CUHK vs HKU: How the THE World Rankings Gap Narrowed from 13 to 4 Places — and Then Widened Again
In 2020, the gap between the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings stood at 13 places. Five years on, the most telling episode was not the narrowing itself, but the brief compression to just four positions before the gap stretched once more. According to the THE 2025 rankings, HKU held steady at 35th globally, while CUHK tumbled from 39th in 2024 to 53rd. In 2020, HKU ranked 35th and CUHK 48th. Over that half-decade, CUHK’s citations score climbed by a cumulative 18%, compared with only a 2% gain for HKU — yet citations are just one part of the formula. The THE methodology operates like a finely calibrated set of scales: small shifts in the weightings for teaching reputation, international outlook or research income can upend standings. This article traces the two universities’ trajectories on the THE table and unpacks the structural forces behind the indicator shifts.
2020 baseline: what the 13-place gap was built on
When the 2020 THE World University Rankings were released, HKU placed 35th and CUHK 48th. At that time the five-pillar weighting was: teaching 30%, research 30%, citations 30%, international outlook 7.5%, and industry income 2.5%. HKU’s far stronger reputation-survey scores in teaching and research — the core of the gap — gave it a decisive advantage. According to THE’s institution-level breakdowns, HKU’s teaching reputation score sat in the 70s (normalised), while CUHK’s was in the 50s. On research income, HKU’s edge was clear, underpinned by the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and a long track record of government funding. In the 2020/21 academic year, the University Grants Committee (UGC) allocated recurrent research funding of HK$2.83 billion to HKU and HK$2.27 billion to CUHK — a difference that aligns closely with the rankings gap.
CUHK was not behind on every front. Its international outlook already showed competitiveness: the collegiate system with its cross-cultural tradition and the share of non-local students provided a boost. Immigration Department figures indicate that in 2020 the number of student visas issued for post-secondary study to mainland and other overseas students began to recover. That year, non-local undergraduates made up about 18% of CUHK’s intake, slightly above HKU’s 17%. Citations, however, were a clear weakness. CUHK’s citations per paper reached only about 60% of HKU’s level, reflecting a research impact still in catch-up mode.
Five-year trajectory: the pivotal turns from 2021 to 2025
Plotting the five years of data reveals that the rankings did not move in a straight line. In 2021, disrupted research during the early pandemic and swings in the reputation survey saw HKU slip to 39th and CUHK drop to 57th, stretching the gap to 18 places. In 2022, HKU rebounded to 30th while CUHK rose to 49th, creating the widest spread of the period at 19 places. In 2023, HKU edged down to 31st as CUHK advanced to 45th, restoring the gap to 14 places — essentially back to 2020 levels.
The real break came in 2023. THE adopted a new citation data source (an update to the Elsevier Scopus database) and slightly adjusted the weighting for international co-authorship. CUHK’s citations score surged. Papers co-authored by the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Engineering with mainland Chinese institutions saw a dramatic increase in citation counts. According to the THE 2024 ranking report, CUHK’s citations sub-score rose more than 20% year on year, while HKU’s gained only 3%. The 2024 table, published in September 2023, showed HKU still at 35th and CUHK jumping to 39th — the gap had squeezed to just four places, the narrowest in recent years.
That momentum did not carry into 2025. In the latest rankings HKU held at 35th while CUHK slipped 14 places to 53rd. THE editors noted that declines in CUHK’s teaching reputation and international outlook scores had cancelled out the citation gains. The multi-year influence of the UGC’s 2020 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE 2020) and the dividend from Greater Bay Area collaborations had fuelled the citation spike, yet brand recognition and internationalisation structures had not been consolidated in parallel.
Deconstructing the citation surge: CUHK +18%, HKU +2%
Over the five-year period, CUHK’s citations score rose by a cumulative 18%, against HKU’s 2% increase. Several forces drove this contrast.
First, a cluster of highly cited papers published by CUHK between 2019 and 2021 continued to contribute. The RAE 2020 results, released in 2021, showed that CUHK had markedly improved the share of research rated “world leading” (4*) or “internationally excellent” (3*) across multiple units of assessment, including clinical medicine, biological sciences, computer science and electronic engineering. In clinical medicine in particular, CUHK’s COVID-19 transmission modelling and community-screening studies were heavily cited, lifting the institution-wide citation count. The UGC report noted that the proportion of CUHK’s output in the clinical medicine unit rated 4* reached 31%, a 12-percentage-point improvement on the 2014 exercise.
