CUHK started with a four-year undergraduate curriculum in 1963, with the constituent colleges taking charge of all academic programmes. In 1977, the University carried out restructuring as recommended in the Second Report of the Fulton Commission, which stipulated that the University departments should be responsible for “subject-oriented teaching” and the colleges for “student-oriented teaching”. After a comprehensive review in the mid-1980s, the University decided to adopt a pure credit-unit-based curriculum structure. From 1991 onwards, greater flexibility was introduced into the system, offering more options in selection of courses and pace of study, thus enabling students to graduate in three years. In the wake of the education reform, the University reverted to a four-year curriculum in 2012 with an enhanced general education programme and faculty package courses. The eight Faculties of the University, namely Arts, Business Administration, Science, Education, Social Sciences, Medicine, Engineering and Law, offer major and minor programmes, electives, inter-disciplinary and cross-faculty courses, as well as joint programmes with other universities in a comprehensive range of disciplines. It is worth noting that undergraduate part-time degree programmes were once introduced in CUHK in the 1980s, which nurtured a pool of talent to meet the needs of the community.
