Media

The University of Hong Kong (HKU) will launch an exciting suite of new interdisciplinary undergraduate degree programmes from the 2019/20 academic year. The new Bachelor of Arts & Sciences degrees, involving all ten faculties, are aimed at nurturing globally-minded thinkers and leaders able to leverage their interdisciplinary knowledge and skills to address the contemporary and future challenges of an increasingly complex world.

In bringing together the arts and sciences, the new BASc programmes are designed to develop an interdisciplinary mindset and approach to learning, crossing traditional faculty lines and enabling students to work creatively and collaboratively in adopting innovative ways of thinking and problem solving.

The BASc family is unique, and will provide high-quality, transformative learning experiences for the best and brightest talents in Hong Kong and from overseas, such as a highly interdisciplinary curriculum, a cutting-edge leadership programme, exchange opportunities with top institutes including Yale, UC Berkeley, UBC, LSE, UCL etc., tailored internship opportunities with Google, NVidia, WHO, UN etc. as well as experiential learning.

Professor Ian Holliday, Vice President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Teaching and Learning) said, “These programmes will enable our students to start to see the connections across disciplines. Our ambition is to make them future social leaders. We want our graduates to be the ones who are actually seizing those opportunities, defining new industries, creating new employment opportunities for others, and really making a difference to Hong Kong and the wider region.”

BASc graduates will be taught leadership skills, have access to exchange and internship opportunities with top/elite organisations. Importantly, they’ll be able to learn and think from interdisciplinary perspectives to deepen their knowledge, work collaboratively in diverse teams, develop resilience and solve problems. Having to think in a more interdisciplinary manner and to cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries challenges students’ own thinking and helps them to become more critical and engaged in their learning. The students will also be part of a large BASc family that has touchpoints across all ten faculties, enabling them to connect more easily within the university, and ultimately beyond.

There are five BASc programmes and one BASc programme for senior year students, aimed at recruiting 150 students across the whole BASc family:

(1) BASc
The aim of this programme is to equip outstanding students with social and cultural intelligence, creative problem-solving (both qualitative and quantitative) skills and communication skills, and nurture them to apply interdisciplinary knowledge within a larger framework of ethical and social responsibility in addressing contemporary issues. It is an intrinsically integrated programme which is co-led and shared by the Faculties of Social Sciences, Arts, and Science.

(2) BASc (Applied AI)
The aim of this programme is to equip high-performing students with foundations of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as necessary problem-solving and analytical skills; and nurture students to apply AI techniques in a wide range of industrial applications and technological innovations. This programme is led by Faculty of Science (Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, Department of Mathematics) and Faculty of Engineering (Department of Computer Science).

(3) BASc (Design+)
Design+ is engineered to teach skills and knowledge in design thinking and innovative interdisciplinary practices. Students will develop robust problem-solving processes based on collaboration, ideation, experimentation, substantiation, actuation, ex-ante/ex-post evaluation etc. that can be applied across many fields, rather than how to design of specific artifacts, as taught in conventional design schools.

(4) BASc (FinTech)
The aim of this programme is to nurture talent pools for FinTech and supply competent professionals in FinTech to the community, and also equips a batch of talented graduates who may conduct further research in FinTech. This programme is led by Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Business and Economics.

(5) BASc (Global Health & Development)
The programme takes an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of contemporary issues and nurture students to develop the competencies necessary to work in health and development internationally in related fields. This programme is led by School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, in collaboration with Asia Global Institute and the Faculties of Architecture; Business and Economics; Law; Science and Social Sciences.

(6) BASc (Social Data Science)
This programme, only available to senior year students, focuses on the social impact and decision making based on data and information, as well as promoting knowledge and understanding of technology for data mining and the theoretical foundation of data extraction and curation. By bringing together different disciplines in this programme, we aim to drive and catalyse new ways of thinking when dealing with social data science.

For more details of the BASc programmes, please visit:
https://basc.hku.hk/

Media enquiries:
Communication and Public Affairs Office, HKU:
Ms Trinni Choy (Tel: 2859 2606 / Email: pychoy@hku.hk)
Ms Rashida Suffiad (Tel: 2857 8555 / Email: rsuffiad@hku.hk)
Ms Melanie Wan (Tel: 2859 2600 / Email: melwkwan@hku.hk)