Harvard
Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has invited international students worried about being displaced from their course at Harvard University in the United States to consider finishing their studies at one of Hong Kong’s universities instead. Universities in some other places, such as Malaysia and Japan, have put forward similar suggestions.
These events have come at the same time as Hong Kong is considering how to make best use of the site in northern metropolis reserved for university purposes to bolster our role as education hub. That site is right at the heart of our future technology research and development area, and within shouting distance of Shenzhen, the nation’s engineering and manufacturing powerhouse.
Lee’s invitation is a bold step in the right direction, but I suggest we take the opportunity to go even further and lock in a step change for tertiary education in the SAR. We have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Hong Kong should proactively reach out to Harvard authorities and offer to make available a site here for a permanent additional campus to supplement those in the home base of Massachusetts. The new facility could be called Harvard International and could take in all of Harvard’s international students together with a significant number of American students at any one time, perhaps on a revolving basis.
The trigger for these suggestions is the extraordinary attack by the Trump administration on the American institution, widely regarded as one of the best in the world. The university has been threatened with loss of the right to admit international students, warned that the visas of its existing international students will be aggressively reviewed, had research grants cancelled and told its tax status will be reconsidered.
We don’t need to consider here the merits or otherwise of these assaults, and we should note that many of them are still subject to legal challenge in the United States. But the uncertainty they have created gives us an opening.
To show that our offer is serious and not a passing whimsy, we should be prepared to offer Harvard a long lease of the land at nominal premium, say 50 years with automatic right of renewal for a further 50 years without payment of additional premium (the same model adopted for Hong Kong Disneyland). This sends a clear message that we want them here permanently. We can also give assurances on the issue of student visas. There would be no reason for our immigration authorities to turn away a bona fide Harvard student from any country. Post graduation employment opportunities could also be discussed. In return, Harvard would have to give comprehensive and binding undertakings on issues such as deployment of faculty and sharing of research findings.
The exact shape of the institutional body to operate Harvard International can be left to our experienced legal and corporate service providers, similarly with ensuring its tax position is secured. Hong Kong’s tax regime is rightly famous for being low, simple and predictable which given recent events on the other side of the Pacific should be attractive and reassuring.
The issue of financing the land formation and construction of facilities would be for negotiation. Harvard is a wealthy institution, Hong Kong a relatively wealthy government which is already committed to developing the northern metropolis. Given the prestige of the Harvard name, there should be a ready supply of corporate donors both from within Hong Kong and elsewhere throughout the country.
What would be the justification for such a move by the government given the proposed level of public material support? Luring one of the world’s top universities here is fully in line with our designated role as the interface between the mainland and the world, and with our aspiration to be one of the world’s great education hubs. The steady stream of the world’s best students passing through our city would lock us into international consciousness forever. Students from the Hong Kong Harvard campus would steadily become part of the elite in every country in the world, in business, academia and public life.
Some might query why we were giving priority to Harvard when there are many other fine international universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Yale etc. There are two answers to this question: first, Trump’s actions have made Harvard an obvious candidate, second, we should be prepared in principle to consider approaches from any other of the world’s top 10 universities on a similar basis.
Another query would be the likely effect on Hong Kong’s eight existing publicly funded universities, at least five of which already have global recognition. Far from weakening our existing institutions, I think the presence of Harvard would act as a magnet for the best faculty from around the globe. The competition would push everybody to up their game and from the staff perspective everyone would want to have Hong Kong on their cv. We would be reinforcing our image as the home of free and open competition.
I think for the next step we need to identify a suitable intermediary to see if the idea can be taken further. Such a person would need to have stature in the education world and also be well connected with the Harvard hierarchy. Luckily there is at least one such person in Hong Kong, a former vice chancellor of one of our top universities.
There needs to be an informal approach to Harvard to see whether there is scope for a conversation at the conceptual level. If there is, then the administration here would have to put together an exploratory team, on a without commitment basis, to examine what the outlines of such a scheme might look like.
The challenge now is to find someone in the administration with the vision to encourage such an informal approach.