A man consults with an admission officer from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University at the International Education Exhibition held in Beijing last March.

Wang said the quality of education in Hong Kong was considered to be better than most schools on the mainland. English language instruction in Hong Kong also provided an advantage. Mainland students are pretty much taking over postgraduate programs. UGC figures show that more than half of the 5,871 research positions available in 2007 and 2008 were occupied by mainland students.

Vincent Cheung, head of the Postgraduate Studies Administration at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), said the mainland contingent now comprises 70 percent of students enrolled in the university's research programs.

With mainland students becoming a rising force in Hong Kong universities, distinctions between mainland students and their Hong Kong counterparts already are becoming blurred. HKU Faculty of Education Dean Shirley Grundy observed that as Hong Kong becomes more integrated into the country, especially the Pearl River Delta region, the distinctions between Hong Kong and mainland students will become less meaningful.

Henry Wai, the registrar of HKU, thinks that as more and more Hong Kong companies expand into the mainland, Hong Kong natives will benefit from their exposure to their mainland classmates.

"At least they speak better Mandarin than before," he said. "And with these mainland connections, they can get an edge when applying for jobs."

Mainland students can also be strong competitors against their Hong Kong counterparts in the job market.

"One-third of the mainland students were in the top ranks of their classes," said Chung Jah Ying, a Hong Kong native who just graduated from HKU. "And in our program, the highest-income job was taken by a mainland student."

Chung admits that those mainland students who can also speak Cantonese and good English apart from Mandarin "have a significant edge over us".

Zou Chonghua, a division head at the Beijing-Hong Kong Academic Exchange Centre (BHKAEC) who came to Hong Kong 16 years ago, says most of the researchers in the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks are mainland graduates. A PhD holder from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Zou now organizes academic and research exchange programs between Hong Kong and mainland higher education and research institutions.

"Talent from the mainland contributes greatly to Hong Kong's scientific research, which enjoys a worldwide reputation for its high quality," he said.

-China Daily/Asia News Network