The ‘Best Of’ the Five: Who’s Oldest, Richest, and Throws the Best Parties

# The ‘Best Of’ the Five: Who’s Oldest, Richest, and Throws the Best Parties

The one-line take: Asking “which is the best” of Hong Kong’s five publicly funded research universities is a self-defeating question that yields no real answer. But reframe it as “who’s the oldest, who’s the richest, who’s the most international, whose single discipline can crack the world’s top five, and whose student traditions are the most gloriously unhinged”—and every question suddenly has a verifiable, source-backed winner. HKU is the oldest (1911) and the richest (HK$40.7 billion in reserves). CUHK has the largest campus (137.3 hectares) and the most storied inter-varsity rivalry. HKUST, the youngest (1991), has already elbowed its way into the global top 20 for AI. CityU is the most international (three straight years as THE’s world No. 1) and the only local university training vets. PolyU has the smallest campus (10.23 hectares) yet runs a hotel-management programme repeatedly ranked world No. 1. This article works through twelve dimensions, each with a single winner—no “each has its own strengths” hedging allowed.

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# Before we begin: one master table, twelve dimensions, twelve winners

Here are all twelve contests compressed into a single quick-reference table; the detailed reasoning for each row follows in the sections below.

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# 1. Seniority: the oldest and the youngest

The one-line take: HKU was founded in 1911^※ under its own University Ordinance and is Hong Kong’s oldest tertiary institution. HKUST opened its doors in 1991^※, making it not only the youngest of the five but also the first Hong Kong university “founded with no predecessor institution” and built from scratch on a greenfield site^※—a full 80 years separate the two.

Line up the five founding dates and you get a neat timeline of higher-education expansion in Hong Kong:

HKU’s seniority isn’t just a title—its medical education roots reach back to the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, founded in 1887 by Patrick Manson, James Cantlie, and Ho Kai^※—Sun Yat-sen was a student there. The university itself was constituted under the University Ordinance that took effect on 30 March 1911^※ and began teaching in March 1912^※ with three faculties: Medicine, Engineering, and Arts. That makes HKU not only the oldest of the five but also the only one that experienced a complete wartime shutdown—after the Japanese invasion in 1941, the university suspended all operations, with the medical faculty relocating inland to Chengdu^※, before returning after the liberation in 1945.

HKUST’s youth tells a different story. Hong Kong’s economic transformation in the 1980s sparked talk of a “third university.” Governor Sir Edward Youde and Sir Sze-yuen Chung, among others, believed the city needed a new institution centred on science and technology research^※. The project was approved in 1986, and the doors opened in 1991—roughly five years from zero to full enrolment, a rare case of building a university from the ground up in Hong Kong’s higher-education history.

Verdict: “Oldest” goes to HKU; no dispute there. The title of “youngest” theoretically belongs to PolyU or CityU (they received university status in the same year), but both have predecessor histories stretching back decades. HKUST is the only one that truly started from scratch—if the question is “which is the youngest without any historical baggage,” HKUST owns it.

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# 2. Campus extremes: the biggest and the smallest

The one-line take: CUHK’s main campus covers approximately 137.3–138.4 hectares^※, the largest of any Hong Kong university and officially self-described as “the greenest.” PolyU’s main campus is just 9.37–10.23 hectares^※, the smallest of the five—a more than 13-fold difference.

Campus areas of the five universities (official figures from each institution; boundary differences noted in the table):

CUHK’s “largest and greenest” claim isn’t empty self-praise: its official “Introducing CUHK” page explicitly states it is “the largest and greenest in Hong Kong”^※. The campus faces Tolo Harbour and Pat Sin Leng, occupying an entire freestanding hill—unique among Hong Kong universities. That scale creates a distinctive campus ecology: internal shuttle buses, a collegiate geography, and hill-path commutes all define daily life on this “mountain city” campus.

PolyU is the mirror image. Its Hung Hom campus sits right beside an MTR station on just 9.37–10.23 hectares^※ (two official figures circulate). Somehow it squeezes in a business school, a design school, an engineering faculty, a hotel-management school, and more—a spatial pressure-cooker that directly produced PolyU’s most recognisable architectural language: the letter-named “cores” and “blocks” navigation system, which we’ll return to under “Distinctive traditions.”

HKU’s situation is the most unusual. Its main campus isn’t large by itself (officially only about 14 hectares), but over a century it has persistently “found land” within the expensive, dense urban fabric of Hong Kong Island’s Western District^※—the Sassoon Road medical campus, the Sai Ying Pun dental campus, the Centennial Campus, the Wong Chuk Hang residences—bringing total institutional landholdings to roughly 54.8 hectares^※. Instead of a single plot, it’s a “distributed patchwork” model.

