Faculty of Dentistry: Hong Kong's only dental school and its world-leading rankings

This article is the dentistry instalment of Module 11 Medicine/Hospitals of the HKU Wild History. The Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) is the only institution in Hong Kong offering undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in dentistry, operates from the Prince Philip Dental Hospital as its teaching base, and holds the record of being ranked No. 1 worldwide three times in a row in the QS World University Rankings by Subject. This article traces its history, its unique status, its teaching hospital, the BDS curriculum and its ranking record.

For the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, see ./li-ka-shing-faculty-of-medicine-2.md; for teaching hospitals such as Queen Mary Hospital, see ./teaching-hospitals.md; for the university-wide view of subject rankings, see ../03-rankings/. This module falls within the 00–12 reference zone and carries no credibility badges. Data are current as of June 2026.

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# 1. At a glance

The Faculty of Dentistry holds a rare position of absolute uniqueness in Hong Kong's higher education landscape: it is the only dental school in the territory. Every locally trained dentist in Hong Kong comes from this single faculty. That singularity, combined with its top-tier performance in international subject rankings, makes the faculty one of the most recognisable at HKU. Where the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine leans on the multi-specialty Queen Mary Hospital, the Faculty of Dentistry follows a "single specialism, vertical to the end" path: one faculty, one dedicated teaching hospital, one undergraduate degree, covering the entire chain of Hong Kong's dental workforce supply.

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# 2. History: from "dental shortage" to the territory's only dental school

# 2.1 Origins (1976–1982)

The faculty was established in response to Hong Kong's long-running post-war shortage of dentists. According to the English Wikipedia article on the Faculty of Dentistry^※ and the faculty's official page^※, the sequence ran as follows:

• In 1976, HKU set up a Dental Education Advisory Committee to plan strategically for a dental school and curriculum^※;
• In 1978, HKU Vice-Chancellor Rayson Huang announced that the University would offer a Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) degree, with dental education to begin from 1980^※;
• Initially, dental students took their classes in the Faculty of Medicine, and only moved to the Faculty of Dentistry when it was established in 1982^※;
• In 1982, the Faculty of Dentistry was formally established^※.

# 2.2 Prince Philip Dental Hospital (1981)

The faculty's teaching base is the Prince Philip Dental Hospital. According to the English Wikipedia article on the hospital^※:

• The Prince Philip Dental Hospital, at 34 Hospital Road in Sai Ying Pun on Hong Kong Island, was officially opened on 24 March 1981 by Prince Philip, then President of the British Dental Association^※;
• The hospital cost roughly HK$200 million to build, was designed by the Architectural Services Department, and construction began in 1979 to address Hong Kong's shortage of dentists^※;
• It housed Hong Kong's first dental school, is today one of the world's leading dental teaching hospitals, and is governed by the Prince Philip Dental Hospital Ordinance^※.

The Prince Philip Dental Hospital opened a year before the faculty itself (1981 vs 1982), giving the fledgling school a dedicated dental teaching hospital from the start. This contrasts with the Faculty of Medicine's reliance on the generalist Queen Mary Hospital: the Faculty of Dentistry has always had its own exclusive, single-specialty teaching hospital.

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# 3. Being the only one: what it means

The faculty is described as "the only institution in Hong Kong providing undergraduate and postgraduate education in dentistry"^※ — a uniqueness with several dimensions:

1. A monopoly on training: every locally trained dentist in Hong Kong comes through this one faculty at undergraduate level;
2. A single teaching hospital: the Prince Philip Dental Hospital is Hong Kong's only dental teaching hospital^※;
3. A capacity ceiling: according to the faculty's undergraduate admissions notes^※, the BDS intake approved by the University Grants Committee (UGC) has already reached the physical capacity limit of the teaching hospital, which is why undergraduate admissions have long been held at around 90 students per year.

This singularity also means that Hong Kong's supply of dentists is, to a significant degree, constrained by the output of this one faculty — a structural fact frequently cited in debates over Hong Kong's dental manpower policy.

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# 4. World-class rankings

The faculty's proudest boast is its performance in the QS World University Rankings by Subject (Dentistry).

