Hong Kong universities suspend student exchanges

Hundreds of mainland and international exchange students will not be coming to Hong Kong after three more universities revealed recently that incoming exchange programmes had been cancelled amid the ongoing anti-government protests, writes Chan Ho-him for the South China Morning Post.

Among the eight publicly funded universities in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said last month that exchange students would not be joining in the coming semester. On Friday 17 January, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Baptist University and the Education University of Hong Kong confirmed they had taken similar action.

Baptist and Polytechnic universities started the second term last week after suffering damage to campus facilities last year when protesters occupied the campus. The remaining four, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), as well as the City University of Hong Kong (CityU), Lingnan University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, made it clear their incoming exchange programmes would go on, even as HKU and CityU warned of a decline in the number of inbound exchange students.
Full report on the South China Morning Post site