Substantial portions of the running costs of a university are actually fixed costs like the depreciation of the campus facilities as well as the related operation and maintenance costs. The incremental costs for supporting the increase in non local students are mainly the payroll costs for additional teaching staff. Hence, most of the $200K tuition fees for a non local student are in fact the profit to the universitiy.
The number of non local students have been increasing in the past few years but the government has not increased the allocation of its education funding to university education (from primary and secondary education).

From UGC statistics: -

https://cdcf.ugc.edu.hk/stat/index.html#/topic/grants

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I thought what matters most for the rise in ranking is the quality and quantity of research. Has research funding been increased by the government? I'm not sure.
With the influx of non local students who pay full tuition fees, universities in HK are grabbing this economic opportunity and thriving on this income stream. And yes, it also helps push the ranking higher on QS.

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下？ 不是Stanford , MIT, Caltel 之類嗎？

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These top US universities may have an edge over Tsinghua in science but definitely not engineering.
Will top students choose to study mechanical or civil engineering in US when there are limited opportunities in heavy industries or infrastructure projects?

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https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/engineering
US News 的ranking, Top 10差不多都是中国大学，清华第一。Sg 2间，HK 1间。

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好多年前，有個清華理科教授來城大短期工作，同我講城大考試卷仲簡單過清華普通學生練習題。

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Top US students prefer to get a job on Wall Street or an AI job in big tech companies.
China engineers can fill up 10 football fields while US engineers cannot fill up a conference room (quoted from Tim Cook). This may be exaggerated but you can see the big difference.

Situation is similar in HK as the addmission scores for engineering programmes (except for those AI related) are very low, both JUPAS and local Non JUPAS.

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埋个正正就係, 當地科研同大学, 目标应該係為當地社会服务, 还是為究研而究研? (没有对錯, 策略方向问題).
E.g.,
- US基本上己將資源集中在高科技上, 其它都唔係piority, 所以, 高科技勁, 其它非高科技反而唔係好得, 只有二三流水平.
- HK, 基本上係冇高科技 (土地/人工相對如深圳貴), 强項係金融服务, 但本地大学, 卻投入大量資源, 好似以前, 間間大學, CS dept得二三十人, 但依家, 间间都成百人, 重要绝大部份都係非本地生, 畢业后又冇本地机会, 个个唔返深圳都去海外, 為乜?

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所以, ranking 既野, 冇啱定錯, 好定唔好, 简乜parameters同weight幾大, 其实已反向定了答案.

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