13th September 2025 – (Hong Kong) It takes an unusually sturdy sense of entitlement to occupy 200,000 square feet of government land for close to four decades and pay, in rent, less than the price of a bottled water. Yet this is the bargain that has quietly underwritten Hong Kong International School’s football field and adjoining grounds since 1986: a short‑term tenancy at HK$1 a year, marked “if payable,” on a site classified for education. In a city where a single car space can attract five figures a month, the symbolism is so stark it borders on satire. Public land, private privilege, nominal rent.
HKIS is no fly‑by‑night operator. It is a highly resourced institution with a reputation for impressive facilities, international accreditation and alumni who populate boardrooms and billboards. It is also, according to filings and allegations now before the courts, an institution sitting on some HK$2.8 billion in reserves, with cumulative net surpluses approaching HK$800 million over five years and annual tuition pushing well north of HK$250,000 per child, plus levies, fees, and the infamous debenture options that function as queue‑jumpers for those with means.
The HK$1 lease is a window into a larger settlement that has long governed elite education in Hong Kong: the public provides enabling conditions—land, regulatory headroom, visa quotas, tax treatment—while private operators provide a premium service to a niche market, increasingly defined by income rather than mission. The state calls it support for diversity and competitiveness. Parents call it choice. The balance sheet calls it what it is: a transfer of scarce public value to schools that, by design or neglect, have drifted out of reach for most families.
Defenders of the model argue that non‑profit schools are not cash machines; they are capital‑intensive operations whose costs rise faster than inflation in a high-cost city. Salaries and benefits consume the lion’s share of revenue; campus renewal demands eight‑ and nine‑figure commitments; compliance is expensive; recruiting top faculty internationally requires packages that compete with global peers. All true. But prudence is not a synonym for hoarding, and buffers cease to look prudent when they sit beside annual fee increases, premium debentures and a public subsidy—yes, HK$1 is a subsidy—that has not been matched by a corresponding obligation to affordability.
The lawsuit filed by the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the founding body that owns the Repulse Bay site and co‑founded HKIS in 1966, alleges breach of an operating agreement and, more pointedly, a breach of purpose. It accuses the school’s operator of serving the “wealthy and connected elite,” of letting reserves swell to “grossly excessive” levels, of selling HK$3 million and HK$5 million debentures for admissions priority, of erecting price barriers that filter its intake. The operator dismisses the claims as misleading and insists it is compliant, not‑for‑profit and mission‑driven. Both statements can be literally true and practically hollow. A school can be impeccably governed and still be exclusionary by price. It can be not‑for‑profit and still operate a marketplace where only the affluent can buy tickets.
Public land is not a trinket passed among private actors. It is a finite asset held in trust. The short‑term tenancy policy exists to put idle sites to immediate, socially useful work pending long‑term plans. It is sensible that non‑profits pay concessionary rents for genuine public benefit. It is indefensible that the benefit flow one way when outcomes so obviously concentrate advantage.
Supporters respond that HKIS does carry obligations. It maintains a foreign passport quota that forces expensive overseas recruitment, thereby elevating costs. It invests heavily in facilities that double as community assets. It provides scholarships and financial aid, and the Education Bureau signs off on fees. The board says eight in ten tuition dollars go to people, two in ten to operations; reserves are earmarked for campus renewal, bond redemptions and rainy days, leaving roughly six months of operating cover. No one disputes that. The question is whether those numbers justify a pricing and admissions regime that would make a hedge fund blush.
Application and enrolment fees are merely the gateway. Annual tuition and capital levies push the bill into the mid‑HK$200,000s. Experiential programmes add four or five digits; technology mandates push the household into buying specific devices; buses, lunches and uniforms tack on more. None of this includes the optional—but not really optional in oversubscribed years—debentures of HK$3 million or HK$5 million that provide admissions priority. Even if redeemable after a decade and a half, such instruments are not working‑class finance. They are wealth filters masquerading as capital structures.
When a school operating on that platform also enjoys an almost free ride on 200,000 square feet of public land for four decades, the optics are corrosive. It tells ordinary taxpayers that public generosity is underwriting private advantage; it tells middle‑income families that “choice” is a euphemism; it tells the city’s young that merit travels fastest when seated on money. The defence that “other schools charge more” is not a defence; it is an indictment of a sector that treats the cost of access as a feature, not a bug.
There is a narrow, technical debate to be had in court about contracts, governance, and whether the founding body can evict the operator from Repulse Bay or Tai Tam. That is for lawyers. The broader debate belongs to the public. If the state confers privileges—land, leniencies, approvals—it should extract obligations that are measurable and binding. At a minimum, any institution enjoying a concessionary public‑land arrangement should publish, in plain language and audited numbers, its need‑based aid budget, the percentage of students on meaningful assistance, the trajectory of its fees relative to inflation, and the size and purpose of reserves. It should commit a floor—say, a fixed share of annual surplus—to fee relief and bursaries. It should phase down the weight of debentures in admissions, and ultimately scrap them. It should agree to pay a modest, indexed rent instead of a ceremonial dollar, with proceeds earmarked for public education.
The counterargument—that tinkering at the margin won’t dent the economics—is partly right. Hong Kong’s structural inputs are stubborn: land is scarce, compliance is unforgiving, talent is costly, parents with multinational packages exist, and demand for English‑medium, university‑pathway programmes is resilient. Even if the Lutheran Church wins every inch of its case, any successor model would inherit that cost base. Litigation doesn’t cheapen cement or lower payroll taxes.
However, the idea that nothing meaningful can change is a counsel of laziness. Much can. A school with HK$2.8 billion in reserves can afford to freeze fees for a period, lift bursaries, and publish a glide path for ending debenture priority. A government that can lease 200,000 square feet for HK$1 can recalibrate that figure to something symbolic but sane, and apply the proceeds to expand places in the Direct Subsidy Scheme or to seed inclusive scholarships. A sector that prides itself on global best practice can decouple admissions from liquidity and still attract the families it covets, because the value proposition is more than a queue; it is curriculum, faculty, community and outcomes.
There is a deeper hypocrisy to confront. We speak of education as a public good while organising its top tiers as a private market resting on public favours. We extol mobility while pricing the on‑ramp as if it were a luxury car. We applaud civic‑mindedness while normalising a financing tool—debentures—that says the quiet part out loud: pay first, study later. If that is capitalism, it is the shabby kind that mistakes extraction for excellence. If that is “not‑for‑profit”, it is an accounting classification, not a moral one.
Education should not be influenced by financial considerations alone. While money will always play a role, it should not be the sole determinant. The crucial distinction lies in ensuring that the younger generation perceives public backing of private schools as more than just a symbol of status for a select few. This support should provide access, foster trust, and establish credibility. It should enable us to declare, earnestly, that in Hong Kong, education is a universal right—supported by actions far more substantial than a nominal cheque for HK$1.
