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Elaine Yau

Hong Kong's universities are offering salary packages worth as much as HK$200,000 a month - double the current level - to attract overseas professors in a recruitment frenzy driven by the impending launch of new four-year degree programmes. 
City University, the Polytechnic University and the University of Science and Technology have introduced flexible pay-scale systems that will significantly raise the earnings of top academics in their fields. This has created pressure on other institutions to follow suit. 
'Under the past rigid system, everybody at the same rank was paid the same,' said City University vice-president Paul Lam Kwan-sing. 
'No matter which disciplines they serve, they climbed up the same pay ladder. We had a lot of difficulty employing quality professors for certain [popular] disciplines such as finance and marketing in the past. Now, the salary of everybody is negotiable. It depends on how much the school head is willing to offer a professor.'
University pay scales used to track those of the civil service, but they were de-linked in 2004. 
University chiefs now say they will, for the first time, be able to compete for the very best academic brains worldwide. Their efforts, some admit, are being helped by the global economic crisis that has made top jobs hard to find overseas. 
As well as making themselves more competitive, local universities say the new system enables them to pay more to close big gaps in the salaries of professors in Hong Kong and the United States, where some top scholars are among the highest paid in the world. 
'We are fully aware of the noticeable disparity in faculty salary levels, compared to those in North America, in a number of academic fields such as business and engineering,' a spokesman for the University of Science and Technology said.
With two years to go before the launch of the four-year degree system, the city's universities together need a total of 1,000 extra lecturers.
A three-year senior secondary school system was launched last year and the first batch of graduates from this will enter university for four-year degrees in 2012. Still short of 100 professors, City University has adopted a discipline-specific pay structure modelled on the US. 
The new system is a far cry from the old model under which all faculty staff, irrespective of the disciplines they serve, have been pegged to various scales depending on experience and qualifications. 
While salaries for US faculty staff are governed by market demand, the salary scales for local publicly-funded universities are fixed. The monthly pay for a chair professor is about HK$100,000 and HK$87,000 for a professor. An associate professor is paid HK$70,000 and assistant professor HK$59,000 per month. 
City University's new system, launched in September,  provides a monthly cash allowance on top of basic pay, ranging from several thousand dollars to HK$100,000 depending on performance and demand.
It is the first time the Kowloon Tong university has reviewed its pay structure since the salary system of the eight publicly-funded tertiary institutions was de-linked from the civil service pay structure in 2004 after substantial cuts in government funding due to the poor economy.
Lam said the new structure would not only help attract top talent, but also retain good academic staff. 
'US universities can get the best people from around the world because they can be highly responsive to market demand,' he said. 
'In the past, we could do nothing if a professor, already at the salary ceiling commensurate with his rank, got a higher-paid offer from a US university. 'Now, if we think he's worthwhile and want to retain him, we can give him a counter offer by way of the discretionary cash allowance within 24 hours.'
The University of Science and Technology has also introduced a discretionary bonus system along with remuneration packages that are market-driven and merit-based.  'We have to ensure competitive remuneration to attract and retain quality faculty,' the spokesman said, noting that as well as the US salary gap, Hong Kong also faced competition from mainland universities which were investing heavily in staff.
Lam said: 'We saw many people prised away from us by mainland and US universities in the past.'
City University's new pay system is the fruit of a year's research by the human resources department on the pay scales of top European and American universities. 
With effect from July 1 this year, a new pay package for Polytechnic University saw all salaries rise by an average of 10 per cent and a monthly special allowance system was introduced for hot disciplines. 
The gratuity on completion of contract was raised from 10 to 15 per cent of salary while the bar for those eligible for housing allowances has been lowered from HK$53,000 to HK$50,150. 
The changes to the pay structure are expected to cost an estimated HK$70 million extra per year. 
Philip Chan Ching-ho, deputy president and provost of the university, said the introduction of the new structure was aimed at rectifying the big discrepancy in pay between local and US universities. 
'In the US, the pay for a finance professor could be five times that for a humanities one. But in Hong Kong, everybody, regardless of disciplines, gets similar pay. A finance professor in a top US university gets paid US$180,000 per year. In Hong Kong, even the chair professor couldn't get that amount.' He said the university was still short of about 150 faculty staff. 'The competition between local universities will be very intense in 2012,' he said. 
However, Chan said Hong Kong was lucky in the timing of its recruitment drive. 'It's coincidental that European and US economies are in a slump. All the post-doctorates who graduate from renowned overseas universities would not be able to find a teaching job in the US. They will be eager to come to us.'
The rising tide
Matching salaries or adding cash top-ups is a new game in Hong Kong
Polytechnic University's salary, bonus, gratuity and other pay benefits will cost annually, in Hong Kong dollars, an extra: $70m



HK$200,000 a month to lure top professors