Verdict: Largest campus goes to CUHK, uncontested. Smallest goes to PolyU (both of its official figures, 9.37 and 10.23 hectares, are below CityU’s 15.6 hectares).

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# 3. Financial muscle: who’s sitting on the deepest reserves

The one-line take: As of the 2024–25 financial year, HKU’s consolidated fund / net reserves stood at HK$40.7 billion^※, the highest publicly comparable figure among the five. In the same period, the eight UGC-funded institutions collectively held approximately HK$139.3 billion^※ in reserves—HKU alone accounted for nearly 30%.

Because the five universities’ financial reports use differing scopes (university entity vs. consolidated group), financial year-end dates, and treatments of UGC funds, direct cross-institutional comparison of net reserves requires real care. Here are the most recent verifiable figures, with scope noted:

HKU’s financial edge isn’t just about the size of the pile—it’s also about how early it professionalised the management. In 2024, HKU established a dedicated Investment Office^※, replacing a model that had relied entirely on external fund managers, to oversee the global multi-asset allocation of its Long-Term Investment Pool (LTIP), and has publicly adopted hard exclusions for tobacco and controversial weapons^※. Net investment income for 2024–25 reached HK$2.65 billion, or 14.1% of total consolidated income^※, pushing the annual surplus to nearly HK$5 billion. By contrast, during the global market downturn of 2021–22, HKU recorded a net investment loss of roughly HK$930 million—a reminder that a deep war chest also means large exposure to market volatility.

Verdict: On the basis of the currently verifiable, scope-clearly-stated “net reserves” figure, HKU’s HK$40.7 billion is the only one publicly disclosed and cross-confirmed by third-party media such as the SCMP as “the largest among the eight institutions”—so HKU keeps the “richest” crown.

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# 4. Internationalisation: the brightest badge

The one-line take: Since 2024, CityU has been ranked No. 1 in the world for “Most International University” by Times Higher Education (THE) for three consecutive years (2024, 2025, 2026)^※—the only one of the five to hold an unequivocal global No. 1 in this category. Even if its overall ranking trails HKU, CUHK, and HKUST, on internationalisation CityU sweeps the board.

THE’s Most International Universities ranking is based on four indicators: international students, international staff, international co-authorship, and international reputation. CityU’s underlying numbers are solid: approximately 70% of faculty are international, and students come from over 90 nationalities^※. This isn’t a one-off ranking pop—three consecutive years of first place is stable outperformance, beating many institutions with far longer histories and higher overall ranks.

Each of the other four universities has its own international highlights:

Verdict: Three consecutive THE world No. 1 rankings as the world’s most international university—the only “single-category global No. 1” with a three-year data track—goes to CityU.

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# 5. Top scholars and academicians: the highest “brain density”

The one-line take: CUHK is the only one of the five that can genuinely say “a Nobel Prize-winning achievement is listed under our name.” Its third Vice-Chancellor, Sir Charles K. Kao (高錕), won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on optical-fibre communication^※; the prize is formally attributed to the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in the UK and The Chinese University of Hong Kong^※, marking the first time a Hong Kong research institution was named on a Nobel award.

This dimension is particularly prone to inflated claims, so we need to be clear about the “strength of affiliation” hierarchy. Nobel/Fellowship connections can be ranked into roughly six tiers of decreasing strength: Vice-Chancellor / full-time professor (achievement attributed to the institution) → Bo Wen / chair professor (long-term distinguished appointment) → college master → honorary doctorate → alumnus → visiting speaker.

CUHK: Beyond Sir Charles Kao, CUHK has long retained several Nobel-calibre scholars as “Bo Wen Professors”: Nobel physics laureate Yang Chen-ning (楊振寧) lectured and directed the Institute of Theoretical Physics from the 1960s onward^※; Nobel economics laureate Sir James Mirrlees served as Master of Morningside College from 2006^※; Fields Medallist Shing-Tung Yau (丘成桐) is a 1969 Chung Chi mathematics alumnus and was the founding director of the Institute of Mathematical Sciences^※; Turing Award winner Andrew Chi-Chih Yao (姚期智) has been a Bo Wen Professor since 2005^※. In addition, 404 CUHK scholars were listed in Stanford’s global top 2% of scientists in 2024^※.

