The Government today announced that starting November 1, the number of eligible universities listed under the Top Talent Pass Scheme (TTPS) will increase to 184 as eight more top Mainland and overseas institutions will be included.

The list of eligible universities under the TTPS covers the top 100 universities under the four designated world university rankings in the past five years.

Such ranking systems include the Times Higher Education World University Rankings, the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings, the U.S. News & World Report's Best Global Universities Rankings, and the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities.

Of the eight newly-added institutions, five are on the QS World University Rankings in the discipline of "hospitality and leisure management”. They involve EHL Hospitality Business School, Swiss Hotel Management School, Les Roches Global Hospitality Management Education, Glion Institute of Higher Education, and Hotelschool The Hague.

The remaining three institutions are Wuhan University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and Harbin Institute of Technology. They are among the top 10 Mainland universities under the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Best Chinese Universities Ranking yet to be included in the current list of eligible universities.

The Government noted that global competition for talent remains fierce and emphasised the need to recruit talent proactively to relieve the tight situation of the labour market and supplement the talent pool locally.

The Policy Address therefore sets out to expand the list of eligible universities of the TTPS to boost the efforts to compete for talent, it added.

The Hong Kong Talent Engage online platform and the TTPS webpage of the Immigration Department will be updated later.