On Thursday, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) declared that it will keep up its efforts to improve the balance of students from other nations and to broaden the diversity of students.
According to the institution, the number of newly admitted non-local students increased from 900 to over 1,200 this year. The mainland accounted for around half of the non-local student body.
Professor Bennett Yim, director of undergraduate admissions and international student exchange, said there were fewer applications from Europe and North America than from other regions.
"Mainland students, being much closer to Hong Kong, will have a much better understanding of the University of Hong Kong, about what we can offer. I think it's not surprising to see that quite a lot of our students are actually coming from mainland China," he said.
"Our goal is always to continue to increase the diversity. And so right now, we are putting a lot of effort, going to everywhere in the world to try to promote Hong Kong."
Asked about instances of students securing their admission to HKU with fake degrees, vice-president Ian Holliday said he is not worried that similar situations will happen again.
"We now have very robust procedures for identifying fake qualifications. We know what to look for in URLs. We know what to look for in terms of certificates that are sent to us," he said.
"We have a team of kind of forensic experts who are confident in unearthing any of the questionable qualifications that we receive. We feel that every student that we ultimately do admit to HKU does merit, does deserve a place here."
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