Joint and Dual Degrees — Cross-Border Degree Partnerships between CityU and Columbia and Others

Part of CityU Wild History 09, Internationalisation module (Part 2 of the upper series). This article focuses on the joint/dual degree programmes offered by City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK / CityU) with overseas institutions. Information is current as of June 2026; key figures follow official sources, with discrepancies explicitly noted. For the substance of "the world's most international university" and the exchange network, see global-partnerships-and-exchange.md; the CityU×Cornell veterinary collaboration is covered in global-partnerships-and-exchange-3.md; campuses and programmes in mainland China and the Greater Bay Area are covered in mainland-and-greater-bay-area.md.

Both are "cross-border", but where an exchange semester buys you one term of change of scene, a dual degree buys you two graduation certificates. The "Joint Bachelor's Degree Programme" (JBDP, also rendered as a Dual Degree) is one of CityU's trump cards in internationalisation: students spend two years at CityU and two years at an overseas partner university, graduating with two bachelor's degrees, one awarded by each institution. The collaboration with Columbia University, the Ivy League school in New York, is the flagship programme in CityU's outward-facing publicity. This article verifies the facts and sorts out the structure of the system.

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# 1. The General Mechanics of Dual Degrees (The "2+2" Double Degree)

The CityU Admissions Office's "Joint Bachelor's Degree Programmes with Overseas Universities^※" page sets out the general structure as follows:

In other words, this is not "one degree, studied in two places" but a true dual degree in which two universities each issue their own diploma. It is a different model from CityU (Dongguan)-type "collaborative education institutions" that award a CityU degree — there, an institution was set up to run the programme; here, two independent universities stack their degrees (see mainland-and-greater-bay-area.md for that model).

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

# 2.1 Programme Structure

According to the collaboration between Columbia University's School of General Studies (GS) and CityU:

# 2.2 Available Majors

The choice of majors spans business, computing, the humanities and social sciences, and the sciences. According to the pages of both CityU and Columbia, areas covered include (among others): business decision analytics, business economics, computational finance and financial technology, computer science, computational mathematics, global business, international relations and global affairs, linguistics and language applications, management, physics, psychology, and public affairs and management.

# 2.3 A Major Change from 2026/27: Secondary School Students Can Enter Year 1 Directly

According to the CityU–Columbia announcement of 11 September 2025: from the 2026/27 academic year^※ onwards, for the first time, secondary school graduates from Hong Kong and around the world can apply directly for Year 1 entry to the joint degree (the previous route was different). Accepted secondary qualifications include the HKDSE, IBDP, GCE A-Level, SAT, and others.

In the announcement, CityU's Deputy President (Academic) described it as "a tremendous opportunity for the best students to earn a transformative dual degree^※"; the Dean of Columbia GS said the University was "expanding our partnership with the City University of Hong Kong^※, which consistently ranks among the best universities in the world" (both cited by title).

Verification trail for the authenticity of the "Columbia joint degree": the programme is corroborated by ①CityU's official news, ②Columbia GS's official website and news, ③a standalone site Columbia GS set up specifically for the programme (cityu-hk.gs.columbia.edu), and ④major financial wire services (PRNewswire/Yahoo Finance picking up the Columbia release). Multiple independent, authoritative sources confirm the programme genuinely exists. The only discrepancy is the number of majors, which the two official sources state differently; this is flagged side by side above.

# 2.4 Two Entry Routes: Internal Transfer vs Direct Admission from Secondary School

The reason "secondary school students can enter Year 1 directly" was big news for both CityU and Columbia is that it did not replace the old route — it added a new one alongside it. The two routes run in parallel, with entirely different admissions logic.

Take the College of Computing's Columbia joint degree (restricted to BSc Computer Science) as an example. The traditional route's internal transfer is not a matter of "study two years, then automatically move up to Columbia": students must submit an internal application to the college office in their second year at CityU (around October), pass a qualifications review, and then log into Columbia's official admissions portal in mid-January of the following year. The English threshold is raised to Columbia's standard of TOEFL 100 / IELTS 7.0^※ — higher than the entry bar for the direct-admission route. In other words, even for students already enrolled at CityU, whether they actually "cross the sea" to Columbia still hinges on this double gate of CGPA and language.

# 2.5 Qualification Thresholds for Direct Admission (Inaugural Cohort 2026/27)

According to the CityU Admissions Office's "Direct Admission for JBDP with Columbia University^※" page, the inaugural direct-admission cohort has separate benchmarks for each qualification system, all set at a highly selective level:

The inaugural application deadline was 2 January 2026 (New York time), with shortlisted applicants notified for interview in early February^※. Placing the HKDSE 24.5, IB 38, and A-Level 2A*1A benchmarks against the local admissions landscape, they approach the entry level of CityU's most competitive departments — which bears out the University's own positioning of the programme as a flagship "for the best students".