Second, the CUHK Shenzhen campus and research collaboration with mainland universities generated a scale effect in both publication volume and citations. After the 2019 Outline Development Plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, CUHK expanded cross-border research programmes in genomics, artificial intelligence and fintech. Such co-authored papers typically draw from a larger readership and citation base. CUHK’s annual report shows that the number of co-authored papers involving mainland institutions grew by 47% in 2022 compared with 2019. Since citations are a lagging indicator, the benefits of these collaborations were released mainly in 2023–2024.
HKU started from a high citation base, making marginal growth harder to achieve. The HKU Medical Faculty has long been among Asia’s strongest, but its paper output entered a plateau phase. Moreover, HKU’s international co-authorship network tilts towards Europe and North America, meaning citation growth relies more on organic diffusion within mature academic circles rather than a sudden expansion of the citation base. While HKU’s citation impact in dentistry and education remained robust, the overall lift was a modest 2%.
Teaching reputation and international outlook: the two headwinds for CUHK
The THE teaching indicator rests entirely on a global survey of scholars and on student-to-staff ratios; the international outlook pillar examines the proportion of international students, international staff and international co-authorship. CUHK encountered headwinds in both.
The teaching reputation survey that informed the 2025 rankings was conducted between late 2023 and early 2024. During that period, the global higher-education landscape shifted, with mainland Chinese universities gaining prominence and diverting the attention of Asia-based scholars. HKU, bolstered by its century-old British-model brand and wider academic network, kept its vote share among Asia-based scholars stable. CUHK, while earning higher regard in business and social sciences, was still building its reputation in science and engineering; its teaching sub-score edged down. According to anonymised THE sub-scores, CUHK’s teaching score fell from 54.9 in 2024 to 52.3 (normalised), a decline that exactly offset the uplift from citation gains.
On international outlook, CUHK’s international student share has not broken through in recent years. Immigration Department statistics show that in the 2023/24 academic year, 3,120 non-local undergraduates held study visas at CUHK, a slight decrease of 1.2% from the previous year. Over the same period, HKU’s non-local undergraduate numbers rose 3.8% to 4,205. HKU was already highly internationalised and introduced additional overseas scholarships to attract students from Southeast Asia and Europe. Although CUHK enjoys a traditional advantage in recruiting mainland students, the perception of “too many mainland students” has arguably influenced THE’s algorithmic assessment of international diversity within the international outlook indicator. The THE pillar captures the breadth of nationality distribution among both students and staff; an over-concentration from a single source can depress the score.
HKU’s resilience: funding, brand and subject configuration
HKU has remained within the 30–39 band for the past five years, and its return to 35th in 2025 signals solid underpinning. Beyond deep-rooted reputation, HKU has sustained advantages in research income and industry income.
On UGC research funding, HKU has consistently led. According to the UGC’s 2023/24 funding allocation, HKU received a total recurrent grant of HK$5.82 billion, of which HK$3.04 billion was for research purposes; CUHK received HK$4.79 billion overall, with HK$2.41 billion for research. The gap reflects not only scale but also its effect on laboratory infrastructure and talent attraction. HKU hosts 12 State Key Laboratories; CUHK hosts five. Basic investment in research facilities translates into steady publication output, helping to keep the citations score from slipping.
For the industry income indicator, HKU performs more strongly in knowledge transfer income and patent licensing fees. In the 2022/23 financial year, HKU’s technology transfer arm recorded contract income of HK$163 million, compared with CUHK’s knowledge transfer income of about HK$97 million. Industry income carries only a 2.5% weighting in THE, but it still provides differentiation. HKU has effectively scored full marks on this pillar each year, while CUHK still has room to improve.
Mainland enrolment expansion and the limits of ranking plays
Since 2023, the Hong Kong SAR government has sharply raised the cap on non-local students at the eight UGC-funded institutions from 20% to 40%. The number of student visas issued by the Immigration Department has climbed each year, reaching 57,890 in 2023 — an increase of 62% over 2020. The cap expansion benefits both universities, but the effects diverge. HKU moved quickly to recruit in Southeast Asia and India, balancing its source mix; CUHK continues to rely on mainland students as the main growth pole. THE’s international outlook algorithm is sensitive to high geographic concentration, which may explain why CUHK’s score on this pillar is structurally vulnerable.
In addition, the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) has pushed forward reforms to the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education curriculum and mutual recognition with mainland curricula. This indirectly affects the quality and quantity of the local student pool. CUHK’s education faculty holds a strong position in local teacher training, but the citation growth from education research is not sharp, resulting in a lower conversion rate between teaching strength and the citations indicator. By contrast, HKU’s Faculty of Dentistry and Faculty of Medicine continue to publish clinical research in high-impact journals, feeding more directly into citation gains.
