Page 27 - FSTE A5 Handbook

According to the progress report of the FHKGEP:
The HKGEI helped enable eight government-funded universities in Hong Kong to develop
significant broad-based, distributed GE programs that include exposure to more liberal
studies than existed previously. The Initiative brought more than twenty Fulbright Scholars
to Hong Kong between September 2009 and June 2012. A single university hosted each
scholar. Scholars worked half time on the specific needs of their host universities. The
other half of their time was spent collaboratively as a team delivering topical workshops
system-wide and assisting small groups of universities with common needs. On several
occasions, Fulbright Scholars ventured out of Hong Kong, on their own time, to promote
the value of liberal education throughout the region. Following completion of HKGEI, the
Hong Kong-America Center and the Fulbright Scholars hosted a GE conference in Hong Kong.
The conference involved university administrators and faculty from throughout Asia and
included presentations by AAC&U.

Although the FHKGEP was completed in 2012, the Hong Kong-America Center continued to
assist Hong Kong universities in the implementation phase of the four-year curriculum (2012-
2016), and assisted self-financed institutions and sub-degree programmes in Hong Kong to
strengthen GE and credit transferability (Shive, 2012).
Diversities in Core Requirements

With the help of the FHKGEP (2008-2012), most of the UCG-funded universities re-designed
their curricula to prepare their students to become well-rounded graduates. Each of the
universities structured their own GE curriculum, which resulted in a diversity of approaches
without a common structural framework for GE. As indicated in Table 1, there is a wide
diversification in their GE programmes in terms of structures, number of credits and course
requirements across the institutions. Some universities count language courses as part of the
GE but some do not.

14