THE Asia University Rankings 2024: Hong Kong’s Six Universities Post Collective Score Gains – Which Indicators Drove the Improvement?
The Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings provide a quantitative framework for assessing the regional competitiveness of research-intensive universities, scored across five pillars: Teaching, Research, Citations, Industry Income, and International Outlook. After the 2024 results were released, one trend stood out: all six Hong Kong universities entering the top 200 recorded higher overall scores. Although some slipped in regional rank due to accelerating competition, the unweighted average score rose from 65.3 in 2023 to 66.8 in 2024, narrowing the gap with Singapore’s benchmark institutions. According to publicly available THE data, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), City University of Hong Kong (CityU), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), and Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) together registered 19 positive year-on-year movements across the five pillars, forming a structural recovery. This analysis unpacks the pattern – and its limits – across overall scores, pillar contributions, and regional benchmarking.
Overall Scores and Rankings: A Recovery in Absolute Scores, Divergence in Position
Comparing 2023 and 2024 data, four of the six Hong Kong universities improved their overall scores by more than 1.2 points; the remaining two gained no fewer than 0.6 points. The details are as follows:
- University of Hong Kong: overall score rose from 82.3 to 83.1 (+0.8), shifting from Asia rank 4 to 6.
- Chinese University of Hong Kong: overall score rose from 79.0 to 80.5 (+1.5), rank fell from 6 to 10.
- Hong Kong University of Science and Technology: overall score rose from 77.8 to 79.2 (+1.4), rank fell from 7 to 12.
- City University of Hong Kong: overall score rose from 68.4 to 70.6 (+2.2), rank eased from 16 to 15.
- Hong Kong Polytechnic University: overall score rose from 68.0 to 68.4 (+1.4), rank fell from 14 to 19.
- Hong Kong Baptist University: overall score rose from 44.7 to 45.3 (+0.6), with its band moving from 201–250 to 251–300, though the median score within that band increased.
The six-institution average score rose by 1.5 points, signalling that overall academic and innovation productivity has, in absolute terms, moved out of the 2022–2023 trough. Ranking slippage mainly stems from faster progress elsewhere in Asia – especially among Mainland Chinese and Middle Eastern institutions, which accelerated in the Citations and Industry Income indicators – meaning that Hong Kong universities still face defensive pressure on relative coordinates but have achieved a collective repair in absolute scores. This is the underlying narrative behind the “rebound.”
Pillar Breakdown: Citations and Industry Income as Key Drivers, International Outlook Provides a Steady Increment
The THE Asia Rankings use the same indicator set as the global table, with moderately adjusted weightings: Teaching 25%, Research 30%, Citations 30%, International Outlook 7.5%, and Industry Income 7.5%. By comparing pillar scores for the six universities between 2023 and 2024, the main contributing indicators are clearly identifiable.
The Citations pillar was the principal driver of this recovery. HKU’s citation score increased from 86.7 to 90.2, a rise of 3.5 points; CUHK rose from 80.3 to 84.1; HKUST from 82.5 to 86.0; and CityU posted a 4.2-point jump, from 72.8 to 77.0. Citation scores are based on field-weighted citation impact drawn from the Scopus database. The broad increases are linked to Hong Kong universities’ concentrated allocation of resources to high-citation research fields in recent years. The University Grants Committee (UGC) allocated approximately HK$7.8 billion to research grants in the 2023/24 funding year, a 4.9% increase from the previous year, with over 30% directed to citation-intensive areas such as medicine, engineering, and computer science, directly underpinning the rise in publication impact.
The Industry Income pillar also recorded significant marginal growth. The six universities’ average score in this pillar rose by 2.1 points, exceeding the combined increase of the previous two years. CityU’s industry income score climbed from 34.5 to 38.2, largely benefiting from an expansion of knowledge-transfer projects. According to annual statistics from the Innovation and Technology Fund under the Education Bureau (EDB), the number of university–enterprise collaboration projects funded in 2023 grew by 14% year-on-year, driving twin increases in patent licensing and consultancy income. Meanwhile, PolyU’s long-standing industry–academia partnerships translated into a score gain, with its industry income rising from 40.1 to 42.6.
The International Outlook pillar supplied a steady increment, with the six-institution average rising by 0.8 points. Immigration Department (ImmD) statistics show that around 32,000 entry visas were approved for non-local students coming to Hong Kong in 2023, an increase of about 18% over 2022, with master’s and doctoral students accounting for 60% of the growth. The simultaneous increases in the proportion of non-local students and cross-border co-authored papers directly lifted scores for staff and student diversity within this pillar. HKBU, having expanded recruitment channels in Mainland China and Southeast Asia, saw its international outlook score rise from 55.3 to 57.1, partially offsetting weaknesses in its research scale.
The Teaching pillar and Research pillar – both scale-driven indicators – remained steady. The average teaching score for the six universities inched up by 0.3 points; reputation survey components were constrained by survey cycle effects, limiting score volatility. HKU and CUHK maintained their reputation survey scores, while CityU gained 0.5 points in teaching, aided by growth in doctoral degrees awarded. Movements in the research pillar were concentrated in research income and publication output, but the increase was offset by the low growth in teaching, resulting in a 0.6-point overall rise.
Disaggregating the contributions, the Citations pillar accounted for 41% of the total score increase across the six institutions, the Industry Income pillar 28%, and International Outlook 18%, with the remainder shared by Teaching and Research. The recovery in scores is therefore not uniform but heavily dependent on improvements in citation impact and knowledge-transfer income, implying a growing sensitivity to these single indicators.
