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QS Campus Visit January 2007 - Hong Kong Polytechnic University
In the middle of this whistle stop tour of 11 Asia Pacific cities to present the World University Rankings, it was very pleasant to have a weekend off… in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a vibrant and cosmopolitan city and seems to have a running competition with Tokyo as to which city can have more neon lighting.
The World University Rankings seminar was held at the University of Hong Kong and was attended by all but one of the nine Hong Kong universities, there were some healthy questions, particularly from Hong Kong Polytechnic University who were curious as to why they had been omitted from the rankings and curious about how they could feature in the future.
Their people were constructive, courteous and as it later emerged, very hospitable and invited us to join them for dinner that evening. At 7pm not a car, but a bus, arrived to take us (and six of their senior academic and administrative staff members) to the Hong Kong Jockey Club for a fine Chinese dinner with ten or so courses and we discussed their situation and the rankings amongst a range of more light-hearted banter.
I was seated next to Professor Lu. Jian, who has come to Hong Kong recently after 27 years in France where he was knighted for his academic work in Mechanical Engineering and is highly cited, and respected, worldwide in his field. He spoke to me of his work in nano-mechanics and the development of “smart” materials… as you can imagine I was unable to keep up for long.
As it turned out, the one PolyU representative who left us early was the Dean of their Faculty of Business, Professor Judy Tsui, had done so to work into the night on a presentation making the, exceptionally strong, case for PolyU’s inclusion in the rankings for 2007.
With exceptional achievements in research, a strong grounding in teaching and a positive focus on internationalisation, PolyU are widely regarded in Hong Kong and consistently ranked by the locally based website education18.com as the fourth best university in the city. In some areas where they particularly excel, they are placed first, second or third in research assessments.
So, even before visiting the campus, their case for inclusion was clear.
The vision of Hong Kong Polytechnic University is to become the world’s number one applied research university. The highlight of an excellent and thorough campus tour was an after-hours visit to their “House of Innovation” hosted by their Deputy President, Alexander Tzang. 
The House of Innovation is a showroom of the final (or semi-final) application of the university’s research. There is no detailed theory of the application of nanotechnology in materials design… just pictures of a “sweating mannequin”, affectionately known as Walter, used for material ventilation testing; an actual example of child’s backpack with not only innovative load distribution but an antibacterial fabric. The showroom displays real life tactile applications of the researchers’ and students’ work from a drug being tested for the treatment of Liver Cancer, an affordable eyesight testing device for the third world, the equivalent to a catalytic converter for diesel engines, now installed on buses across Hong Kong, building materials recycled from old glass bottles and even self-cleaning fabrics that use sunlight as an activator for their nano-agents to repel stains.
Having had the opportunity to visit many universities in my time, it is the first time I have had the opportunity to see and touch the application of an institution’s research and it is an extremely effective strategy in attracting industrial investment.
Aside from the House of Innovation the campus is a compact but cleverly designed environment hosted a little over 26,000 students, with many open areas for student activities, a swimming pool, three sports halls, two gyms and an array of other sporting facilities. There are many restaurants on campus and just off-campus there is a well-equipped student hostel that is home to 3,000 students (at a cost of just US$5 per day including free phone and internet use). At the heart of their conferencing is a stylish auditorium that can seat over 1,000 and the lecture theatres and teaching rooms are all very well equipped.
All of this contributes to a great sense of pride amongst all those we met that work there and a united dedication to improving their performance and international reputation.
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