Hong Kong must reform its degree offerings to attract West's brightest
For decades, the flow of academic and scientific talent has been largely one way: East to West. China's brightest minds packed their bags for the universities of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge in pursuit of better teachers, better laboratories and a better future. This has changed.
US and British universities are still magnets of global talent but are no longer unmatched. Chinese universities, once dismissed as rigid and third-tier, are now
engines of scientific and technological advances . Western students who want to stay on the cutting edge ought to consider a move previously unthinkable: studying in China.
After the second world war, the United States and Britain dominated higher education. They hosted Nobel laureates and pumped funding into research that pushed the frontiers of knowledge. Groundbreaking studies on DNA in Britain gave birth to the biotech industry. America's invention of the semiconductor chip and internet led to the electronics industry and digital revolution. English became the global academic language. Talent went West.
The fundamental difference is that in the West, each university chases its own academic excellence and pursues independent research aspirations. In China, universities operate like a national team. Each institution plays a strategic role in a coordinated research jigsaw puzzle, collectively delivering tech breakthroughs.
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