Founding member: University of Hong Kong

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) was founded in 1911 and opened in 1912.  As early as 1914, HKU was in contact with the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). In a report received by the Council of the University in 1921, it was recommended that HKU should develop its position as ‘the representative of British university education in China’ and to build a home base to ‘serve as a centre for the co-ordination of the work of this University and that of other universities of the (British) Empire’.

We continued our links with the ACU throughout these years for the benefits we received from the services provided, and for the contributions that we believe we could make to this consortium of higher education. Over the past century, HKU has participated in many ACU congresses, conferences and annual meetings, and even hosted some of these events, including the Conference of Executive Heads of Commonwealth Universities in 1981. Two of our previous Vice-Chancellors have been elected to the Chairmanship of the ACU Council and our current Vice-Chancellor, Professor Tsui Lap-Chee was appointed as a member of the ACU Council from 2003-04 to 2010-11.

In recent years, we have continued to benefit from ACU programs like CUDOS and Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, as well as support in areas like overseas staff recruitment, grants and funding offered, and quality assurance and benchmarking exercises. The ACU Professional Networks have also provided useful materials to our colleagues in different areas and we receive other publications from the ACU which we circulate within the University.

Looking forward, we believe the biggest challenge of the higher education sector is globalisation. The production and dissemination of knowledge is now near instantaneous, resulting in a smaller, highly integrated world, but one with fewer certainties and more moral dilemmas. Whilst boundaries between regions and cultures have completely broken down, new forms of activities are learned as they are created each day, and we are confronted with novel situations and ill-defined problems. 

One of HKU's challenges is the local community’s demand for, and unrealistic expectations of, higher education. Employers and taxpayers are increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of university graduates; they expect our graduates to possess both generic capabilities and global outlook, and, ironically, be able to undertake their duties without going through a lot of on-the-job training.

As a result, our students tend to pay more attention to vocational skills over academic learning when they study. The teaching of moral, civic and ethical values — which are precisely the core values underlying the sustainable development of our society — are seldom covered extensively in the undergraduate curriculum. To address this, the University has implemented a new 4-year undergraduate curriculum, which aims to develop the intellectual capabilities, professional skills and the core values of responsible global citizenship in our students. While traditional classroom teaching remains a core activity, we also want students to have opportunities to put into practice what they learn through a wide variety of experiential learning options.

Another difficulty is that whilst both students and academics are facing intense competition internationally, most university rankings are based on research achievements rather than contributions in education and humanity, which is difficult to assess. We identified our research strengths and areas we wanted to develop, and we sought leading academics who could help us reach our goals. We also nurtured young research talent and invested in learning facilities and research support. The upshot is that we have attracted a growing number of top scholars; in 2003 we had 18 scientists ranked among the top 1% in their fields by the Institute for Scientific Information, and in 2012 we had 111.

With a new campus extension, an innovative undergraduate curriculum that encapsulates a dynamic, holistic approach to teaching and learning, and a research strategy that is yielding significant results, we believe the University is well-placed to face the challenges of the future.