Back to UGC Home
 

 

The "3+3+4" academic structure will be implemented in the higher education sector in 2012/13. This is a landmark milestone of Hong Kong's education reform and the UGC and its funded institutions sector have been attaching great importance to it. The new academic structure provides opportunities for all students to receive six-year secondary education and four-year higher education. It promises to infuse our students with a broadened knowledge base, balanced development, sound language and other generic skills, as well as a propensity for life-long learning. Through curriculum and assessment changes, the new structure can cater for the diversified learning needs of all students and allow those with different aptitudes, interests and competencies to excel. Moreover, the new academic structure will provide smoother articulation for further studies or work in Hong Kong and be better connected with other major education systems in the world. For university education, the four-year undergraduate programme will allow more balanced and comprehensive development of our university students.

The biggest challenge to be faced by the institutions is how to handle having both cohorts of students entering the universities at the same time. To ensure smooth transition to and implementation of the four-year undergraduate programme by the institutions, the Government had set aside since 2007 a one-line allocation of $550 million for the eight UGC-funded institutions in the advanced recruitment and engagement of additional academic, professional and supporting staff, revamping the academic curriculum, development of the administrative and IT systems, etc. The grants were released to institutions by phases, and the last sum was disbursed to them in September 2011.

Institutions are now in their final stage of preparing for the new academic structure. With the support of the UGC, institutions are progressing smoothly in a number of areas as elaborated in the ensuing paragraphs.

Institutions' preparation for "3+3+4"

(a) Revamping existing curriculum

The implementation of the new academic structure will bring huge changes in academic and curriculum development in the UGC sector. The rationale of the new curriculum is to provide students with greater flexibility, more broad-based and student-centered learning experience. Institutions have put in extraordinary efforts to ensure that the four-year undergraduate programme, which comprise the core, major and elective courses with an emphasis on general education and exposure to both academic and non-academic skills and knowledge, will be coherent, and the additional year is not simply an add-on to the current three-year undergraduate programme.

To pave way for the smooth transition to the new system, some institutions piloted a number of new undergraduate programmes or incorporated some new elements (e.g. inter-disciplinary or multi-disciplinary, all-round/whole-person education, etc.) to the existing courses well before 2012, so that the current students enrolling in the three-year curriculum would be able to benefit from the change in the curriculum as well. Institutions have also been soliciting feedback from these students for further enhancing and revamping their courses/programmes before the actual implementation of the new academic structure in September 2012.

(b) Support for double cohort of students

In 2012/13, there will be two groups of students – one from Form 7 under the old curriculum and another from senior secondary 3 under the new curriculum – admitted to the institutions. To ensure that there would be no competition between the two cohorts of students in entering to the institutions, the Administration announced earlier that the eight UGC-funded institutions will offer a total of 30 000 first-year-first (FYFDs) degree places, i.e. 15 000 for each cohort, for 2012/13. Indeed, to enhance the articulation opportunities for the secondary school students, the Administration had increased the FYFD places from the current level of 14 620 to 15 000 per cohort for 2012/13, and that the number of publicly-funded senior year places will be gradually increased from the existing 3 974 to 8 000 by 2015/16.

Since both cohorts of students will co-exist for a period of time, institutions will implement a number of measures to meet the mounting demand for services by the two cohorts, particularly in the areas of application processing, student admission, staff recruitment, upgrading of IT system, etc.

Process of application for the two cohorts of students is a mammoth task. To allow institutions to have ample time to process a large number of applications, the Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority and the Joint University Programmes Admission System (JUPAS) Office have decided to stagger the announcement of the examination and JUPAS results of the two public examinations. Institutions will also separate the processing of the applications of the two cohorts of students.

Some institutions will adopt broad-based or faculty-based student admission mechanism in admitting students for the new four-year curriculum. Broad-based admission means that students will first be admitted to the academic faculty or school, instead of a specific programme, and will be given the flexibility to defer their choice of a major/specific programme to a later stage of their study. Such arrangement can offer students an opportunity to have a taste in different courses in their first year of studies before choosing their majors in the sophomore years.

In view of the expansion of the student population, having sufficient manpower is therefore essential for the smooth implementation of the new academic structure in September 2012. On staff recruitment, institutions will complete their recruitment of both academic and administrative/support staff by 2012. Indeed, some of them had even started the recruitment process years ago, so as to ensure the manpower required will be well in place before September 2012.