# 4.1 Three consecutive years at No. 1 (2016–2018)

According to HKU's 2018 press release^※, the Faculty of Dentistry, "following 2016 and 2017, was again ranked No. 1 in the world in dentistry among 364 institutions from different countries" — that is, first globally in the QS subject rankings for dentistry for three straight years, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

# 4.2 Recent years: a fixture near the top

Since then the faculty has remained at or near the top worldwide, slipping outside the top three in only a handful of years over the past decade:

According to an account published by the faculty^※, the Faculty of Dentistry ranked among the global top three in eight of the ten years between 2015 and 2024. After the 2026 results were released, HKU's Vice-Chancellor and President Xiang Zhang said in the University's press release that the faculty's ranking was "the fruit of collective efforts, attributable to outstanding staff and diligent students^※" — dentistry was, according to the same release, one of eight HKU subjects to place in the global top 20 in the 2026 QS subject rankings. As a reference zone, this archive records the ranks above as reported in official press releases; the methodological limitations of rankings and their year-on-year fluctuations are discussed in the university-wide rankings section at ../03-rankings/.

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# 5. Organisation: five departments, distinct roles

Clinical teaching and research at the faculty are organised into five departments, each with its own specialism, according to the official "Organization & Divisions" page^※:

The Department of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery extends its clinical network to the oral and maxillofacial surgery wards and operating theatres at Queen Mary Hospital, where it overlaps in teaching and patient referrals with the Department of Surgery of the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. It is a useful reminder that, although the Faculty of Dentistry stands alone as an administrative unit, it is by no means sealed off from the rest of HKU's medical complex.

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# 6. Research and innovation: the Clinical Research Centre

The faculty's research effort splits into a "basic science" wing and a "translational/clinical" wing. According to the official Clinical Research Centre page^※:

• The Clinical Research Centre (CRC) was established in 2020^※, with the stated mission of "harnessing the potential for translational and clinical research and nurturing clinical innovation in the Asia-Pacific region";
• The centre occupies the fifth floor of the Prince Philip Dental Hospital^※, complementing the Central Research Laboratories, which handle basic science;
• The fifth floor houses a treatment zone (four dental chairs with integrated monitoring systems), an operating theatre (with a specialised ventilation system and 4K recording equipment for medical knowledge transfer), a cell-culture laboratory (for dental pulp cell culture and biomaterial analysis), a sterilisation room, and a data centre and imaging analysis centre with eight workstations^※.

According to the faculty's research postgraduate programmes page^※, postgraduate research is organised around "Five Multidisciplinary Research Themes," spanning directions including Clinical AI and Microbiome Innovation, all in service of oral health promotion across different populations. This "laboratories + dedicated teaching hospital" configuration echoes the "basic research + Queen Mary Hospital translation" model common to other departments in the Faculty of Medicine, as discussed in Clinical departments and research strengths — but for dentistry, the translation setting is concentrated within the single building of the Prince Philip Dental Hospital.

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# 7. The flagship undergraduate degree: BDS

According to the faculty's undergraduate admissions page^※, the BDS programme is based mainly at the Prince Philip Dental Hospital, but students also attend general medical and surgical wards alongside the Faculty of Medicine and the Department of Surgery, and gain experience in the oral and maxillofacial surgery wards and operating theatres of Queen Mary Hospital, as well as in dental clinics and oral health education settings across Hong Kong.

According to the English Wikipedia article on the Faculty of Dentistry^※, the faculty's postgraduate offerings include specialist master's degrees in endodontics, oral and maxillofacial surgery, orthodontics and implant dentistry, with durations ranging from one to three years. In addition, since 1 April 2025, BDS graduates must complete a one-year internship before being fully registered as dentists^※.

# 7.1 Scale and internationalisation

According to the faculty's official "About the Faculty" page^※, in recent years the faculty has drawn staff from 19 countries/regions, students from 22 countries/regions, and alumni spanning 45 countries/regions; 21 of its full-time academics were named to the 2025 list of the "world's top 2% scientists." (These are the faculty's own stated indicators of internationalisation and academic standing, transcribed here from its official page.)

