When you think of areas for great education most would think of Oxbridge, Silicon Valley, and east coast US Ivy League. You would be hard pressed to ever find Guangdong in that conversation. However Bangkok Post recently reported that there has been an investment boom in institutions of higher education in Guangdong. Guangdong has grand ambitions to rival Silicon Valley in the United States. In China's quest to be self-sufficient in technology, access to top-tier talent is an urgent requirement. While China has attracted some overseas talent to the mainland, its higher education plans indicate that it hopes to take a home-grown approach to cultivating talent.
Guangdong will open 11 new universities this year, with more to come in the next few years. In Shenzhen city, the local government announced that it would invest 150 billion yuan to build 20 new universities and colleges by 2025, with an aim of boosting the number of full-time students on campus in the city to 250,000 from about 103,800 now.
In the 2020 QS World University Rankings, Hong Kong had five universities in the top 100, while the mainland had six — mostly in Shanghai and Beijing. No Guangdong-based university cracked the top 300.
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