Recent Milestones (2023–2026) — A Period of Dense Change for CityU

Zoom in on the last four years and City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has been fighting several battles at once in almost every single year: a change of president, a new campus, expanded halls, climbing rankings, and the occasional big-ticket property purchase. The period from 2023 to 2026 has been one of the most event-packed in CityU's recent history: the presidency changed hands twice, a mainland China campus came on stream, new colleges were launched, a new student residence village opened, rankings hit new highs (including a jump to 52nd in the 2026 QS World University Rankings), and the University went on an outward expansion spree with property acquisitions… This article sets these events out in chronological order as a timeline of milestones, each entry with its source or a cross-reference to the relevant in-depth chapter elsewhere on this site. For the earlier chronology, see 00-overview/history.md; for overall developments from 2020 to 2026, see 00-overview/recent-developments-2020-2026.md; for more detailed data on student places and headcounts, see 00-overview/enrollment-and-figures.md.

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# 1. 2023: Change at the Top and a Veterinary Milestone

In 2023, CityU both bade farewell to a scholar-president who had led the University for fifteen years and marked a historic breakthrough for Hong Kong's veterinary profession — the registration of its first locally trained vets. The veterinary thread planted that year would still be bearing fruit two years later; see the "Deep Dive" section of this article.

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# 2. 2024: Campus, College and Halls Land Together

2024 was CityU's year of "hard expansion": three big items — a new college, a new campus and a new residence village — all landed at once, stretching the University simultaneously across the organisational, geographical and residential dimensions. The mechanics of each of the three deserve a closer look:

• The College of Computing was not created from scratch; it merges the existing School of Data Science with the Department of Computer Science into a single college^※, a step that mirrors the wider disciplinary regrouping trend in response to the AI/data era. After the merger, CityU's total count of colleges/schools stands at 11^※.
• CityU (Dongguan) first received formal approval from the Ministry of Education in April 2024^※, and opened its doors on 2 September of the same year. The inaugural cohort admitted over 500 undergraduate and postgraduate students^※, with four undergraduate majors launched initially: Computer Science and Technology, Intelligent Manufacturing Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Energy and Power Engineering. The two-step sequence — approval first, then opening — is the standard path for mainland China-based education ventures.
• The Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village was built using Modular Integrated Construction (MiC) technology, involving over 1,300 modules^※ and providing over 2,000 places. The naming honours the long-standing donations of Lee Shau Kee, founder of Henderson Land Development — one of the more substantial uses of MiC technology in recent Hong Kong university residence construction.

Add the three together and the result is that CityU expanded simultaneously on three fronts — geographic reach (across the border to Dongguan), disciplinary structure (AI/data concentrated into a single college), and residential capacity (over two thousand new places) — laying the foundations for the rankings and internationalisation metrics of the following two years.

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# 3. 2025: Governance Renewal, Record Rankings and an Office Purchase

Note: According to Orange News's report on the Festival Walk deal, the office building has a leasable area of approximately 214,000 square feet (213,982 sq ft), a transaction price of about HK$9,160 per square foot, and the seller retains full ownership of the shopping mall; the deal is expected to complete in February 2026^※. Further details are also covered in the South China Morning Post report cited in 15-campus-lore/campus-identity-and-spaces.md.

2025 was a year of "multi-track progress" for CityU on both the rankings and governance fronts. On rankings: QS Asia 7th, THE world 73rd, the most-international crown for the third year running, and the only Hong Kong university in the global top 100 for patents. On governance: a change of Council chairman and routine personnel renewal for the Court. On expansion: the purchase of a shopping-mall office building for nearly HK$2 billion to ease its chronic shortage of urban space. The year also saw the BVM programme's international character come into sharper focus — two years after its first cohort had found their feet, the student body now spans countries across Asia, Africa and Europe.

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# 4. 2026: Another Change of President, and a Leap to 52nd in the QS World Rankings

# QS World University Rankings 2027: The Only Hong Kong University in the Global Top Three for Citations

In the QS World University Rankings 2027, released on 18 June 2026^※, CityU jumped from 63rd the previous year to 52nd globally, one of the biggest climbers among Hong Kong's eight UGC-funded universities. According to CityU's official press release:

• Citations per Faculty: 2nd globally, 1st in Hong Kong, behind only Harvard University — the only Hong Kong university in the global top three on this indicator;
• International Student Ratio: 1st in Hong Kong, 11th globally; International Faculty Ratio: 1st in Hong Kong, 16th globally;
• Faculty–Student Ratio: 1st in Hong Kong, 84th globally;
• Three indicators rank in the global top 20 in total.

Acting President Lee Chun-sing said in the release that the rise confirms CityU's core strengths in teaching, research and innovation, "especially in maintaining the No. 2 worldwide position of our Citations per Faculty". QS Senior Vice President Ben Sowter, for his part, commented that Hong Kong's higher education sector is consolidating its status as "one of Asia's most globally competitive, research-intensive systems" (per the official CityU press release^※).

The ranking trajectory of the past three years at a glance:

"—" in the table indicates that this article has not yet verified an official figure for the corresponding year; these cells are left for later updates. The QS World Rankings and the QS Asia Rankings are two separate league tables with different scoring methodologies and cannot be directly compared.

Significantly, this rankings leap happened at a time when the presidency was vacant and an acting president was steering the University — the expansion and reputation tracks did not pause for the personnel turbulence. That in itself is a side-witness to the design of CityU's governance architecture, in which "the President is the chief executive, while academic affairs and day-to-day operations run on institutionalised continuity mechanisms" (see Governance Structure and Presidents for details).