To ensure that the IT systems will have sufficient capacity to deal with a sudden surge in usage, institutions have been taking forward new Enterprise Resource Planning systems, and/or major upgrades of existing student progression/timetabling systems, etc. Institutions are fully aware that, unlike other risks (such as shortages of staff or insufficient teaching venues) that can be easily identified and anticipated in an early stage, failure of IT systems is always sudden and difficult to be observed. Test-run of the systems has been arranged. In case if there is any system failure due to large usage volume in September 2012 when the two cohorts of students will be in place, institutions have come up with various fallback arrangements, such as to put forward a storage area networking system to prevent data loss, install the IT Disaster Recovery programme, etc.

(c) Capital works

The substantial increase in overall undergraduate enrolment exerts great demand on space for classroom, hostel and other facilities. With the Legislative Council's approval of $5.84 billion, the UGC-funded institutions are carrying out twelve capital works projects to provide additional teaching and learning facilities in support of the new academic structure. A list of the projects are shown in the chart below.

In 2011-12, the UGC continued to work closely with institutions in taking forward the twelve "3+3+4"-related capital works projects. Generally good progress was made for the projects. Four projects, including HKUST's Extension to the existing Academic Building, LU's New Academic Block and New Student Hostel, and CUHK's Centralized General Research Lab Complex (Block 1), have been completed. CUHK's Extension to the existing University Library and an Integrated Teaching Building, HKU's Centennial Campus, Phase 1, and HKBU's Baptist University Road Campus Development (main building) are scheduled for completion in the second quarter of 2012. The other four projects (i.e. HKUST's New Academic Building, CityU's Academic and Administration Building, CUHK's Student Amenity Centre and PolyU's Phase 8 Development) are on very tight schedules and institutions concerned are trying to complete the new buildings or at least the teaching facilities of the projects by September 2012. The UGC is closely monitoring the progress of the projects and notes that institutions have derived relevant contingency plans.

In addition, in 2011-12, the UGC supported 25 Alterations, Additions, Repairs and Improvements proposals with a total estimated cost of $395 million for institutions to carry out consequential works related to their "3+3+4" capital projects and improvement works to their existing facilities necessary for implementation of the new four-year academic structure. It is expected that more proposals for consequential works will be submitted by institutions after completion of their "3+3+4" capital projects.

UGC's "3+3+4" Group

The UGC set up the dedicated task force in 2007 to take an overview and to render support to institutions' initiatives. Issues taken up include capital projects and contingency plans, etc. The Group had organized several sharing sessions inviting the UGC-funded institutions, the Hong Kong Examination and Assessment Authority, the JUPAS Office and the Education Bureau to share their experiences in the preparation, issues encountered and contingency planning with each other. Among one of these sessions, Mr Peter PT Cheung (former Secretary-General of the UGC and the then Deputy Director of the then New Airport Coordination Office) was invited to share his experiences in coordinating the New Airport Project and its relevance to the "3+3+4" implementation, where he had stressed upon the importance of crisis management and infused a sense of non-complacency into the participants.

Contingency planning

Given the massive scale and significance of the exercise, it is anticipated that possible issues such as insufficient teaching venues due to a delay in the capital projects and shortage of teaching staff may occur in some institutions. To minimise the adverse impact of these possible problems on their operation, institutions have been assessing risks that may emerge during the commencement of the new academic structure and devise contingency plans to tackle such risks. For instance, in case there is shortage in the teaching venues, some institutions have decided to schedule classes to weekends or extending the classes to evenings / at night. Some have prepared to rent classrooms from business offices nearby or their respective community colleges. Separately, the former Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Lee Wai Lee) campus has been reserved for contingency use by institutions. Arrangements have been made to allow institutions to carry out detailed inspection, planning of space use, and necessary renovation and repair works to ensure the campus is ready for use before September 2012.

" 3+3+4" Symposium

Sponsored by the UGC, institutions have already organised a series of 12 symposia to exchange ideas and share experience on "3+3+4"-related issues among themselves. The symposia were well received by the participants who were mainly from the UGC and self-financing sectors. Some symposia had also invited secondary schools principals and teachers, students and parents groups to join. The topics of the 12 symposia are as follows -



"Advancing Teaching and Learning: Evidence, Outcomes and E-learning" – the "3+3+4" symposium sponsored by the UGC on "3+3+4" issues held on 4 March 2011
 
"Knowledge Exchange Conference" sponsored by the UGC held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre on 5-6 December 2011
Copyright © 2012 University Grants Committee. All rights reserved.
Last Revision Date: 15 August 2012