Redbird Cross Campus Study Program — A Student-Mobility Experiment Between HKUST and HKUST(GZ)

One-line summary: Since June 2024, HKUST and HKUST(GZ) — the latter opened in September 2022 — have jointly run the "Redbird Cross Campus Study Program." About 1,500 undergraduate courses are cross-open for enrolment, with roughly 30% of them cross-campus credit-transferable^※, and by the time the program was announced, about 1,300 students had already taken part in exchanges between the two campuses. This has become a new channel through which mainland students connect with the HKUST system, distinct in nature from the traditional route of "mainland students crossing the border to enrol in Hong Kong."

# What is HKUST(GZ)? Why is it more than just a "branch campus"?

On 29 June 2022, China's Ministry of Education approved the establishment of HKUST(GZ)^※, jointly founded by HKUST and Guangzhou University, sited at the Qingwan Hub in Nansha, Guangzhou, and formally opened to students on 1 September of the same year. Legally and financially, the new campus is an independent legal entity — not a mainland "branch campus" of HKUST Hong Kong, but a sister institution with "equal standing" to the Hong Kong campus. The two campuses operate under a shared "One HKUST, Two Campuses" framework^※: academic standards, faculty quality, and course quality are aligned, while each campus develops complementary disciplinary strengths so as to avoid overlapping resources.

Another distinctive feature of HKUST(GZ) is that it has dropped the traditional "school–department" structure in favour of an interdisciplinary "Hub–Thrust" system^※: the university is organised into four Hubs — Function, Information, Systems, and Society — each containing four Thrusts (for example, the Information Hub includes Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Analytics, Internet of Things, and Computational Media and Arts). This is intended to break down departmental barriers and facilitate interdisciplinary training. This structure operates as its own system at HKUST(GZ), running in parallel with the traditional school-based system on the Hong Kong campus, and is one concrete expression of the "complementary campuses" positioning.

# How did admissions start? Which provinces did the first undergraduate cohort come from?

Postgraduate admissions at HKUST(GZ) began as early as 2022, with the first batch of 15 postgraduate programs^※ covering fields such as advanced materials, intelligent transportation, and microelectronics. Undergraduate admissions started a year later: the first undergraduate intake was in 2023, offering three majors — Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Big Data Technology, and Intelligent Manufacturing Engineering^※, and in that first year recruitment was limited to early-batch gaokao admissions in only four provinces: Guangdong, Shandong, Sichuan, and Henan, not yet extended nationwide.

The university publicly described the quality of the first undergraduate intake favourably: 12 students were admitted from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, with the top scorer admitted via the Joint Admissions Examination ranking 82nd nationally; a further 3 international students were admitted^※. This admissions sequence — postgraduate before undergraduate, four provinces before nationwide — reflects the cautious, incremental approach of a newly founded campus entering the mainland gaokao admissions system, in contrast with the more established system on the Hong Kong campus, where independent mainland gaokao admissions have operated for more than two decades.

# How fast has the admissions footprint expanded over three years?

HKUST(GZ)'s mainland admissions coverage has since expanded year on year. In 2024, seven additional provinces/municipalities — Beijing, Shanghai, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Guizhou, and Hebei — were added to the original four (Guangdong, Sichuan, Henan, Shandong), bringing the national admissions quota to 300^※; in 2025 coverage expanded further to 16 provinces/municipalities, with first-time admissions in Hubei, Fujian, Chongqing, Liaoning, and Yunnan, bringing the national quota to 420, with Guangdong's quota up roughly 60% year on year^※; Guangdong province alone was planned to account for about 200 places^※.

Over three years the admissions footprint grew from 4 to 16 provinces, and the national quota grew from an undisclosed aggregate to 420 — a pace of expansion considerably faster than that of traditional mainland universities, and also faster than the gradual growth in non-local student admissions at the HKUST Hong Kong campus, where the 2025/26 non-local undergraduate admissions quota is about 800, covering mainland and overseas students combined^※. This gap suggests that HKUST(GZ) is rapidly becoming a mainland-student pipeline running in parallel with the Hong Kong campus, rather than functioning as its subsidiary or overflow channel.

# How do the training model and tuition fees differ from the Hong Kong campus?

HKUST(GZ) undergraduate education follows a "broad enrolment, later specialisation" model: students are not assigned a major for the first two years, focusing instead on general education and foundational courses, and formally choose a major only at the end of their second year, with no enrolment cap set for any major^※. The university also runs combined bachelor's–master's and bachelor's–PhD pathways, under which students may switch direction across any major campus-wide during postgraduate study. By 2026 undergraduate admissions expanded to eight majors: Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Big Data Technology, Intelligent Manufacturing Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Robotics Engineering, Microelectronics Science and Engineering, Financial Technology, and New Energy Science and Engineering^※.

On tuition, HKUST(GZ)'s "Leading Talent Class" (direct-PhD track) charges RMB 50,000 per year, and its "Sci-Tech Innovation Class" (direct-master's track) charges RMB 100,000 per year^※; by comparison, undergraduate tuition on the Hong Kong campus is HK$155,000 per academic year^※. At typical RMB-to-HKD conversion rates, this puts Guangzhou-campus tuition at roughly one-third to two-thirds of the Hong Kong campus level — a visible illustration of the difference in training-cost structures between the two locations, even though the two campuses state that academic standards are aligned under the "One HKUST" framework; tuition and admissions-entry mechanisms remain entirely separately set, under two distinct financial systems.

