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Education

Fund, setting up a $3 billion, three-year Research Matching Grant Scheme, introducing three new fellowship schemes for researchers, reviewing the RGC's mode of operations, streamlining and rationalising the RGC's three existing collaborative research funding schemes, setting up an internal government liaison group to improve coordination among different funding bodies and adopting a common researcher identity for grant applications.

The government is also following up the recommendations of the Task Force on Review of Self-financing Post-secondary Education, which include the need to set a clear policy on the development of self-financing post-secondary education, more sharply differentiating the positioning of associate degree and higher diploma qualifications, strengthening support for self-financing post-secondary institutions and students and forging a reformed and unified regulatory framework.

Under the Ministry of Education's Scheme for Admission of Hong Kong Students to Mainland Higher Education Institutions, some Mainland higher education institutions admit Hong Kong students on the basis of their HKDSE Examination results and exempt them from taking the Joint Entrance Examination for Universities on the Mainland. In 2019-20, over 3,500 Hong Kong students applied and about 1,800 were offered places. In 2020-21, the number of participating institutions will increase from 112 to 122 across 21 Mainland provinces and municipalities and one autonomous region.

Increasing Post-secondary Education Opportunities

The government promotes the sustainable development of the self-financing post-secondary sector by providing land and premises at nominal premium and rent, interest-free start-up loans, the $3.52 billion Self-financing Post-secondary Education Fund (SPEF), financial assistance for students, quality assurance subsidies and matching grants.

As at end-2019, about $7.7 billion of start-up loans to post-secondary institutions out of a total $9 billion commitment had been approved, while about $492 million of matching grants had been approved under the seventh Matching Grant Scheme, which ended in July 2019.

The number of publicly funded, senior-year undergraduate places available at UGC-funded universities for sub-degree graduates was increased to 5,000 by 2018-19. This offers more opportunities for such students to obtain a publicly funded degree education and fosters a flexible multi-entry post-secondary education framework.

The SPEF provides the Self-financing Post-Secondary Scholarship Scheme to outstanding students pursuing full-time, locally accredited self-financing sub-degree or undergraduate programmes, and granted $83.6 million in scholarships and awards to 5,237 recipients in 2018-19. The fund also supports worthwhile non-works projects under the Quality Enhancement Support Scheme to enhance the quality of self-financing post-secondary education, and approved a total of more than $23 million in the same academic year for nine projects.

The Study Subsidy Scheme for Designated Professions/Sectors, launched in 2015-16, subsidises. students to pursue designated full-time, locally accredited self-financing undergraduate

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