On June 11, the Ministry of Education announced that it would agree to establish ten schools including the Greater Bay Area University and Ningbo Oriental University of Technology, marking the entry of a new stage in the construction of China's new research university. These two highly-watched universities, one organized by social forces and the other led by local governments.

The Greater Bay Area University is led by the Guangdong Provincial Government and guaranteed by the Dongguan Municipal Government. It is positioned as a new research university with "international standards, openness and inclusiveness, and Bay Area characteristics". It focuses on six major fields such as material science and advanced engineering, and is headed by Tian Gang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The school adopts a "one school and two districts" layout, covering a total area of ​​2,356 acres. The Songshan Lake Campus has been completed. The first phase of the Binhai Bay Campus will be put into use in 2026. It is estimated that the number of students in school will reach 10,000 in 2030.

Ningbo Oriental University of Technology was founded by entrepreneur Yu Renrong, and Chen Shiyi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, served as president. The school plans to use 2,300 mu of land, and is built in three phases. The first phase of the project will be completed in 2025. As a representative of social forces running schools, the school has established a diversified funding system of "foundations governments", and the donated funds have increased from 20 billion yuan to 30 billion yuan. It is planned to achieve a scale of 10,000 students within ten years, with the ratio of undergraduate, master and doctoral students of 4:3:3.

Both schools are centered on science and engineering. Greater Bay Area universities have set up five undergraduate majors including mathematics, physics, and computer science, and implement the integrated training of undergraduate, master and doctoral students. They have jointly trained graduate students with Sun Yat-sen University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, etc. Ningbo Oriental Science and Technology aims at the "bottleneck" technical research and builds a discipline system of science, engineering, information and business. Since 2022, it has jointly recruited 243 doctoral students, and the plan is to start undergraduate enrollment after approval.

In terms of training mechanism, Greater Bay Area universities broke the traditional departmental structure, adopted the "university-field" flat model, and dynamically adjusted the cross-curriculum; Ningbo Oriental Science and Technology promoted the "academic-department" collaborative education, and jointly built a practical platform with Geely Automobile and Yongjiang Laboratory to strengthen the integration of industry, academia and research.

Both schools are focusing on building an international faculty team. Ningbo Oriental Science and Technology has formed a core team of 100 people including 15 academicians and 52 national talents. More than half of the teachers have experience in working in the world's top 200 universities; 96% of the teachers in Greater Bay Area universities have overseas backgrounds and adopt a full-staff appointment system. Tian Gang said he will learn from the experience of top universities such as MIT.

As a regional carrier of national strategy, Greater Bay Area University carries the mission of promoting scientific and technological innovation of the "Belt and Road", while Ningbo Oriental Science and Technology is committed to solving the dilemma of Ningbo's "strong industry and weak higher education". The establishment of the two schools not only improves the regional higher education layout, but also provides a dual sample of "society forces running schools" and "government-led construction" for the development of China's new research universities.