What is the personalised Bachelor of Arts & Sciences (BASc) Programme in Interdisciplinary Studies?

Interdisciplinary Studies draws upon the specialised knowledge developed by different disciplines (e.g. psychology, biology, history and literature) and integrates their unique perspectives into a holistic synthesis. This synthesis empowers students to address topics, answer questions, or solve problems that are too complex to be dealt with by a single discipline.

The BASc in Interdisciplinary Studies at HKU is designed for students to become exceptionally well-rounded. As the most personalised degree programme in Hong Kong, we offer students the chance to create their own degree under the mentorship of teachers who truly care about students’ passions, ambitions and whole person development. Our students explore and develop their intellectual interests during their university studies.

Over the course of four years, we educate and train our students to tackle complexity, forge connections among disciplines, gain heightened self-awareness of their strengths and capabilities, and acquire deeper understandings of the world. We aim to cultivate within students a rare unity between unbounded imagination and creativity from the humanistic disciplines, with rigour and systematic analysis from the scientific disciplines.

Our students are provided maximal flexibility and choice over what they learn, with opportunities to develop compassionate leadership and work-readiness skills that apply to the real world. As true interdisciplinarians, our students develop their potential as young scholars with a signature intellectual agility for an ever-changing world.

Designed to be at the Cutting-Edge of Liberal Arts and Sciences Education

The Interdisciplinary Studies programme has been developed with combined inspiration from leading institutions worldwide, including Brown University’s Open Curriculum. Our principle of nurturing a small group of exceptional students to design their own degree around questions/issues of interest (with the dedicated support of caring scholars) is modelled after the Robert S. Harrison College Scholar Programme at Cornell University. Our Personalised Concentration curriculum feature is benchmarked alongside the individualised approach to education taken at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. We situate our programme firmly between HKU’s proud traditions of academic excellence and its vision for innovative change, at the intersection of Eastern and Western educational philosophies.

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