The Open University of Hong Kong

The Open University of Hong Kong

香港公開大學
Type	Public, Self-financing
Established	1989 (as Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong) 1997 (granted full university status)
Chancellor	Chief Executive of Hong Kong (Current officeholder: Leung Chun-ying)
President	Yuk-shan Wong
Administrative staff	558 (2016)
Students	17,093 (2016)
Location	Hong Kong
Campus	Ho Man Tin Campus 30 Good Shepherd Street, Homantin, Kowloon
Affiliations	ICDE, AAOU
Website	www.ouhk.edu.hk

The Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK, OpenU, Chinese: 香港公開大學), formerly the Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong (OLI), is a statutory university located in Ho Man Tin, Hong Kong. The University adheres to the principles of Education for All and Exit Standards with rigorous features. Established by the Hong Kong Government in 1989, the OUHK consists of 4 Schools and they are School of Arts and Social Sciences, Lee Shau Kee School of Business and Administration, School of Education and Languages and School of Science and Technology. The undergraduate and postgraduate awards offered by the University are fully accredited and recognized by the Hong Kong Government and society.

The OUHK is the only self-financing university set up by the Hong Kong Government. It began as a distance-learning-based university, but is now in effect two universities in one. It has started to offer full-time programmes since 2001 and has participated in Hong Kong's centralized joint university admission system (JUPAS) since 2007. Currently, it has a headcount of more than 9,500 students on its full-time face-to-face programmes, occupying one-sixth of all undergraduate students in Hong Kong. The current President is Professor Yuk-Shan Wong.

The university was initially named Open Learning Institute of Hong Kong (OLI, 香港公開進修學院). Under the expansion of education in the 1990s in Hong Kong, the establishment of institute introduced distance learning to Hong Kong and set an alternative path of continuing education for its working force. Students are able to adjust the pace of learning according to their own conditions.

As programmes of study are self-financing, there are no financial subsidies from the Hong Kong Government for the university itself. However, full-time students may get grants and loans from the scheme "Financial Assistance Scheme for Post-secondary Students" (FASP), while other distance learning students are able to make special loan arrangements with a bank.

The OUHK has designed many non-distance learning courses, including full-time courses. In 2006-2007 academic year, they also participated the Joint University Programmes Admissions System, which mainly target at secondary school graduates, marked as the only self-financed university under the scheme.