Overview

The self-financing sector is an integral part of the post-secondary education in Hong Kong. It plays an important role in broadening the opportunities and choices for further education, thereby providing quality, diversified and flexible pathways with multiple entry and multiple exit points for school leavers. The sector also helps diversify our higher education sector and is conducive to the development of education service and Hong Kong’s further development as a regional education hub.

By responding quickly to changing society needs, the self-financing sector plays a pivotal role in upgrading the quality of the human resources in Hong Kong by offering a wide array of continuing and professional education and lifelong learning opportunities for our workforce and the community at large.

The Government supports the parallel development of the publicly-funded and self-financing post-secondary education sectors. The self-financing sector has witnessed significant growth in the past decades from having around 40 programmes in the 2001/02 academic year to around 766 in the 2023/24 academic year.

Quality is of utmost importance to the healthy and sustainable development of the self-financing post-secondary sector. All education institutions providing post-secondary programmes are subject to the regulation of relevant ordinances.

A basket of support measures have been implemented to support the quality and sustainable development of the self-financing post-secondary sector.