Universities alter courses to offer broader education
Students under the new four-year degree system will be able to study a range of topics in their first year before choosing a major, as universities aim to nurture graduates with expertise beyond their chosen fields.
Most publicly funded universities will get rid of early specialisation, and offer general studies courses for first-year students under the new system, which begins in 2012.
The move echoes changes in the new senior secondary structure, introduced last year, in which the rigid segregation of arts and science streams was abolished and a broad-ranging new compulsory subject, liberal studies, was introduced.
Baptist University, the first to announce its detailed curriculum changes for 2012, said five of its seven schools would adopt an admission system under which students can try out all disciplines in the first year and choose their major in the second.
With the exception of a few faculties, such as the schools of engineering at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, students now have to pick their major preferences before they enter university.
Professor Chung Ling, associate vice-president of Baptist University, said more new courses on general knowledge would be introduced.
'Teachers from various disciplines who have come up with new courses can fill in an application form. Their ideas will be vetted by a special committee,' she said.
New courses on general knowledge include history and civilisation, debating skills in Putonghua and mathematical logic.
Disciplines that will retain the current admission procedures include music and visual arts.
Professor Walter Yuen Wai-wah, vice-president of academic affairs at Polytechnic University, said a similar system would be adopted in some faculties, including engineering. The university says the system, which it calls 'broad-discipline admission', couldn't apply to all courses.
'Some faculties like the faculty of health, due to the nature of courses like nursing and rehabilitative science, will retain the practice of early specialisation,' Yuen said.
In a recent letter sent to faculty staff and students, Chinese University provost Professor Benjamin Wah Wan-sang said students under the new system would spend more time taking courses outside their majors, especially in the first or second year.
He said universities needed to be aware that the new secondary diploma qualifications would not provide graduates with the same depth of understanding in some academic disciplines as the old system, which consisted of seven years' secondary schooling.
'Broad-based admission is, therefore, consistent with the broad-based education that we wish to provide.'