HKUST: While it lacks a Nobel laureate among its full-time faculty, its successive presidents are academic heavyweights. The second president, Paul Ching-Wu Chu (朱經武), is a pioneer of high-temperature superconductivity—he and Maw-Kuen Wu announced the YBCO breakthrough above 77K in 1987^※—and is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. The fifth and current president, Nancy Y. Ip (葉玉如), is a neuroscientist and the first woman to lead a publicly funded university in Hong Kong^※.

CityU: Its strategy is “using internationalisation to build depth.” Its Academians page lists approximately 32 current scholars elected as fellows of various national/regional academies^※, with overseas academies (Academia Europaea, Royal Academy of Engineering, Canadian Academy of Engineering, etc.) dominating. Its Hong Kong Institute for Advanced Study (HKIAS) has, under the title of “Senior Fellow,” secured the long-term appointment of Fields Medallist Stephen Smale as a professor in CityU’s mathematics department^※.

HKU: Highly Cited Researchers grew from about 15 in 2018 to 53 in 2024, placing 10th globally among institutions^※; in 2024 alone it recruited more than 120 international scholars from 13 countries/regions^※.

PolyU: It hasn’t produced a homegrown Nobel laureate, but its roll of honorary doctors reads like a cross-disciplinary who’s who: John Nash (the subject of A Beautiful Mind, 1994 Nobel economics laureate) received an honorary DSc in 2011^※; Barry Marshall (discoverer of H. pylori, 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine)^※ and Dan Shechtman (discoverer of quasicrystals, 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry)^※ are among those honoured, and PolyU even houses a Marshall Research Centre^※ that continues that connection.

Verdict: On the strict test of “Nobel achievement attributed to the institution,” only CUHK qualifies. Using the broader test of “depth of top-tier scholars,” CUHK, with multiple long-serving Nobel / Fields / Turing-level academics, remains first.

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# 6. Admission thresholds: the hardest to get into

The one-line take: The flagship medical and law schools of HKU and CUHK have long occupied the highest minimum JUPAS admission scores and the most intense competition ratios in Hong Kong—these two are the hardest universities in which to secure a place on elite professional programmes. For STEM-cum-business peaks, you have to look at HKUST’s Data Science and CityU’s Veterinary Medicine.

In Hong Kong, admissions difficulty is heavily programme-specific rather than institution-wide—a different logic from the US/UK model where a university’s brand halo covers all its programmes. A few verifiable threshold peaks:

• The only dental school in Hong Kong: HKU’s Faculty of Dentistry is the city’s sole provider of undergraduate and postgraduate dental degrees^※. Founded in 1982, dentistry was ranked world No. 2 in the QS subject rankings 2026 edition^※—having no local competitor makes it the most irreplaceable professional admissions pathway by default.
• The only veterinary degree in Hong Kong: CityU’s Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences offers the city’s first and only Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine programme^※, modelled on the Cornell University veterinary curriculum^※. The first cohort entered in 2017; with an extremely small annual intake and again no substitute, the admissions bar is punishingly high.
• The medical duopoly: HKU’s Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and CUHK’s Faculty of Medicine are Hong Kong’s only two medical schools; their clinical-medicine programmes are perennially among the highest-scoring JUPAS subject groups.
• The law triopoly: HKU, CUHK, and CityU are the only three institutions authorised to offer the Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (PCLL), the mandatory gateway to legal practice; their undergraduate law programmes have long sat at the top end of admissions thresholds.

Verdict: If we’re talking about professional-programme thresholds where there is literally no substitute and competition is fiercest, HKU Dentistry and CityU Veterinary Medicine are joint first—both are “the only one in Hong Kong,” with supply constrained to an extreme. If we’re talking about the hardest university to get into in a general sense, HKU’s and CUHK’s medical and law schools remain the traditional peaks.

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# 7. Single-discipline champion: who’s got a flagship subject that’s genuinely world-class

The one-line take: Every one of the five has a single-discipline champion that sits at or near the top of the world and that composite rankings can’t explain—PolyU’s Hotel & Tourism Management (Shanghai Ranking’s GRAS world No. 1 for nine straight years), CityU’s Materials Science (U.S. News world No. 5), HKUST’s Data Science & AI (QS world No. 17; Engineering & Technology HK No. 1 for 15 consecutive years), CUHK’s Nursing (QS world No. 6), HKU’s Dentistry (QS world No. 2) and Education (U.S. News world No. 1). This is the single most important section to remember: look at the subject, not the university—the five universities’ world-class flagships are almost all hidden in subject tables, not overall rankings.

