Founded on a barren plot of land a decade ago and now a world-class tertiary education institution, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen aims to make greater contributions to cultivating talent with its innovative and inclusive spirit. 

The institution, which will admit students through the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination from the next academic year, hopes to attract more Hong Kong students to further enrich its student diversity. 

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During a media tour of the campus on Friday to introduce the university’s development over the past decade, CUHK-Shenzhen President Xu Yangsheng said the institution has achieved remarkable progress in building up discipline, academic systems, student quality, educational methods and social collaboration. 

Founded in 2014 on a desolate piece of land in Shenzhen’s Longgang district, CUHK-Shenzhen has become a competitive university, occupying an area of 1.33 square kilometers with about 12,000 students. 

Currently, the institution has seven schools for bachelor's degree students. Along with the Graduate School, it offers 28 undergraduate and 46 postgraduate programs. 

According to Xu, 135 full-time professors at the university’s economics and finance departments come from some of the world’s top universities. He said that even some of the country’s prestigious seats of higher learning like Tsinghua University and Peking University have only 60 to 70 professors of such high caliber in the same fields. 

The high qualifications of CUHKShenzhen’s faculty can also be seen in other disciplines, such as material chemistry, biomedical sciences and economic sciences. 

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On building up the academic system, Xu said the Shenzhen campus has made great efforts to put itself on a par with the CUHK main campus in Hong Kong, as well as other leading international universities. 

He said CUHK-Shenzhen has maintained the highest admission scores based on the national university entrance examination in Guangdong province for nine consecutive years. 

This year, the university started admitting students through the Joint Entrance Examination for students from the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan, as well as through Taiwan’s General Scholastic Ability Test. 

Cai Xiaoqiang, associate vice-president of CUHK-Shenzhen, said the institution has admitted 23 students from the three regions this year, including 20 from the HKSAR. 

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He said students admitted through the Joint Entrance Examination this year are of high quality, some of whom are among the nation’s best. As of the next academic year, students who take the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education examination can use the exam results to apply for admission. Cai said he hopes CUHK-Shenzhen can attract more Hong Kong students to strengthen its talent cultivation effort. 

Compared with the main CUHK campus in Hong Kong, the Shenzhen branch may have higher quotas for some popular courses, such as medicine, to enable more Hong Kong students to be enrolled. 

Davy Cheng, founding dean of the School of Medicine at CUHKShenzhen, believes that, as the first medical school established by a Hong Kong university on the Chinese mainland, the faculty can play an important role in nurturing medical talent in the GuangdongHong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and help to alleviate the pressure on Hong Kong’s healthcare system. 

He said students of the School of Medicine should have a global vision, and the admission requirements will be in line with Hong Kong’s. Graduates of the school can also practice in Hong Kong as long as they can obtain a license in the SAR. 

Cheng said the medical school aims to deepen cooperation between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and reform the Greater Bay Area’s healthcare system in the long run. 

Besides CUHK, three other universities in Hong Kong — Hong Kong Baptist University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the City University of Hong Kong — have set up branches in the Guangdong cities of Zhuhai, Guangzhou and Dongguan respectively. 

Three other universities — the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Hong Kong Metropolitan University — have been allowed to establish campuses in Shenzhen, Foshan and Zhaoqing.

Contact the writer at atlasshao@chinadailyhk.com