CityUHK Graduate Outcomes, Starting Salaries and Experiential Learning — GES Employment Survey, GREAT and the Internship Network

A ten-year high, first among the eight UGC-funded universities for two consecutive years, and the lowest underemployment rate in the city — the employment report card for CityUHK's Class of 2022 reads like a victory bulletin. Where does this record come from? This article first summarises the employment performance of undergraduate graduates of City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK / 城大): full-time employment rates, average salaries and the University's relative position among the eight UGC-funded universities; it then looks at how CityU lays the groundwork before students graduate — experiential learning and its internship network.

The data is drawn mainly from CityU's Graduate Employment Survey (GES) and the UGC's territory-wide graduate employment statistics for the eight universities. The scope of each wave of data differs; every figure is labelled with its survey year. Compiled: June 2026.

Each year, the eight universities conduct a GES employment survey of all full-time graduates, reporting the results to the University Grants Committee (UGC) and the Education Bureau; the UGC then aggregates and publishes a comparison across all eight institutions. CityU has long ranked near the top on the "full-time employment rate" measure, and in some years has come first among the eight.

# 1. CityU GES key figures over the years

# Class of 2022 (2021/22 academic year) — a ten-year high

According to UGC employment data cited by the CityU Alumni Affairs Office, Class of 2022 graduates:

• Full-time employment rate 97%^※ — a ten-year high for CityU, and first among the eight for the second consecutive year;
• Average annual salary HK$268,000^※, up about 10% on the previous year;
• Underemployment rate down to 1.5%^※ — the lowest among the eight and CityU's own lowest in a decade;
• The previous year (Class of 2021, 2020/21) recorded a full-time employment rate of 96.6% (per the 2022 CityU press release^※).

CityU attributes its high employment rate to its applied orientation, close ties with industry, and the support of its Career and Leadership Centre (CLC), among other factors; the University has also said it offers more than 9,000 job vacancies to students in recent years (as reported by the media, citing the University).

# 2. Class of 2024 (2023/24 academic year) — territory-wide figures across the eight

The UGC's 2023/24 employment survey of graduates from the eight universities (published in 2025) shows the following (per the DotDotNews report^※):

The same report mentions CityU's unemployment rate for that cohort at about 5.4% (among the higher of the eight). This archive could not verify CityU's Class of 2024 "average annual salary in absolute terms" from that second-hand report or any single official page (the report gives only the eight-university average of 329,000 and HKU's 401,000, without listing CityU's salary separately) → CityU's Class of 2024 average annual salary is marked unverified (to be confirmed against CityU's GES / UGC institution-level data).

# 3. Employment destination structure (overview)

• CityU is known for its applied, industry-facing character; graduates of the College of Business, the College of Computing and the College of Engineering typically enter finance, technology, engineering and professional services, and some programmes (e.g. computer science, data science) publish separate employment statistics through their own faculties.
• CityU operates a Career and Leadership Centre (CLC) that coordinates the GES survey and career support; GES results are reported to the UGC and the Education Bureau.
• Graduates of distinctive programmes such as veterinary medicine (the only such programme in Hong Kong) and creative media have industry-specific destinations; for programme-by-programme outcomes, see the individual faculty pages.

This archive could not verify an official consolidated breakdown of CityU's programme-by-programme / industry-by-industry employment destinations on any single admissions page → this detail is marked unverified (to be confirmed against faculty-level employment statistics and CityU's GES reports).

# 4. Experiential learning: GREAT — a "special class" for research and entrepreneurship

A high employment rate does not come out of thin air. CityU styles itself as "applied and pragmatic", and that character shows not only in patents and technology transfer but also in the undergraduate emphasis on "learning by doing". This section maps CityU's experiential learning and internship pipelines — a key source of its graduates' competitiveness in the job market.

CityU introduced the Global Research Enrichment and Technopreneurship (GREAT) stream in the 2021/22 academic year^※ — a four-year undergraduate option designed for students who aim at a research career or starting their own business.

The logic of GREAT lines up precisely with CityU's two strengths:

• Research: CityU is research-intensive (materials, computing, energy and other strong fields), and GREAT gives undergraduates who intend to pursue graduate study and a research path an early route into research;
• Technopreneurship: CityU emphasises technology transfer and runs flagship entrepreneurship programmes such as HK Tech 300 (see 04-research/patents-and-hk-tech-300.md) — GREAT writes "entrepreneurship" explicitly into the undergraduate pathway, letting students with entrepreneurial ambitions get started early.

With its dual "research + entrepreneurship" track, GREAT can be read as the institutional embodiment — at the undergraduate level — of CityU's "research-heavy, translation-minded" character.

# 5. Internships and the transition to work: multiple channels

The other pillar of experiential learning is the internship and work placement. According to public information, CityU offers several internship routes:

• Course internships: integrating academic study with real work, letting students apply theory in an actual workplace;
• Work placement schemes: schemes such as the On-demand Internship Programme, where employers offer internship opportunities^※, helping students understand diverse professional environments;
• ITC-STEM Internship Scheme: employers provide IT-related training and work-learning experience to interns^※, meeting Hong Kong's demand for innovation-and-technology talent;
• Faculty-run internships: internship programmes organised by individual faculties and departments, such as the internship programme of the Department of Media and Communication^※, providing students with local and international real-world experience.

Together these channels form a "classroom-to-workplace" network that lets students build genuine work experience before graduation — the core of the "learning by doing" educational philosophy.

The rise of experiential learning is inseparable from the four-year undergraduate curriculum introduced after Hong Kong's 2012 "3-3-4" reform (see 01-academics/four-year-curriculum-and-general-education.md). The extra year in the four-year system made room for "beyond-the-classroom" experiences such as general education, internships, research and exchange: Gateway Education broadens horizons, overseas exchange (over 400 partners; see 09-international/student-exchange-network.md) provides international experience, and GREAT / internships supply research and workplace exposure. Together these three layers shift the CityU undergraduate experience from "simply taking major courses" to a composite model of "discipline + general education + practice + international experience" — the concrete realisation of the "whole-person education" ideal.

Experiential learning bears directly on graduates' competitiveness: internship experience is an important reference point when employers screen fresh graduates; testing what one has learned in a real workplace narrows the gap between study and application; internships often serve as a prelude to formal employment and help students build industry networks; and GREAT connects with HK Tech 300 to offer aspiring founders a complete path from campus to startup.

A note on scope: this archive has not independently verified the specific intake size and curriculum structure of GREAT, or the coverage and participation numbers of each internship scheme; please refer to the latest official CityU pages. This section focuses on the institutional and conceptual dimensions.

# Data reliability and gaps

• Official hard data: Class of 2022 full-time employment rate 97%, average annual salary HK$268,000, underemployment rate 1.5%, first among the eight (CityU Alumni Affairs Office); Class of 2021 full-time employment rate 96.6% (CityU press release); 2023/24 eight-university average annual salary HK$329,000, HKU HK$401,000, survey scale (via media report, sourced from the UGC survey).
• Marked "unverified": CityU's Class of 2024 average annual salary in absolute terms (the second-hand report did not list CityU's salary separately), programme-by-programme / industry-by-industry destination proportions, GREAT's specific intake size and internship scheme coverage — none confirmed from a single official page, and none fabricated.
• A note on scope: single-institution figures vs. eight-university aggregates, and different graduating cohorts — salary figures cannot be compared across measures; every item is labelled with its year and source.