PolyU’s hotel and tourism crown deserves particular unpacking. The Shanghai Ranking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS) is a purely objective, metrics-driven list (papers, citations, top-journal publications, international collaboration, academic awards)—it isn’t padded by reputation surveys. The School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) has held the world No. 1 spot in this subject for nine consecutive years^※. That means even though PolyU’s composite ranking has long sat in the middle of the pack among the five, in this one specific domain it is the globally recognised number one—not just “Hong Kong’s best” or “Asia’s best.”

HKUST’s Data Science & AI is equally worth noting. This is a QS subject only split out as an independent category in 2024; in its inaugural year HKUST debuted at global No. 10, and in the 2025 edition it settled at No. 17—but has held firm as Hong Kong’s No. 1 throughout^※. That a university barely over thirty years old can stake out ground in such an emerging frontier discipline is the result of deliberate, targeted investment rather than historical accumulation.

Verdict: If the criterion is “purely objective metrics, multiple consecutive years, globally recognised No. 1,” PolyU’s Hotel & Tourism Management is the single-discipline champion with the most weight—it doesn’t rely on reputation surveys and it isn’t a one-year spike.

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# 8. Distinctive traditions: the most gloriously unhinged campus cultures

The one-line take: No single winner here—this is a three-way split. The “Big-Two” rivalry between CUHK and HKU is the oldest, most institutionally formalised sporting-antagonist tradition. HKUST’s “turkey sundial” is the best meme-generating campus symbol. PolyU’s letter-block navigation system is the most pragmatically elegant spatial language.

CUHK vs. HKU: the Big-Two rivalry (over forty years). CUHK (1963) and HKU (1911) are Hong Kong’s only two comprehensive research universities with histories exceeding half a century, and have long been paired as “the Big Two.” Their sporting rivalry is built from several parallel traditions: the Annual Inter-Varsity Games, which open with the water sports meet and have run for over forty years^※, covering more than ten events with the overall championship changing hands multiple times; the Vice-Chancellors’ Cup football match, founded in 2003 to mark the two universities’ cooperation during the SARS epidemic^※—as of the most recent edition, CUHK leads 11 wins to HKU’s 4, with 4 draws, though the 19th edition (April 2026) saw HKU win 7–2^※; and an annual rowing duel that openly salutes the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race tradition^※, staged in recent years on the Shing Mun River. This is the only decades-long, friendly-enemy rivalry of its kind in Hong Kong’s higher-education landscape.

HKUST: the Red Bird sundial and its “turkey” nickname. The landmark at the centre of HKUST’s piazza, Circle of Time, is a red steel sundial installed on 8 October 1991^※, commissioned by the Hong Kong Jockey Club and created by an Irish sculptor couple—just days after the university opened. Its official nickname is the “Red Bird sundial,” but students in everyday Cantonese far more commonly refer to it as the “turkey” (火雞)^※. One widely circulated (but unverified by the university) explanation is that the sculpture seems “ostentatious but not terribly useful,” much like the overblown bird on a Thanksgiving table. A deeper piece of trivia: it took HKUST 32 years to release its first official university anthem in 2023^※; the composer, chosen from 45 submissions, reportedly drew inspiration from humming a tune while walking near the Guangzhou campus.

PolyU: letter cores and the “campus maze.” PolyU’s Hung Hom campus is composed of a series of rectangular “blocks” linked by cylindrical “cores,” designated with letters A through Z but skipping K, O, and I^※ (to avoid confusion with numerals). The system dates from the 1972 red-brick campus design led by architect James Kinoshita^※; when a PolyU student says “see you at X Block” or “go up to Y Core,” that’s this institutional vocabulary in daily use. The popular “PolyU maze” label, while not officially endorsed, has some physical basis—red-brick walkways interweave at three levels (underground, ground, and podium), making this one of the most oft-repeated folk anecdotes in PolyU’s campus narrative.

Verdict: If we’re talking about the tradition with the deepest history, verifiable official records, and mutual acknowledgment by both sides, the CUHK–HKU Big-Two rivalry is the most solid. If we’re talking about the campus meme with the widest cultural reach and the best anecdote to tell an outsider, HKUST’s turkey sundial and PolyU’s letter blocks split the honours.

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# 9. Instagrammable landmarks: whose architecture breaks the internet

The one-line take: HKUST’s Red Bird sundial wins on “more than three decades of accumulated symbolic capital”; PolyU’s Jockey Club Innovation Tower (designed by Zaha Hadid) wins on “the architect’s own international star power.” Two entirely different logics of fame—which is more “Instagrammable” depends on whether you’re asking a local or an architecture buff.

