- David Bach highlights that Hong Kong must address high living costs, globalize management education, and diversify its economy to remain Asia’s top education hub.
- He emphasizes attracting international faculty, broadening career opportunities beyond traditional sectors, and fostering entrepreneurship and innovation.
- Hong Kong ranks 4th globally in the 2025 IMD World Talent Ranking, and strategic reforms could help sustain its position as a leading talent and education hub.
David Bach, president and Nestle professor of strategy and political economy at the Institute for Management Development, said Hong Kong needs to deal with high costs, globalize its management education and diversify its economic base to become more competitive as Asia's education hub. Speaking in an interview Bach said there are millions of young people across Asia looking for world-class education-many of whom would have gone to the United States or somewhere else years ago.
He said Hong Kong is well-positioned to attract these students, provided it faces the main challenges that shape international attractiveness. For students, says Bach, the cost of living remains very high in Hong Kong. “You need to earn a lot of money to have a good life here in Hong Kong. In comparison to some other jurisdictions, the cost of living becomes an issue”, he said.
Apart from affordability, Bach emphasized the need to offer management education with an international perspective. Bach indicated that Hong Kong business schools could achieve this by attracting professors from other parts of the world and training their graduates to handle high political and business complexities across India, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
He mentioned that the graduates also needed more opportunities for employment, most especially outside the traditional sectors of finance, science, and engineering. Bach called for diversification in the economy to breed entrepreneurship and innovation, career opportunities in fields other than art, literature, and psychology for students, among others.
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The proposal would, he claimed, make Hong Kong more attractive to foreign talent and allow for the nurturance of a most diverse and versatile work population. It was this trend that placed Hong Kong in fourth position globally in the 2025 IMD World Talent Ranking for the first time, both ever and in Asia. Bach added that such competitiveness could only be sustained with a stable and predictable business environment, while promoting innovation, learning, and experimentation.
He referred to Switzerland and Singapore as models and called for a collaborative approach to policymaking, weighing the interests of government, business, and civil society. While IMD currently has campuses in Switzerland and Singapore, as well as a research office in Shenzhen, there is no plan to add a Hong Kong campus anytime soon. However, Bach spared no praise for the city as a talent hub in Asia.
The AKN delegation earlier visited the Northern Metropolis Coordination Office to study the proposed university town across Hung Shui Kiu/Ha Tsuen and Ngau Tam Mei, indicative of its interest in Hong Kong's education infrastructure and strategic planning. By addressing affordability, making education more global, and creating diversification of the economy, Bach concluded that Hong Kong could maintain its status as one of the most influential global education and business cities.
