate tuition rose at an average annual rate of about 4.3% between 2019/20 and 2024/25^※, well above Hong Kong’s average inflation rate of roughly 2.1% over the same period.

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# 6. What financial role does the School of Continuing and Professional Studies (CUSCS) play?

The School of Continuing and Professional Studies (CUSCS) was founded in 1965 as the Department of Extramural Studies and took its current name in 2006. It is a wholly self-financed, independently operated unit of CUHK^※ that receives no direct subvention from the University’s recurrent budget. Its tuition income sustains its own operations, and curriculum policy is overseen by the Senate’s Committee on Associate Degrees, Professional and Continuing Education Programmes.

In the 2023/24 academic year, CUSCS offered 73 award-bearing programmes^※ and a large number of general-interest, distance-learning, and corporate training courses across business, information technology, healthcare, languages, creative media, and other fields. Headquartered in Tsim Sha Tsui, it runs four learning centres across Hong Kong. Because CUSCS is self-funded, its fees are not subject to the UGC’s “5.5% per annum” adjustment mechanism but are determined by market supply and demand and cost recovery — associate-degree fees are generally lower than those of regular taught master’s programmes, though they must still comply with the relevant government qualifications framework and any applicable fee caps under subsidy schemes.

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# 7. Where do self-financed programme surpluses go? What is the ban on cross-subsidisation?

The use and oversight of self-financed programme surpluses rank among the University’s most important internal financial controls. According to CUHK Finance Office’s Regulatory Disclosure page^※, the University operates an indirect-cost recovery mechanism for self-financed programmes, levying rates between 18% and 36% (depending on the facilities and level of services used) as compensation for consuming shared resources — campus infrastructure, administration, IT backbone, and the like. The mechanism dates back to 1995 and has been comprehensively standardised since the 2018/19 academic year under the UGC’s Cost Allocation Guidelines for Funded and Non-Funded Activities (CAGs).

The central principle is a ban on cross-subsidisation: a self-financed programme may not draw on UGC-grant resources (the government-funded portion of teaching space, administrative staff, research facilities, etc.) to lower its own costs; conversely, surpluses from self-financed programmes must not be used to subsidise activities that the UGC grant is meant to cover. The Finance Office states flatly: “The University runs self-financed programmes not for profit but as part of its educational responsibility to the community, meeting learning demand at the associate-degree and continuing education levels as a complement to UGC-funded academic provision.”

After the indirect-cost levy is deducted, the net surplus remaining in a faculty or programme account may be used by the relevant academic unit (business school, law school, etc.) for teaching development, student financial assistance, capital investment, and other internal purposes, subject to the University’s financial regulations. Publicly available financial reports do not separately disclose the surpluses of individual self-financed programmes; these sums are consolidated into the University’s “Restricted Funds” or the General and Development Reserve in the overall accounts.

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# Frequently asked questions

Q: What is the tuition fee for The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2025?

A: For local undergraduate and UGC-funded postgraduate students, the annual fee from the 2025/26 academic year is HK$44,500 — a 5.5% rise from the HK$42,100 that had been frozen for nearly 30 years. For non-local undergraduates, the fee jumped 22.8% in the same year to HK$178,000, the steepest increase among the eight UGC-funded institutions. The ratio between the two is roughly 1:4.

Q: How much does CUHK tuition generally cost?

A: CUHK tuition follows three distinct tracks: local UG/PG (UGC-funded) — HK$44,500 per annum in 2025/26, determined uniformly by the Government on a triennial basis; non-local UG — HK$178,000 in 2025/26, rising to HK$214,000 in 2026/27 (with a 3% annual cap from that cohort), priced independently by the University; and self-financed taught postgraduate programmes, where each faculty sets its own fees — sample Business School programmes range from HK$230,000 to HK$605,000 per programme.

Q: What are the postgraduate tuition fees at CUHK?

A: UGC-funded research postgraduate students pay the same rate as undergraduates — HK$44,500 per annum in 2025/26. Self-financed taught postgraduate fees vary enormously: in the Business School, for example, the full-time MBA was around HK$567,000 (2024/25 reference), the MAcc around HK$420,000, and the MSc in Finance around HK$460,000 (all 2027 intake references); self-financed master’s programmes outside the Business School generally fall between HK$80,000 and HK$250,000.

Q: How do scholarships relate to tuition fees at CUHK?

A: This page focuses on the tuition and funding structure: non-local tuition fees form part of faculties’ own income, some of which is complemented by scholarship expenditure, but the specific amounts and application criteria for entry scholarships fall outside the scope of this article. Neither UGC grants nor self-financed programme surpluses may be used to cross-subsidise any purpose beyond scholarships. For details of scholarship amounts and application procedures, please see Tuition, Accommodation, and Entry Scholarships.

Q: After students pay tuition for self-financed programmes, where does the surplus go?

A: Self-financed programmes must pay the University indirect-cost levies at a rate of 18% to 36% (depending on facilities and service levels). The net surplus after this levy belongs to the relevant faculty or programme account and may be used for teaching development, student aid, and other internal purposes within that unit. Crucially, the rules prohibit any backflow or subsidy to activities covered by the UGC grant — the “ban on cross-subsidisation” principle.

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# 8. Three tracks in parallel: a summary of local, non-local, and self-financed student fees

These three tuition tracks operate in parallel on the same campus, but their financial flows are kept strictly separate: the UGC grant sustains local places and basic operations, non-local tuition provides income to faculties and supports scholarship disbursement, and self-financed programmes must cover their own costs while paying indirect-cost levies to the University. Cross-subsidisation among the three tracks is prohibited under existing regulations, creating a financial ecosystem that is at once independent and complementary.

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Further reading: For CUHK’s overall annual financial data (total income HK$13.16 billion, net assets HK$31.56 billion, etc.), see Financial Overview and Endowment Funds.