Just months away from the launch of four-year degrees in September, Hong Kong universities have made great strides in developing new courses and faculties for an expanded curriculum that aims to produce graduates who can adapt and effectively respond to a fast-changing world.
Under the four-year curriculum - the final stage of the 3+3+4 academic structure reform - students can expect a heavy dose of general education in their first two years, choosing from a potentially mind-boggling mix of electives on top of compulsory courses. For most students, and excepting those enrolled for professional degrees such as medicine or law, admissions will be faculty or programme based, and they won't need to declare a major till the second year.
The change underlies the major goal of the education reform launched a decade ago - to nurture graduates' all-round development. And such a target has never been more important. Institutions not just in Hong Kong, but in the region, including Singapore and the mainland, have attached increased importance to university education that fosters creativity. General education serves the same purpose as that championed by traditional liberal arts institutions in the United States. 'In the early 1900s, as university education in the US became specialised, people said we had gone too far and left the old tradition of learning behind, so the call for general education emerged,' says Professor Reza Hoshmand, director of general education at Baptist University, who is among a team of Fulbright Scholars brought to the city by the Hong Kong-America Centre to help institutions carry out the reform.
'On top of professional degrees such as engineering, law, you provide some kind of a broad-based education to let students define themselves, and to see the connection between their study and the rest of the world.'
Regionally, Hong Kong leads the way in nurturing graduates with broad knowledge and skills, though Yale University is helping the National University of Singapore set up the island state's first liberal arts college, called Yale-NUS College, due to open next year.
Despite opposition from some Yale faculty members against collaboration with a nation that is far from liberal, the new college is seen as a model of education that, as put by Yale president Richard Levin, offers a 'broader perspective on the complex problems of the world'.
