Universities draw on diverse expertise as they prepare to roll out hundreds of general education (GE) courses at the launch of the four-year curriculum in 2012.
Lingnan University, for one, regards its own GE offerings as a defining curriculum. 'The GE experience should mould our future students into what we hope our graduates to be,' says Professor William Lee, the university's registrar and associate vice-president of academic affairs.
Besides compulsory language courses, it involves a 33-credit core curriculum covering the subject areas of critical thinking, understanding morality (ethics and morals), world history, and the making of Hong Kong, on top of some course clusters - each with 15 to 20 courses for students to choose from. The making of Hong Kong is a multidisciplinary course that allows students to develop a broader view of local society and policies, Lee says.
The liberal arts college is looking to hire around 20 teachers to support small-class teaching. While higher education recruitment is a global business, Lee maintains that candidates with local qualifications stand a fair chance of being hired. 'It depends on the area of discipline. If the subject matter and its content are local, we may hire local candidates. Benefits and remunerations are all determined by rank. Expatriate terms no longer exist today,' he says.
For the past 16 years, the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has depended upon local expertise for its GE courses which are non-credit-bearing and open to student participation on a voluntary basis.
HKU will continue its role in meeting the need to broaden the scope of the curriculum without the risk of overlapping with the content of HKU's new common core curriculum, which will be expanded from next year.