TRANQUIL SITE: The NUS student village will sit on 19ha in Clementi that used to be a golf course. A bridge will link it to the Kent Ridge campus. -- PHOTOS: NUS

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That is Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's vision for the 19ha site - dubbed a University Town - which had its official ground-breaking ceremony yesterday.

'It will make the University Town a vibrant centre of learning and creative inquiry,' said Mr Lee. 'Not an ivory tower, but an active intellectual community integrated into our society, and connected to the world.'

Sitting on land that was once the Warren Golf Course, it will have eight residential colleges and graduate residences to accommodate 6,000 students when it is ready in 2010.

Funded by NUS through government grants, the $500 million to $600 million project will have cafes and fashion boutiques, social and recreational facilities, as well as classrooms and a library, said an NUS spokesman.

A two-level bridge across the Ayer Rajah Expressway - the upper for cars and lower for pedestrians - will link the town to the NUS campus at Kent Ridge.

The new campus is modelled after the residential college system used by top universities like Oxford and Cambridge. There, students live, learn and socialise under the same roof as professors.

There will be 'a whole community of faculty and students from different backgrounds and disciplines coming together to engage one another and promote free exchange of ideas,' said Mr Lee.

Students will be able to learn where they live, a major change from the current system at NUS, where undergraduates stay in hostels but attend lessons in faculty buildings. Students will also be able to take courses outside of their core curriculum, some of which could be offered at night.

There will also be a series of seminars on mixed topics like mathematics and astronomy. The goal is to broaden the students' minds and offer opportunities for inquiry, said Professor Lily Kong, vice-president for university and global relations.

In the works is a writing programme to help students be critical readers and thinkers, said Prof Kong.

'We are not teaching business writing, but rather teaching students to analyse, form strong arguments, and put across ideas convincingly,' she said.

The University Town will also be home to the new Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (Create) and the Asia Research Institute.

This will allow students to work with top scientists on cutting-edge research projects and attend talks by experts.

PM Lee, who led the ground-breaking ceremony, said universities should develop flexible programmes that cater to a wide range of student interests.

'Cross-fertilisation will help to spark new ideas and promote collaborations across all disciplines,' he said.

To allow more students to benefit from a university education, the Government is increasing the number of publicly-funded university places to take in 30 per cent of every cohort by 2015.

janeng@sph.com.sg