Scholarship and the extension of knowledge are the foundation of a university, but the core activity raised on this foundation is the education of the next generation of professionals and community leaders. The best of our young people are entrusted to universities at a moment of transition in their lives. Making good on this trust is our first duty.
CityU has a very broad educational mission. Desirable educational outcomes vary greatly across the range of this work. Understanding this is a first step in consolidating our strengths.
Bachelors Degrees -- the ideal graduate
In setting out the attributes for an "ideal graduate" from our bachelors degree programmes, we have recognised that specialist, content-based knowledge must be complemented by the acquisition of learning skills, the ability to deal with problems creatively, to work well with people, and to operate across discipline and professional boundaries. Only then will students have an educational experience capable of preparing them for the world of work and providing an underpinning for life-long learning.
Meeting these objectives for undergraduate education requires a searching, on-going review of our existing academic curriculum to ensure that we are teaching to the objectives we have set out. This development of the academic curriculum must be aligned with increased opportunities for students to acquire skills and competences, to take part in international student exchange, to join out-of-class programmes for personal development, and improvements in mentoring and advising.
Any forward-looking university sets out much of this agenda for its undergraduate programmes. We are working to make CityU's education special in two respects. Firstly we are conscious that our graduates must find their way among the cross-currents of diverse cultures. To prepare them for this challenge we emphasis the value of a study of Chinese culture and social life, the dynamics of regional developments, especially in the Pearl River Delta, English language acquisition, and exposure to other cultures. Secondly we focus on the dynamic linkage between the new technologies revolutionising our world and the creativity and imagination required to put them to exciting and profitable use.
To achieve what we wish for our graduates means making bold connections among traditional disciplines and professional areas. To maximise these connections for our students, the University will need to encourage cooperation among departments, to roll back the number of specific programmes, and to allow for more varied combinations of courses.
The changing environment of post-secondary education creates new opportunities for broadening our recruitment of young people who missed the opportunity for direct entry to a bachelors programme after secondary school graduation, but have demonstrated their capacity to succeed in other environments. We have shown that we can achieve excellent results for students with a wide range of achievement. As the pool of graduates from post-secondary education grows, we expect to recruit the best and the brightest to join CityU.
Postgraduate qualifications
One of the most direct contributions we make as a university is to provide postgraduates with advanced qualifications in our evening programmes. In business, law, engineering, computing, social work, education, public administration, environmental sciences, and language studies the CityU evening session provides hard-working, ambitious, young professionals with the chance to upgrade skills.
It is sometimes argued that these programmes are a personal investment that pays off to the graduate and so requires no public subsidy. But this view ignores the fact that postgraduate education is not a luxury for the few, but an essential component of a dynamic economy and society. If Hong Kong does not invest in its young professionals in this way, it will not move forward.
Nevertheless rebalancing income from postgraduate programmes toward student fees and relying less on public funds is a key objective for this planning period. This objective is consistent with the project of consolidating the resources available to mount an evening session around high-value-added advanced qualifications. Law and business are leading the way in this regard. Over the planning period other disciplines will follow in gearing their work to advanced studies benchmarked to the highest standard. We are actively exploring options for programmes mounted jointly with interested employers, or other agencies.
A more market-oriented portfolio of postgraduate studies will be supported by a more flexible administration of these programmes. The adoption of the credit unit system allows us to charge fees by credit unit and enables students to set their own pace in their studies.
Because our community now reaches into mainland China, we are projecting postgraduate programmes to key centres in our region and beyond. Our MBA and MPA programmes are the leading edge of this development. We will make such work a priority because it forges links that are essential to Hong Kong as it grows into a new regional and national role.
A new beginning for the College
If Hong Kong is to maintain its position as a premier commercial and industrial centre, more students must go further with their education. As a result the SAR Government has launched a major effort to open access to tertiary education. A key element in this expansion will be the establishment of post-secondary colleges, offering qualifications that allow students to articulate to bachelors degree programmes, or prepare them directly for employment.
Since its formation, CityU has offered such qualifications, formerly higher diplomas and now associate degrees. The high-quality programmes offered by our College are accepted and valued by the community and have become a benchmark for the sector. We are already far along in plans to increase the scale of these programmes and to create a more effective bridge from secondary school graduation to advanced qualifications.
To allow for better decision-making and a better adaptation to the changing environment, we intend to increase the autonomy of the College and to facilitate its development toward financial viability.
Performance measures
Traditional assessments of students' content knowledge fall short of the evaluation of well-rounded competence and do not allow for any assessment of the progress students are making from entry. "Value added" measures of progress are essential to guide our work. We will therefore embark on a strategic project to develop better measures of performance and an effort to benchmark performance at entry to gain an insight into the University's success in educating its students.
Goals for Education
- Working with undergraduates to prepare them for the fast-changing world of work with special attention to the mix of professional knowledge, technical skills, and creativity necessary for their success.
- Broadening our recruitment of young people who have missed the chance for direct entry to a bachelors degree programme after secondary school, but have demonstrated their capacity to succeed.
- Focusing our part-time programmes on high-value, advanced, professional qualifications.
- Contributing to the community's effort to expand opportunities for post-secondary education through the development of a more autonomous, financially viable College.
- Basing our projects for education on reliable measures of performance.
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