# 7.2 A new chapter in admissions: opening to mainland and non-local students from 2026

The BDS has long been a degree taken almost exclusively by local students — a direct consequence of the capacity ceiling discussed under "Being the only one" above. But according to the HKU Admissions Office's "Mainland Undergraduate Admissions" website^※, this arrangement has begun to loosen in recent years:

• The admissions office notes explicitly in the programme description that from the 2026 academic year, the BDS admits both local and non-local students^※ — an institutional opening of the BDS to applicants from mainland China and elsewhere;
• HKU's mainland admissions set no quota caps by province or city, selecting on merit^※; the ratio of local to non-local students is determined by the overall calibre of the applicant pool rather than fixed quotas;
• The total intake still hovers around 90 — in other words, non-local places represent a restructuring of existing places within the teaching hospital's capacity ceiling, not additional expansion.

According to the HKU Admissions Office's BDS programme page^※, non-local applicants apply through the International Admissions Scheme (IAS)/non-JUPAS route; the medium of instruction is English; and the six-year structure with clinical years at the Prince Philip Dental Hospital applies identically to local and non-local students. This change echoes, to some degree, the broader trend of HKU expanding the proportion of non-local admissions across its faculties, including the Faculty of Medicine.

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# 8. Serving the community: oral health surveys and "Love Teeth Day"

The faculty's public role extends well beyond training dentists. It also carries out government-commissioned public health surveys and runs a steady calendar of community outreach — complementing, at the epidemiological level, the public health work of the School of Public Health and Chinese Medicine.

# 8.1 The Oral Health Survey of Hong Kong

According to an HKU press release^※, the Faculty of Dentistry was commissioned by the Department of Health of the Hong Kong SAR Government from November 2021 to run a territory-wide Oral Health Survey lasting about a year:

• The survey covered five age groups: 5-year-old children, 12-year-old adolescents, adults aged 35–44, seniors aged 65–74, and seniors over 65 receiving long-term care^※;
• Each outreach team comprised a registered dentist assisted by one or two assistants; participants filled in a questionnaire and underwent an oral examination (at the Prince Philip Dental Hospital or in their own homes), assessing three key oral health indicators — tooth decay, gum problems and tooth wear^※;
• After the examination, participants received a brief dental report and professional advice from the dentist^※.

These government-commissioned, territory-wide surveys are the extension of the faculty's "only dental school in Hong Kong" status into the public policy realm: when the government needs authoritative, territory-wide oral health data, this one faculty is effectively the only institution capable of delivering them.

# 8.2 "Love Teeth Day" and long-running outreach

According to the official "Community Engagement" page^※, the faculty runs a number of long-standing outreach projects under the leadership of Professor Chun Hung Chu, Associate Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange):

• The "Jockey Club Children Oral Health Project" targets the prevention of tooth decay in pre-school and school-age children^※;
• The annual "Love Teeth Day" (愛牙日) has run for over a decade, with the tenth edition in 2025 covering districts including Kwai Tsing, Kowloon City, Sha Tin and Yau Tsim Mong^※;
• Outreach beneficiaries also include people with intellectual disabilities, refugees and asylum seekers, victims of human trafficking, people living alone, residents of remote areas and women of South Asian descent^※;
• Faculty projects have been recognised with HKU's "Knowledge Exchange Excellence Awards" (2015 and 2021)^※.

From the Clinical Research Centre inside the Prince Philip Dental Hospital to the "Love Teeth Day" booths in the neighbourhoods of Kwai Tsing and Sha Tin, the faculty's reach spans the full spectrum from cutting-edge translational research to grassroots oral health education. This is the other meaning of being the "only one" in practice: it is at once Hong Kong's sole wellspring of dental research and, in effect, the territory's sole provider of oral public health data and outreach services.

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# 9. See also

• Faculty of Medicine (Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine), the five schools and MBBS: ./li-ka-shing-faculty-of-medicine-2.md
• Teaching hospitals (including oral and maxillofacial surgery at Queen Mary Hospital): ./teaching-hospitals.md
• Research strengths of clinical departments: ./departments-and-strengths.md
• University-wide subject rankings (including methodological discussion of the dentistry table): ../03-rankings/

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