Joint and Dual Degree Programmes — CityU’s Transnational Degree Partnerships with Columbia and Beyond

This chapter belongs to CityU Wild History Module 09: Internationalisation (Part I, sub-section 2), focusing on joint/dual degree programmes between City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) and overseas institutions. Information is current to June 2026; key figures follow official sources, with discrepancies explicitly noted. For the meaning of “Most International University” and the exchange network, see global-partnerships-and-exchange.md; for the CityU × Cornell veterinary collaboration, see global-partnerships-and-exchange-3.md; for mainland China / Greater Bay Area ventures, see mainland-and-greater-bay-area.md.

Where an exchange student swaps their campus for a semester, a dual degree student swaps their transcript for two graduation certificates. The “Joint Bachelor’s Degree Programme” (JBDP, also called a Dual Degree) is one of CityUHK’s trump cards in internationalisation: a student spends two years at CityUHK and two at an overseas partner, graduating with a separate bachelor’s degree awarded by each university. Among these partnerships, the collaboration with Columbia University, an Ivy League institution in the United States, is the flagship that CityU promotes most prominently. This chapter verifies and maps out that system.

# 1. The General Framework of Joint Bachelor’s Degrees (the “2+2” Dual Degree)

The generic structure, as set out on CityUHK Admissions’ page “Joint Bachelor's Degree Programmes with Overseas Universities^※,” is:

In other words, this is not a single degree earned at two locations, but a genuine dual degree with a diploma from each of the two universities. This differs from models where a collaborative institution (such as CityU (Dongguan)) issues a CityUHK degree — that is institutional franchising, whereas here the degrees of two independent universities are stacked (see details in mainland-and-greater-bay-area.md).

# 2. The Flagship: CityU × Columbia Joint Bachelor’s Degree

# 2.1 Programme Structure

Based on the partnership with Columbia University’s School of General Studies (GS):

# 2.2 Available Majors

The available majors span business, computing, humanities and social sciences, and natural sciences. According to the web pages of both CityUHK and Columbia, the fields covered include (as examples): Business Decision Analytics, Business Economics, Computational Finance and FinTech, Computer Science, Computing Mathematics, Global Business, International Relations and Global Affairs, Linguistics and Language Applications, Management, Physics, Psychology, and Public Affairs and Management.

# 2.3 A Major Shift from 2026/27: Direct Year‑1 Entry for Secondary-School Leavers

According to a joint announcement by CityUHK and Columbia on 11 September 2025: beginning in the 2026/27 academic year^※, secondary-school leavers from Hong Kong and around the world will, for the first time, be able to apply directly for Year‑1 entry to the joint degree programme (the pathway was previously different). Accepted qualifications include the HKDSE, IBDP, GCE A-Level, the SAT, and others.

CityUHK’s Provost was quoted in the announcement calling this an “excellent opportunity for the brightest minds to earn a transformative dual degree^※”; the Dean of Columbia GS noted the School was “expanding our partnership with CityUHK^※, which is consistently ranked among the best universities in the world” (both quoted by title).

A note on the verification trail for the “Columbia joint degree”: This programme is corroborated by multiple strong, independent sources — ① CityUHK’s official press release, ② Columbia GS’s official website and news, ③ a dedicated Columbia site built for the programme (cityu-hk.gs.columbia.edu), ④ mainstream financial wires (PRNewswire / Yahoo Finance carrying Columbia’s release) — confirming the programme is genuine and exists. The discrepancy in the number of majors (11 vs. 12) between two official sources has been flagged side-by-side above.

# 3. Other Overseas Joint-Degree Partners

Columbia is not an isolated case. According to CityUHK’s Admissions page, the overseas joint-degree partners also include (each on the “2+2, two degrees” structure):

The table above is based on CityUHK Admissions’ page “JBDP with Overseas Universities^※”; the exact availability of each major and intake streams may vary annually — always refer to the Admissions page for the current academic year. Joint laboratories / research institutes under international research collaborations (e.g. with EPFL, KU Leuven) fall under research, catalogued in mainland-and-greater-bay-area-3.md and Module 04 (Research); this chapter covers degree-programme partnerships only.

# 4. Other Outbound Learning Pathways

Beyond the “2+2” joint degrees, there is a tiered set of channels for CityUHK students to study abroad:

Approximately 65%^※ of CityUHK undergraduates have an overseas learning experience during their studies (NAFSA citing CityUHK’s own figure, 2024). Operational details of the exchange system are covered in Section 3 of global-partnerships-and-exchange.md.

# 5. In Brief

• The core mechanism of CityUHK’s joint bachelor’s degrees is “2+2, two degrees”: two years at CityUHK and two at the partner university, each issuing its own diploma.
• The flagship programme is the joint bachelor’s degree with Columbia University, confirmed genuine by multiple independent strong sources; from 2026/27, secondary-school leavers can apply for direct Year‑1 entry; the two official tallies of available majors (11 vs. 12) are recorded side-by-side.
• Overseas joint-degree partners also include CentraleSupélec, ESSEC, Leuphana, NTU, Edinburgh, and Manchester, spanning France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Taiwan.