The competitive logic beneath the data points
Breaking down five years of rankings into indicator-level data reveals that the CUHK-HKU contest is shifting from a “gap in overall strength” to a “difference in indicator efficiency”. CUHK has accelerated on research citation efficiency, but it still lacks HKU’s depth in accumulated teaching reputation and normalised international structure. The narrowing to four places in 2024 was a signal: steadily strengthening research output can quickly offset a reputation handicap. The slide to 53rd in 2025 is also a warning — progress on a single dimension cannot compensate for imbalances across multiple indicators.
HKU may have held 35th, but its citations score has all but stalled. If CUHK records another citation burst next year while addressing the soft spot of international student diversity, the probability of another narrow gap is not small. This “four-or-five-place” contest will depend on whether CUHK can convert research dividends into gains in teaching and international brand, and whether HKU can re-ignite citation growth on top of its funding advantages.
FAQ
Q1: How does the THE World University Rankings differ from the QS rankings? Why do the gaps between CUHK and HKU look so different across the two tables? In the THE ranking, teaching and research reputations each carry a 30% weight, and citations 30%. QS assigns 40% to academic reputation, 10% to employer reputation, and 20% each to faculty-student ratio and citations per paper. These weight differences produce different relative positions. For example, in the QS World University Rankings 2025, HKU ranked 17th and CUHK 36th, a gap of 19 places, largely because QS’s employer reputation and faculty-student ratio metrics favour HKU more.
Q2: Does CUHK’s sharp rise in citation score mean its research quality has overtaken HKU’s? Not quite. The high growth in citation score reflects a recent cluster of highly cited papers from CUHK, concentrated especially in COVID-19-related medical research and AI. Research quality should also be judged through citations per paper, the proportion of top-cited papers, international awards and other dimensions. According to the UGC’s RAE 2020, HKU still had a slightly higher share of research rated “world leading” across most disciplines. The THE citation score is a single sub-component and does not represent an overall research-quality ranking.
Q3: Is CUHK’s drop from 39th to 53rd in 2025 a one-off fluctuation? It may well be. THE rankings are subject to annual sampling variation in the reputation survey and to delayed citation updates. A technical correction after the 2024 peak is plausible. If CUHK continues to expand international collaboration and improve the diversity of its international student body, its international outlook score can recover. Rankings are also affected by movements of peer institutions; it is always a relative ordering.
Q4: Is HKU’s non-local intake more diverse than CUHK’s? Immigration Department data indicate that HKU draws a higher proportion of non-local students from Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas, while CUHK has a larger mainland Chinese share. THE’s international outlook indicator considers the breadth of nationalities, which currently favours HKU. CUHK has acknowledged this structure and in recent years has introduced Belt and Road scholarships to attract a more diverse source of students.
Q5: Does CUHK’s Shenzhen campus contribute directly to the rankings? The CUHK Shenzhen campus is an independent legal entity, and its publication data are reported under “The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen”. They are not normally attributed directly to the CUHK Hong Kong submissions for ranking purposes. However, papers produced through joint laboratories and cross-institutional research with Shenzhen, where CUHK is listed as the corresponding author or the affiliation unit, are counted in CUHK’s citation tally, indirectly boosting the citation score. The synergy between the two campuses has indeed worked to CUHK’s advantage.
Q6: Will HKU adjust its strategy because CUHK is closing in? HKU is advancing several large-scale research initiatives, including increased international hiring in medicine and quantum computing. Because THE’s teaching reputation survey changes slowly, HKU will stay focused on maintaining its reputation advantage while lifting citations through publications in top-tier journals. A sharp near-term shift in ranking strategy is unlikely, but HKU will keep a close eye on CUHK’s citation velocity.
Q7: How do Education Bureau (EDB) policies affect the long-term rankings of the two universities? The EDB supports university development through the non-local student cap expansion and direct research funding. The Research Grants Council (RGC) allocates funding to both institutions through schemes such as the Research Impact Fund and the Theme-based Research Scheme. Policies encouraging cross-border collaboration and talent mobility tend, over the long term, to raise overall research output and citations. This shifts the local competition from an inward scramble for shares towards a joint effort to lift international visibility — a positive for both universities’ rankings.
Q8: Can CUHK reach a stable position within the global top 45 in the future? The difficulty lies in balancing teaching reputation and international outlook. If CUHK can continue producing highly cited papers in its strong disciplines, broaden its network of diverse international partners, and invest steadily in student-staff ratios and the teaching environment, a top-45 position is achievable. University rankings are inherently uncertain; CUHK would need several consecutive years without weak spots across multiple indicators to stabilise in the sub-50 range.