Shenzhen is renowned as a city of doers rather than thinkers. Despite the presence of Huawei, Tencent, DJI, and many other highly successful technology firms, its universities lack national and global recognition. The government appears determined to address this perceived shortcoming in typical leapfrog manner, wooing Tsinghua and Peking universities from Beijing to set up joint-venture postgraduate projects in Shenzhen, as well as one of the world’s most prestigious names, Cambridge University, which is looking at an opportunity in the Qianhai special economic zone.

However, Shenzhen is nothing if not a city of pragmatists, and its leaders recognize that a practice-makes-perfect approach to development has proven strengths. While education officials pursue the world’s leading academic minds, they are also pouring resources into vocational education institutes. And they have no qualms experimenting with “dual-track” approaches to learning – research and application-based – to see what works best.

Their latest experiment is Shenzhen Technology University, which welcomed its first batch of 807 freshmen on September 15. This university, which was only approved by the Ministry of Education last December, is seeking to establish a new model for vocational education at the undergraduate level and above. What this means, in practical terms, is it wants to attract the brightest minds in technology, and put them to work here in the most effective way.