Hong Kong recruits from the ranking. It created a pass, the Top Talent Pass, for people it wants to see working in the city. One way in is a degree: a bachelor’s awarded by a university Hong Kong has placed at the top of the world rankings. On arrival, no job offer is required. The graduate comes in order to work. The official page: Top Talent Pass Scheme.
The name of the university makes the difference. A bachelor’s degree from an institution on this list opens the pass. A bachelor’s degree from a university that is not on it does not. Other universities do not open the same mobility.
A child can have attended a very good university, respected at home, chosen with care. If it sits outside the set Hong Kong reads, the city does not use it as a reason to let them come and work. The mobility is in the rank. It is not in the mere fact of having studied abroad.
A wider list, the same gesture
Hong Kong does not stop at fifty names. Its list adds up, over several years, the top of several rankings — Times Higher Education, QS, Shanghai, and others. It is therefore wider than a Top 50 of one year. The gesture is the same. The city says: the top of the ranking. It does not say: a good university, somewhere.
The Top 50 universities we prepare are at the heart of what Hong Kong reads. Shanghai, Times Higher Education, QS, in that year’s edition. A child who graduates from one of them has a degree this city knows how to recognise. A child who graduates from a university chosen because it was easier to reach does not have that recognition.
Tsinghua, Peking, the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University are names of that kind. So are Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Oxford, when they sit at the top of these rankings. The degree, wherever it was earned, is what Hong Kong looks at. The studies happen at that university. Hong Kong is the city where the degree later opens work.
The United Kingdom and the Emirates have made a choice of the same kind, with their own lists. The HPI visa list. The graduates’ Golden Visa. Why aim for the Top 50.
The rank is decided before the pass
A child in 6e, in 4e, or in high school does not file for this pass. They build the university file. That university is what will say, on the day of the degree, whether Hong Kong can read them in this way.
Liwaza Familles starts there. The diagnostic looks at how the child reasons, where their English stands, what interests them, and what a path toward a Top 50 university asks of them.