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# 5. Deep Dive: The Veterinary Programme's Three Years from Zero to Asia's First Dual Accreditation

The BVM (Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine) is the longest-running thread in this timeline — from its first graduating cohort in 2023 to the internationalisation of its intake in 2025, it lays bare the process of "how a new institution takes root and grows".

The institutional foundation: CityU's BVM programme is run by the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences and is the first veterinary degree in Asia to hold dual accreditation from both the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) in the UK and the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council (AVBC) (see 01-academics/). Dual accreditation means graduates are eligible to register and practise not only in Hong Kong but also in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and other jurisdictions that recognise the two bodies — a "portability" goal anchored in the programme's original design, not an honour tacked on afterwards.

The first cohort's debut: In October 2023, the first 11 graduates completed their registration to practise — the first locally trained and registered veterinarians in Hong Kong's history. According to public reports, around half of the first cohort already had job offers before graduation, reflecting the real market demand among local veterinary employers for a "locally trained" degree (see 11-medical-hospital/ for details).

The intake profile two years on: By November 2025, CityU's official press release disclosed that the BVM programme's proportion of international students had hit an all-time high, with students from Germany, Italy, South Africa, Jordan, Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia and various cities in mainland China. The same cohort includes both students with a perfect IB score (45/45) and top local HKDSE entrants with 5** in six subjects (per the official CityU release^※). The programme itself has also entered the QS top 100 for veterinary science^※ (first appearing in 2025). Flagship scholarships cover full or half tuition, accommodation, and up to HK$500,000 in overseas exchange funding, with partner institutions including MIT, Imperial College London, Oxford, Cambridge, Cornell and the University of Toronto.

Taken together, this thread forms a complete loop — "accreditation first → the first cohort opens up the local market → international intake feeds reputation back" — an institutional storyline that sits outside this article's "expansion track" and is all too easily drowned out by rankings headlines, but is just as worth recording.

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# 6. How to Read This Timeline

String the years 2023–2026 together and what emerges is a CityU in a phase of high-speed change:

• The expansion track: the Dongguan campus, the College of Computing, the residence village and the office purchase — organisational, geographical and physical space all expanding at once;
• The reputation track: QS Asia 7th, QS World leaping to 52nd, THE World 73rd, most-international crown three years running, the patents championship and BVM internationalisation — rankings and reputation climbing steadily, with the coverage extending from "overall league tables" to "subject rankings" and "international intake";
• The governance track: two changes of president (retirement in 2023, early resignation in 2026) layered on top of the routine rotation of the Council chairman and Court members — governance fluctuation and institutionalised renewal coexisting.

"Simultaneously high expansion and high reputation, with governance fluctuation alongside routine renewal" is the key to understanding CityU in this period: on one hand, two unconventional changes of president; on the other, the handover of the Council chairmanship and the Court's personnel rotation proceeding in an orderly fashion as usual, while rankings and internationalisation indicators kept climbing even through the personnel turbulence. This suggests that, in CityU's governance design, the succession of the chief executive and the continuity of the University's overall operations are two relatively separate tracks. The deeper verification of each event and the juxtaposition of multiple sources are handled in the corresponding chapters of this archive; this article serves as a timeline index only.

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# 7. Summary (Timeline at a Glance)

• 2023: The fourth President retires; the first locally trained vets register (BVM becomes Asia's first dual-accredited programme).
• 2024: The College of Computing is founded (merging the School of Data Science and the Department of Computer Science); the Dongguan campus is approved and opens; the Lee Shau Kee Residence Village (MiC technology) comes into use.
• 2025: Change of Council chairman; the only Hong Kong university in the global top 100 for patents; QS Asia rises to 7th, THE World to 73rd, most-international crown three years running; BVM international intake hits a record high; purchase of the Festival Walk office building (seller: Mapletree Pan-Asia Commercial); routine personnel renewal for the Court.
• 2026: The fifth President resigns early (framing as per the wild-history module); QS World Rankings leap to 52nd, with Citations per Faculty 2nd globally.

This is CityU's period of intensive change in recent years, marked by "simultaneously high expansion and high reputation, with governance fluctuation coexisting alongside institutionalised renewal".

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# Sources

• Way Kuo — Wikipedia (tenure of the fourth President) — secondary
• Grand opening of City University of Hong Kong (Dongguan) (2024-09-02) — CityU official — official
• CityUHK rises to a record 73rd in THE World University Rankings 2026 — CityU official — official
• CityU president resigns — The Standard (2026-04-24) — press
• CityUHK leaps to 52nd globally in QS World University Rankings 2027 (2026-06-18) — CityU official — official; Citations per Faculty 2nd globally, international student/faculty ratios, 11-place jump
• 大學高層變動｜浸大城大換校董會主席 — Orange News — press; new Council chairman takes office on 2025-01-01
• 豐樹近20億沽又一城寫字樓 傳城大接貨 — Orange News — press; seller name, leasable area, price per square foot, expected completion date
• 城大獸醫學學士課程吸引全球頂尖學子 國際生比例創新高 (2025-11-10) — CityU official — official; BVM international intake, QS subject ranking top 100
• CityUHK welcomes appointments for Council and Court members (2025-12-19) — CityU official — official; routine personnel renewal for the Court/Council

# Related Reading

• Historical Timeline · 2020–2026 Developments · What Makes CityU CityU · Governance Structure and Presidents · Governance Controversies · Rankings · Places and Headcounts · Superlatives and Firsts