Hong Kong Branch Campuses in Greater Bay Area: Motivations, Quality assurance, and Impacts on Higher Education Regionalization

Given that higher education cooperation in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) was encouraged by the Chinese government, the top eight universities in Hong Kong have successively established branch campuses in GBA. Their collaborative practices and modes by the Guangdong and HK governments would be implemented to strengthen regionalization and to establish several world-class universities in GBA. However, regional disparities in the GBA are accentuated, especially between Hong Kong and Guangdong. Interestingly, it is imperative that how can HK universities can develop and integrate their branch campuses into the GBA? At the same time, how can these HE branch campuses ensure their educational quality worthy of these top-ranking home campuses from Hong Kong? Existing research tends to concentrate more on the IBCs from western countries while ignoring HK's branch campus in the Mainland. Therefore, this paper examines the motivations of this cooperative mode by local governments and Hong Kong's university branch campuses, and internal quality assurance of branch campuses, as well as their future challenges on higher education regionalization.