SLS-3a1 The First 4YUG Cohort - 2,400 students per year (later to become 4,000)

In September 2012, the first cohort of ~2,400 students for the new 4-year undergraduate programs enter PolyU - these are the students who just completed grade 12, around 18 years old.  At the same time, the last cohort of students for the old 3-year undergraduate programs also enter PolyU - these are the students who just completed grade 13 (aged 19), the grade which will cease to exist in Hong Kong. From 2012-15, there will actually be two cohorts of students studying side-by-side at PolyU.  But only the students in the 4Y undergraduate programs are required to take service-learning courses.  Since ~2,400 students are admitted to the 4-year undergraduate programs  at PolyU each year, and each one of them is required to take at least one SL course over the 4 years, it is expected that on average ~2,400 students will be taking service-learning courses each year, out of the 2,400 x 4 = 9,600 enrolled in the 4-year undergraduate programs each year. 

Note: The number of students taking SL will soon increase from 2,400 to 4,000 each year.  It is because additional students admitted to the senior years, as well as students admitted into 2-year top-up degree programs will soon also be required to take SL. But we are jumping ahead a little - more on that later.)

Since this is the first year of operations, only one cohort of ~2,400 has been admitted.   and only some of the students are likely to take SL in their first year of studies.  During the first year of studies, the “freshmen” have a lot of matters that demand their attention.  The have to adjust to the teaching methods of university education, which is quite different from that of the regular secondary schools in Hong Kong.  They have to quickly learn about their discipline of study and decide on a study pattern.  For many of them, they also have to strengthen some basics such as languages and mathematics to get ready for the rigorous academic studies.  Hence we do not expect many students to take SL in their first or even the second semesters of the first year of their university life.  

On the other hand, when students are in their final year, many of them have a heavy workload, making up for failed subjects, completing a capstone project, preparing for graduate studies, looking for a job, etc.  Hence it is not very desirable for them to take SL, which can be quite demanding of their attention, energy and emotions.  Hence there is a higher probability that the students may take SL courses during the period ranging from their first summer, to the second year, the third year, to the third summer.  Our experience since then has largely validated that expectation.  

Given these assumptions, the number of students expected to take SL courses in 2012-13 is much smaller than 2,400, perhaps no more than a few hundreds.  But that breathing space is not going to last very long.  Certainly, by 2016, we will need to offer more or less a full range of SL courses, with the capacity to handle ~2,400 students (subsequently revised upwards to 4,000 as explained later).  In 2012-13,  in the first year that PolyU started to require our students to take service-learning subjects, we ended up offering 6 SL subjects to a total of 189 students.