# What does the campus itself look like?

The HKUST(GZ) campus was led architecturally by KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox), with Arup providing engineering consultancy, on a planned site of about 267 acres (about 108 hectares), taking about three years from planning to completion^※. The university positions it as a representative case of sustainable campus construction in China, stating a claimed carbon-emissions reduction of about 54% relative to conventional construction methods, with a target of carbon neutrality by 2060^※. These sustainability claims originate from the university or its design partners; this article reproduces the source figures as stated and does not independently verify them via third-party audit.

# How does the Redbird Cross Campus Study Program actually work?

On 14 June 2024, the two campuses jointly announced the launch of the Redbird Cross Campus Study Program^※, built on three core mechanisms: shared coursework — about 1,500 undergraduate courses across both campuses are open for cross-enrolment, of which about 30% have complementary syllabi allowing students to take the same subject on a different campus under a different instructor; credit transfer and recognition — once students meet requirements approved by both campuses' Senates, they may take courses on the partner campus, with credits recognised and countable toward graduation requirements at their home campus; cross-border exchange activities — students may undertake internships, cultural exchange, industry visits, and competitions at the partner campus for up to one semester.

Figures released at the time of the program's launch show that: since HKUST(GZ) opened in September 2022, nearly 1,300 students had taken part in exchanges of up to one semester between the two campuses, with a further 250 taking online courses^※. This figure covers both directions — Hong Kong students going to Guangzhou and Guangzhou students going to Hong Kong — and the official press release does not break down the specific numbers for each direction.

In the newly launched Financial Technology and Microelectronics programs for 2025/26, about a quarter of courses will be shared between the two campuses^※, indicating that course-sharing is expanding from scattered elective courses to the level of full-program design. The program also includes a "Sustainable Design Thinking Certificate Program" and a student-facing "HKUSTours" component, the former focused on joint cross-campus course accreditation and the latter on campus tours and community-building.

# How do the two presidents describe the program?

HKUST President Professor Nancy Ip said at the program's launch^※ that close coordination between the two campuses has created a collaborative environment for teaching and research; HKUST(GZ) President Professor Nishan Canagarajah — Note: source lists the president as Professor Nishan Canagarajah^※ emphasized the university's role as a hub for cultivating innovation and technology talent. These are standard institutional-announcement remarks; this article reproduces the attribution without offering its own assessment.

It should be noted that Professor Nie Mingxuan's title is "HKUST(GZ) President," a position parallel to, not subordinate to, Professor Nancy Ip's "HKUST President" on the Hong Kong campus — this in turn reflects the "equal standing, separate presidents" independent-entity structure, rather than the more familiar arrangement of one university governing two branch campuses.

# Compared with the earlier-established CUHK-Shenzhen, what stage is HKUST(GZ) at?

Mainland readers often compare HKUST(GZ) with CUHK-Shenzhen, founded in 2014 — both are Ministry of Education-approved mainland–Hong Kong joint-venture institutions, with CUHK-Shenzhen the second and HKUST(GZ) the third^※, both holding independent legal-entity status. But the two institutions are at clearly different stages of development:

CUHK-Shenzhen has been operating for over a decade and has accumulated a complete set of employment and further-study data; as of mid-2026, HKUST(GZ) remains in a "construction and admissions-expansion phase" — its first undergraduate cohort, admitted in 2023, will not graduate until 2027, so its training outcomes cannot yet be compared with CUHK-Shenzhen's. This time gap is the key variable for understanding the current difference between the two institutions, not a difference in educational quality itself — this article does not render a judgment on which institution is better.

# How much has HKUST(GZ)'s faculty grown?

As of September 2024, HKUST(GZ) had over 300 academic staff in service, including over 240 tenure-track faculty, 100% holding doctoral degrees and 98% with overseas education or work experience^※; the university's stated goal is to expand its regular faculty to 400 by 2025^※. On postgraduate enrolment, the university has set a target of 4,000 postgraduate students by the 2027/28 academic year^※. This faculty composition — nearly all doctoral-qualified, nearly all with overseas background — continues the research-university, internationally staffed tradition established at HKUST's Hong Kong campus, and is one concrete quantified indicator of the academic-standards-alignment commitment under the "One HKUST" framework.

# How does this mechanism differ from the traditional path of "mainland students studying in Hong Kong"?

The two paths essentially serve different groups: the former is the entry point through which mainland students join the Hong Kong higher-education system "from scratch"; the latter is a mechanism for students already within the HKUST ecosystem (whether originally on the Hong Kong or Guangzhou campus) to move between the two Greater Bay Area locations. The existence of the Redbird program means that HKUST(GZ) itself is also steadily feeding students with "cross-border study experience" into the broader HKUST system — a new branch stream independent of gaokao admissions, arising from the 2022 decision to found the Guangzhou campus.

# What could not be found, and where the boundaries of this account lie

A search found no independent news investigations or student-media commentary on students' cross-border exchange experience following the launch of the Redbird program. The participation figures disclosed in the official press release (about 1,300 and 250) reflect the cumulative count as of the program's launch; no search results were found indicating whether updated figures have since been published. The specific operational rules for course selection and credit transfer under the program (such as application deadlines or place caps) have not been found in a publicly disclosed complete form — only the principle-level mechanism can be confirmed here. This article does not speculate about students' subjective views of their exchange experience, nor does it conflate HKUST(GZ)'s admissions figures with the separate gaokao-based non-local-admissions figures under the existing "non-local student admissions" system — these are two parallel admissions systems that differ in pathway, scale, and policy history; see Non-Local Admissions^※ for details.