University of Hong Kong drafts proposal to set up international campus in city’s new academic town near border with Shenzhen
- HKU plans to offer joint programmes with overseas institutions and take in more non-local students at hub, the Post learns
- New university town is aimed at getting ‘influential and prestigious institutions’ to set up operations, Undersecretary for Education Jeff Sze says
An institution supporting the set-up would admit more non-local students in the hub, the government said on Tuesday without naming the school. A source said the institution was the University of Hong Kong (HKU).
The hub will be part of the academic town included in the Northern Metropolis development proposed by the previous administration in 2021. The entire economic and housing project will cover 30,000 hectares (74,130 acres) in the New Territories, with the university town occupying about 60 hectares.
One proposal submitted for the new academic town’s operation was to set up an internationalised university campus “in a self-financing mode” to provide more joint programmes with well-known overseas institutions for local and outside students, the government earlier revealed.
“HKU is now consolidating our proposal that seeks to further support the government’s vision to build an international postsecondary education hub in the Northern Metropolis,” a university spokesman told the Post.
Undersecretary for Education Jeff Sze Chun-fai told lawmakers in a Legislative Council meeting on Tuesday that this proposed international campus, which he named “i-campus”, could benefit students by immersing them into an international and globalised study environment.
Sze revealed the proportion of non-local students in the proposed international tertiary hub would be higher than the intake level currently allowed for publicly funded institutions. That quota would be doubled to 40 per cent from September.
The new university town was aimed at getting “influential and prestigious institutions” to set up operation, he said.
Sze also said the bureau would follow up on all the proposals submitted by institutions last summer to determine whether their plans for the new hub remained in line with the government’s goals, and if overlapping plans for mainland China branches would be dropped.
“Our land resources are very precious. If [their proposals] are just repeating what they are doing in other places, we may not be able to follow up with those institutions,” Sze said.
19 Hong Kong educational institutions signal interest in new academic town
He added the goals of the university town included promoting vocational and professional education, supporting the city’s development into an international tertiary education hub, aligning with the country’s development strategies and collaborating with industries in the metropolis.
Chu Kwok-keung, a lawmaker representing the education sector, said the reduction of the student population in the city might affect the expansion of the institutions.
Sze said the government hoped to broaden where students came from, particularly since there was no quota in admitting non-local research postgraduate students.
“We believe the development of high quality programmes will be able to attract students from different places,” he said.
