NEW CAMPUS: Buildings of the South University of Science and Technology of China takes shape in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province (FILE)

In 2007, the Shenzhen Municipal Government first proposed establishing the SUSTC, aiming to develop it into a famous research-orientated university within 10-15 years and modeled after Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Since its opening in 1991, the Hong Kong university, the only science and technology research university in the region, has secured a place on the academic world map in record-breaking time.

On September 10, 2009, Zhu, with his insistence on academic excellence, stood out from 200 candidates and was appointed the SUSTC's founding president for a five-year term. Zhu was president of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui Province, in 1998-2008 and is an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zhu's independent, pioneering spirit first became evident in 1999, soon after he took over the University of Science and Technology of China.

Responding to a call from the government to boost domestic demand, universities across China expanded their enrollments in the year, many at the price of education quality.

The University of Science and Technology of China was no exception. In 2001, it enrolled 1,860 undergraduate students, doubling the figure in the early 1990s. When this pace of expansion did not satisfy Ministry of Education officials, Zhu disobeyed their orders and stabilized enrollment.

As other universities raced to buy up land and open new campuses, Zhu remained unmoved.

This time, from the outset, Zhu wanted the SUSTC to be totally different.

With the SUSTC, Zhu seeks a return to basics, hoping to restore the long-lost academic integrity of Chinese universities, according to the university website.

"In past decades, our universities have all been guided by bureaucracy instead of the needs of academic research," he said.

Different from those ever-expanding, profit-oriented higher learning institutions, Zhu envisions a new kind of university, small and research-focused like the California Institute of Technology or Rockefeller University.

The SUSTC will have 1,500 undergraduates and 500 graduates specializing in science and engineering—small by Chinese standards—according to Zhu.

Instead of the candidates who scored high in the national college entrance examination, students of the SUSTC's experimental classes will be handpicked by Zhu from second-graders of senior high schools before the exam.

"This is to keep the students' originality and learning vigor from being smothered after a year's intensive study for the exam," Zhu said.

For the experimental classes, all teaching sessions will be conducted in English. In the first two years, courses in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, computing and English will be offered. During the last two years, students can choose their own research focus.

In its bid to become a paragon of education reform, the Shenzhen Municipal Government paid nearly $1 billion for the land for the SUSTC's campus.

Several hundred houses have been demolished and their residents resettled to make way for the 500-acre campus.

Since January last year, the university has been operating from a temporary campus that once was the Shenzhen Financial Engineering Institute of Nankai University.

On May 24 last year, the MOE sent a team of experts to inspect the SUSTC's preparation who, reportedly, all thought highly of the efforts of Zhu and his team.

Zhu was hopeful that with a permit from the ministry, the university could begin recruiting students before September 2010, the start of the new school year.

"I've been waiting anxiously for a reply from the ministry," Zhu told China News Weekly.

The MOE held a special meeting in September 2010, agreeing to the construction of the buildings, but not the university itself.