The latest rankings confirm what many in Hong Kong already know: the city’s universities are exceptional. Five institutions continue to sit among the world’s top 100, reflecting decades of investment, academic ambition and hard work.

Yet behind the rankings triumph lies a question that receives far less attention: what happens to the people responsible for that success?

As universities compete ever harder for rankings, grants and prestige, academics face growing pressure to produce results on ever-shorter timelines. If Hong Kong wants to sustain its success, it must look beyond rankings and ask if the risks and rewards of academic achievement are being shared fairly.

Academic excellence is a collective accomplishment. Outstanding teaching emerges from interactions between professors and students. Research breakthroughs depend not only on scholars, but also on research teams, university support, funding agencies, community partners and society at large. When a university rises in the rankings, it is the product of an entire ecosystem.

Yet higher education is increasingly governed by the logic of performance management. As competition intensifies, university leaders understandably seek tools that promise measurable gains.

The problem is that many of these tools shift risk onto individual academics while concentrating rewards at the institutional level.

Becoming an academic is already an exercise in uncertainty. Years are spent earning advanced degrees, completing postdoctoral appointments and navigating highly competitive job markets. Even after securing a position, scholars commit to research programmes, pursue funding, supervise students and undertake projects whose value may not become clear for years. Throughout, they are expected to excel in research, teaching and service.

Universities face risks too. They invest in salaries, infrastructure and institutional support while deciding how performance should be evaluated and resources allocated. But this raises a fundamental question: what exactly counts as academic performance?

Is it publication numbers, grant income, citations, student evaluations or social impact? How should universities compare a groundbreaking humanities monograph with a commercially valuable patent? How should teaching quality be assessed when student learning depends on factors that extend far beyond the classroom?

The answers are neither obvious nor objective. Every metric captures part of the picture while obscuring another.

Historically, tenure emerged as a response to this uncertainty. Universities made long-term commitments to scholars whose future contributions they believed justified institutional investment. In return, academics gained the security needed to pursue ambitious ideas.

The arrangement was never perfect, but it aligned incentives around long-term excellence rather than short-term output. Today, that balance is increasingly under pressure.

Across higher education systems worldwide, annual reviews, metric-based assessments and ranking-driven management play a growing role. When salary adjustments, contract renewals and promotions become tightly linked to annual indicators, universities gain more immediate control over performance and may improve the metrics that feed international rankings.

Yet there is an important difference between what can be measured annually and what creates lasting academic and social value.

Many influential books take years to write. Groundbreaking discoveries often emerge only after years of failed experiments. Transformational teaching and community partnerships produce benefits that may not become visible until long after students graduate.

Institutions that become too focused on short-term indicators risk encouraging behaviours that boost measurable outputs while weakening the deeper foundations of scholarship and education. They may also discourage intellectual risk-taking.

Research on scientists’ workplace experiences suggests satisfaction depends not only on funding or resources, but also on professional autonomy, institutional trust, supportive colleagues and confidence about career prospects. These are conditions that enable creativity, collaboration and sustained scholarly achievement.

Research is inherently uncertain. The more careers are tied to short-term performance targets, the greater the incentive to prioritise safe, predictable projects. What appears efficient in the short term may ultimately reduce the very innovation universities seek to promote.

This matters because universities compete not only for rankings, grants and students, but also for talent. The world’s strongest research systems increasingly recognise that attracting and retaining outstanding scholars requires more than financial investment.

Researchers are more likely to thrive in environments that offer stability, supportive academic communities, meaningful participation in governance and the freedom to pursue important questions. Academic well-being is a strategic asset.

The debate resembles the broader controversy surrounding rankings. Rankings provide useful information and enhance international visibility. But few would argue that a university’s true value can be reduced to its position in a table. The same principle applies to academic performance.

Most importantly, discussions about institutional success often leave students out of the picture. If policies are designed primarily to improve organisational metrics, who ensures that student learning, intellectual development and well-being remain at the centre of university life? The ultimate test of a university is whether it advances knowledge, cultivates thoughtful citizens and contributes to society.

For Hong Kong, the challenge is not whether universities should pursue excellence. They must. The question is whether the incentives shaping academic life remain aligned with that goal.

That requires funding systems that support long-term scholarship, governance structures that give academics and students meaningful voices, and leadership that recognises the limits of metrics. It requires balancing competition with collegiality, performance with well-being, and institutional ambition with educational purpose.

Hong Kong’s universities have shown they can climb the rankings. The harder task is creating the conditions under which talented scholars will continue to produce path-breaking research, inspiring teaching and meaningful public engagement.

The universities that succeed in the decades ahead will not necessarily be those that measure the most. They will be those that share risks fairly, reward contributions wisely and create environments in which people can do their best work.