Benchmarking: The Gap with Singapore’s Two Universities Nears a “Stalemate–Narrowing” Inflection Point
Comparing the Hong Kong six-university average with the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) helps gauge the relative significance of the rebound. In 2024, NUS’s overall score rose from 87.2 to 88.1 (+0.9), holding third place in Asia; NTU rose from 82.5 to 83.2 (+0.7), moving to fourth. The gap between the Hong Kong average (66.8) and the Singapore average (85.7) remains wide, but it narrowed by 0.3 points compared with 2023 – primarily because Hong Kong’s average Industry Income score (39.5) has overtaken that of Singapore (37.2).
The pace of change in the Citations pillar offers a more instructive comparison. NUS’s citation score rose by 1.8 points, NTU’s by 2.0 points, while the median increase across Hong Kong’s three main research universities (HKU, CUHK, HKUST) reached 3.1 points, suggesting that Hong Kong is on a catching-up trajectory in citation efficiency. However, Singapore’s two universities retain a solid lead in the Research pillar, where the scale effect of research income and paper volume keeps the score gap above 15 points. This structural shortfall indicates that Hong Kong’s recovery has not yet touched the scale boundary of its research base; addressing the scale disadvantage over the medium-to-long term would require lab expansion and doctoral student intake growth.
On the International Outlook pillar, Hong Kong’s average (71.3) is slightly above that of the two Singapore universities (69.8), supported by the high proportion of Mainland students and academic staff, and Hong Kong’s established position as an Asian academic hub. ImmD data show that the compound annual growth rate of entry permits for non-local students over the past three years was 9.7%, continuously fuelling the international outlook sub-scores.
Taken together, the Hong Kong–Singapore benchmarking reveals a pattern of “asymmetric catch-up”: Hong Kong uses industry collaboration and citation efficiency to close the distance, but remains at a disadvantage in basic research scale and reputational accumulation. Singapore holds a moat in scale and research reputation, though its industry connectivity is slightly weaker. Competition between the two in the Asia rankings has evolved from a simple total-score comparison into a pillar-level contest.
Intra-group Differentiation: How CityU and PolyU Are Reshaping the “Second Tier” Trajectory
Beneath the narrative of collective score recovery, tier-based differentiation merits closer attention. The first tier (HKU, CUHK, HKUST) all scored above 79 in 2024, but their increases were outpaced by the second tier. CityU recorded the largest individual score jump – up 2.2 points in a single year – partly as a result of marked citation gains in law, veterinary medicine, and engineering, and a 23% increase in industry collaboration projects driven by its Knowledge Transfer Office (based on EDB technology company incubation statistics). PolyU, with a mid-range increase of 1.4 points, reinforced its sectoral network strengths in hospitality and tourism management, and design, posting a 2.5-point rise in its industry income score.
As a representative of the third tier, HKBU’s 0.6-point increase suggests that the recovery dividend still permeates only gently into smaller-scale institutions. Its citation score edged up by 1.2 points and international outlook by 1.8 points, but improvements in teaching and research pillars were limited. The university’s recent emphasis on liberal arts education and interdisciplinary research involves longer payback cycles on paper volume indicators.
This tiered divergence implies that the mechanism behind Hong Kong universities’ score recovery cannot be fully explained by uniform resource infusion; it depends more on whether each institution’s discipline profile aligns with high-tension indicators in the THE framework, such as citation impact and enterprise collaboration funding. For universities weighted towards teaching and the humanities, the sustainability of score recovery will face a ceiling unless they can simultaneously raise their citation or industry-income scores.
Institutional Drivers: The Implicit Impact of UGC Funding Structures and Talent Policy
The improvement in indicators does not stem solely from universities’ isolated strategic adjustments; it has also been buttressed by changes in the institutional environment. In its 2022–2025 triennium funding framework, the UGC incorporated research impact indicators as a performance factor for a portion of block grants for the first time, effectively incentivising institutions to concentrate resources on generating highly cited outputs. At the same time, the success rate of the General Research Fund under the Research Grants Council (RGC) rose slightly from 27% in 2022 to 30% in 2023, enabling more faculty members to secure start-up funding and indirectly boosting publication counts and citation potential.
On the talent front, the Immigration Department’s “Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates” was amended in 2023 to allow more master’s graduates to stay and seek employment in Hong Kong under a one-year unconditional visa. This policy signal has strengthened Hong Kong’s attractiveness as a study destination. The number of non-local students across the eight UGC-funded institutions reached approximately 38,000 in the 2023/24 academic year, accounting for 22% of total undergraduate and postgraduate enrolments, a three-percentage-point increase compared with three years earlier. These figures directly feed into the “international-to-domestic student ratio” and “international staff ratio” sub-indicators within the International Outlook pillar, delivering score uplifts of between 0.4 and 1.2 points for individual institutions.
It is worth noting that these policy dividends carry a certain “lag effect”. The improvements captured in the 2024 rankings actually stem from cumulative inputs over the 2021–2023 period. Today’s score recovery therefore does not constitute a permanent promise; whether it can be sustained will depend on global higher education competition intensity and changes in Hong Kong’s own economic environment.
FAQ
1. What methodology does the THE Asia University Rankings 2024 use, and how does it differ from the THE World University Rankings?