HKUST Red Bird sundial: As noted above, installed in 1991, it has, through more than thirty years of campus life, evolved from a timekeeping device into the university’s spiritual emblem—brands like “Red Bird Innovation Fund,” “Red Bird MPhil,” and “Red Bird Challenge Camp” all take their names from it^※. This is landmark fame built bottom-up, over time.

PolyU Jockey Club Innovation Tower: Designed by the late Zaha Hadid, it opened on 18 March 2014, stands roughly 76 metres tall across 15 floors, and is Hadid’s first permanent building in Hong Kong^※. Its fluid, sculptural form is a strong visual statement; it houses PolyU’s School of Design. This is landmark fame delivered top-down, through the architect’s aura—it didn’t need time to accumulate cachet; it arrived with it on opening day.

CityU Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre: Designed by Daniel Libeskind and opened in 2011^※, it houses the School of Creative Media and is another “architect-aura” landmark, though its visibility trails PolyU’s Innovation Tower.

HKU and CUHK: The landmark buildings of these two universities lean more towards “historical accumulation.” HKU’s Main Building carries over a century of institutional history and named spaces like Loke Yew Hall^※; CUHK’s Art Museum, founded in 1971 with a collection of some 15,000 items^※, leans on cultural depth rather than photogenic appeal—neither fully matches the “Instagrammable” logic discussed in this section.

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# 10. Highly Cited Researcher density: the highest output per head

The one-line take: Measured as a proportion of total academic staff, CityU’s Highly Cited Researchers have ranked first in Hong Kong for ten consecutive years (as of 2025)^※—this isn’t a volume advantage; it’s an efficiency advantage: modest size, astonishing density.

Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers list is an authoritative measure of paper-level citation impact. In 2025, 32 CityU scholars were named, second in Hong Kong and ninth in Asia^※, but as a proportion of total faculty, CityU has ranked first in Hong Kong for ten straight years. This combination—second in volume, first in density—is key to understanding CityU’s ranking logic: it’s disadvantaged on metrics like QS that include reputation surveys, but on purely metrics-driven indicators like U.S. News and citations-per-paper it is a hidden powerhouse (QS 2026 citations per paper: world No. 2, Asia No. 1^※). The listed scholars are concentrated in materials science, chemistry, and engineering—exactly matching CityU’s “materials-science flagship” disciplinary profile.

HKU also performs strongly in this dimension: its Highly Cited Researchers grew from about 15 in 2018 to 53 in 2024, placing 10th globally among institutions^※. In absolute numbers HKU comfortably leads CityU, but because HKU’s total faculty base is larger, the “density” sub-crown stays with CityU.

Verdict: On absolute numbers, HKU leads with 53. On density (proportion of total faculty), CityU has been Hong Kong’s No. 1 for ten consecutive years—and since “density” is the headline metric of this section, the title goes to CityU.

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# 11. Surplus volatility: the wildest financial roller-coaster

The one-line take: This is a “black humour” dimension. In recent years, every one of the five has ridden the investment-market roller-coaster. Among them, HKU recorded a net investment loss of roughly HK$930 million in 2021–22, while PolyU in the same year saw its investment returns swing from an approximately HK$800 million gain to an approximately HK$482 million loss—the two institutions’ annual headline swings were the most dramatic of the five.

HKU’s net investment income over six financial years reads like a fairground ride: 2020–21: +HK$3,302 million → 2021–22: -HK$2,099 million → 2022–23: +HK$456 million → 2023–24: +HK$1,627 million → 2024–25: +HK$2,647 million^※. The positive-to-negative swing in a single year exceeded HK$5 billion. PolyU likewise saw investment income flip from profit to loss in 2021/22 (-HK$482 million), which dragged total income from HK$7.8 billion to HK$6.6 billion^※ in one go. CityU, in 2022/23, saw investment returns nearly flatline (approximately HK$6.7 million), and combined with an operating deficit, posted a full-year shortfall of about HK$360 million^※; two years later, in 2024/25, its surplus rebounded to HK$586 million.

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# 12. Coda: twelve dimensions, no all-round champion

Go back to the master table at the top of this article and read the winners of the twelve contests again: HKU wins on seniority and deepest reserves; CUHK wins on largest campus, the oldest Big-Two rivalry, and the most substantive Nobel attribution; HKUST wins on being young without historical baggage, the sharpest Data Science & AI programme, and the best campus-symbol meme game; CityU wins on internationalisation No. 1 and Highly Cited Researcher density No. 1; PolyU wins on the smallest campus paired with the most surgically precise discipline, a hotel-and-tourism world No. 1, and the most stylish navigation system.

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