The Academic Development Planning Exercise and Grant Recommendation for the 2012-15 Triennium

The UGC conducts academic planning and recurrent grants assessment with its funded institutions on a triennial basis. The forthcoming funding period is 2012-15. As in previous periods, institutions were asked to submit Academic Development Proposals (ADPs) for the 2012-15 triennium. ADPs are proposals that serve three purposes: (i) a platform for institutions to put forward development proposals for the immediate future; (ii) the foundation for the institution's costed estimates for the next grant triennium; and (iii) where approved academic programmes are to meet specific manpower needs, ADPs provide an assurance of anticipated supply of graduates. It must be stressed that the UGC does not seek to micro-manage our institutions, and thus would not intervene in their internal planning of and allocation of places to individual programmes, except for those subject to specific manpower requirement. This ADP exercise for the 2012-15 triennium is of paramount importance, as it sets out the academic plans and strategic development of each institution under the new four-year academic curriculum commencing in September 2012.

Following the practice adopted in the 2009-12 triennium, the UGC implemented a competitive allocation mechanism for the 2012-15 triennium whereby institutions has put forward its ADP assuming a small percentage (6%) of the non-manpower-planned undergraduate intake places were set aside for redistribution while at the same time propose new directions/programmes to be introduced if the Institution gets back the 6%, or more, of the student places basing on the comparative merits of their ADPs. The assessment of the ADPs was a fair, transparent and interactive exercise. All the ADPs submitted by the institutions were evaluated according to the four agreed broad evaluation criteria – i.e. Strategy, Teaching and Learning, Advanced Scholarship and Community. The UGC completed the assessment in mid-2011. Institutions were informed about the UGC's views on their ADPs and the allocation of student places for the 2012-15 triennium subsequently.

Some members of the public had expressed concerns over the assessment process of the institutions' ADPs. To address their concerns, the Administration and the UGC attended the Legislative Council Panel on Education (LegCo Education Panel) meeting on 11 July 2011 to listen to the views of the deputations direct.

With the detailed allocation of the student places among different academic programmes provided by the institutions for calculation of the grants, the UGC endorsed the funding requirements for eight institutions for the 2012-15 triennium in September 2011. The grant recommendation was submitted to the Administration for consideration, which later submitted it to the LegCo Education Panel and the LegCo Finance Committee for endorsement. The grant recommendation was approved by the LegCo Finance Committee in January 2012. Institutions were informed about the details of their grants recommendation for the coming triennium in February 2012.