Enhancement and Start-up Grant Scheme for Self-financing Post-secondary Education opens for applications
The Education Bureau (EDB) today (December 30) announced that the 2025/26 round of applications under the Enhancement and Start-up Grant Scheme for Self-financing Post-secondary Education opens for applications from today to April 15, 2026.
The Scheme aims to provide financial support for eligible self-financing post-secondary education institutions to develop and enhance programmes that meet market needs but require high start-up costs, reducing institutions’ reliance on tuition fees to recover the costs, thus relieving the financial burden on students. It also supports institutions to better develop their own strengths and niche areas, strengthening strategic co-ordination among institutions.
Eligible institutions are as follows:
(a)Hong Kong Metropolitan University;
(b)approved post-secondary colleges under the Post Secondary Colleges Ordinance (Cap. 320); and
(c)post-secondary institutions registered under the Education Ordinance (Cap.279).
The Scheme subsidises full-time locally accredited local self-financing sub-degree and undergraduate (including top-up degree) programmes, covering both the development of new programmes and the enhancement of existing ones. To enhance teaching and learning in designated academic areas, it supports projects of the following nature:
(a)significant development/enhancement of programme curricula and pedagogies;
(b)recruitment/professional development of faculty members and teaching staff;
(c)procurement/upgrade of market-standard equipment/facilities to meet academic and professional requirements;
(d)provision of new/improvement to existing discipline-specific campus facilities/infrastructure; and
(e)other relevant discipline-specific expenditure areas aligned with the objectives of the scheme.
Funding for each proposal will generally be capped at $42 million. The Committee on Self-financing Post-secondary Education will advise the Secretary for Education regarding the comparative merits of the proposals.
In the 2024/25 round of applications, two out of seven applications were approved with a total grant of about $48 million, which supported the aviation services and surveying sectors in meeting the keen manpower demand of the relevant industries. Details of the projects are as follows:
Institution
Project
Approved grant
(in million dollars)
Hong Kong Metropolitan University
Establishment of a Flight Simulation Laboratory for the Bachelor of Business Administration with Honours in Aviation Services Management Programme
22.4
Hong Kong Shue Yan University
Development of an Applied Degree in Surveying and Dispute Resolution
25.1
The EDB will maintain close liaison with relevant institutions to make best use of the resources of the Scheme and launch the relevant programmes as soon as practicable.
Further details of the Scheme and the approved projects are available at the designated website (www.cspe.edu.hk/en/esgs.html).
The Education Bureau (EDB), Photo source: reference image