# 2.6 Tuition: Two Segments, Two Bills

The cost structure of a dual degree is priced in segments according to "where you are studying" — the realistic side of a joint degree that distinguishes it from an ordinary exchange (where exchange students pay only CityU tuition). According to the Columbia GS joint-degree website and CityU's public fees:

In other words, students enjoy Hong Kong public-university tuition levels for the first two years, then switch to an Ivy League bill for the final two — this "tuition cliff" is an unavoidable item in any family's financial planning for the programme. The Columbia GS page also carries Financial Aid information, but no primary source gives a specific aid figure for joint-degree students; this archive does not make estimates.

# 2.7 History and Scale: A Decade-Long, Low-Profile Partnership

The "Columbia joint degree" is not a project that sprang out of nowhere in 2025. According to Columbia GS and the major wire services, this undergraduate collaboration between CityU and Columbia dates back to 2012^※. Over more than a decade it has drawn students from four CityU faculties and over a dozen eligible majors, always via the "study at CityU first, then transfer to Columbia" third-year transfer route. By the time of the 2025 expansion announcement, roughly 54 students^※ from the programme were enrolled at Columbia GS — not a large pipeline, but a mature one that has run continuously for years. Opening direct admission to secondary school students from 2026/27 is a case of moving the entry point forward for this long-standing route to reach a broader pool — not a start from zero.

A note on wording: the Columbia GS and PRNewswire releases describe the change as "open[ing] direct admission to secondary school students starting Fall 2025^※", while CityU's side says "starting in the 2026/27 academic year" and sets the application deadline in January 2026. The two are not inconsistent: the former refers to the start of the application cycle, the latter to the year of entry; the inaugural direct-admission cohort corresponds to 2026/27 entry.

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# 3. Other Overseas Dual-Degree Partners

Columbia is not the only partner. According to the CityU Admissions Office page, CityU's other overseas dual-degree partners include (each on the "2+2, two degrees" structure):

The table above follows the CityU Admissions Office "JBDP with Overseas Universities^※" page; the exact availability and intake direction of each major are adjusted from year to year, so the admissions office's current-year page is authoritative. Joint laboratories / joint research institutes for international research collaboration (e.g. with EPFL, KU Leuven) belong to the research level and are covered in mainland-and-greater-bay-area-3.md and the 04 Research module; this article covers degree-level collaborations only.

# 3.1 Majors Offered by Each Partner (Current Admissions Office Breakdown)

Expanding the "examples" into full detail, the specific dual-degree majors the admissions overview page lists under each non-Columbia partner are as follows (numbers change from year to year; this is the current count):

As the table shows, the non-Columbia partnerships are mostly point-to-point collaborations involving one or a small number of departments — a single department pairing with the matching discipline at one strong overseas institution (CityU's Department of Chemistry with Manchester chemistry, Computing Mathematics with Edinburgh), rather than Columbia's broad sweep across five faculties and over a dozen majors. NTU is the most extensive of these, spanning business, engineering, and the humanities across six majors — CityU's deepest undergraduate dual-degree tie in the Chinese-speaking higher education world.

# 3.2 CentraleSupélec: Engineering Dual Degree in the Paris-Saclay System

CentraleSupélec is a founding member of Université Paris-Saclay and one of France's top engineering schools in the "Grande École" tradition. CityU's College of Engineering partners with it for a Bachelor of Engineering dual degree — students again spend two years at each institution on the "2+2" model, graduating with degrees from both CityU and CentraleSupélec. This tie connects CityU students to France's elite engineer-training system and to Paris-Saclay, a major European research hub — consonant with CityU's long-running engineering internationalisation strategy (the University also has joint laboratory exchanges with that system at the research level, which is research collaboration, covered in the 04 Research module).

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# 4. Other Routes for Overseas Study

Beyond the "2+2 dual degree", CityU students have several other routes for studying abroad, each adding another layer:

About 65%^※ of CityU undergraduates have an overseas study experience during their degree (NAFSA citing CityU figures, 2024). For the operational details of the exchange system, see Section 3 of global-partnerships-and-exchange.md.

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# 5. Summary

• The core mechanism of CityU's dual degrees is "2+2, two degrees": two years at CityU, two years at a partner university, one diploma from each.
• The flagship is the joint bachelor's degree with Columbia University, confirmed by multiple independent authoritative sources, with the collaboration traceable to 2012 and about 54 students enrolled at Columbia at the time of the 2025 expansion announcement; from 2026/27 onwards secondary school students can enter Year 1 directly, with the old "internal transfer in Year 3" route retained in parallel.
• "Direct entry" is not a filter-free guarantee: both routes require clearing CGPA/language thresholds before entering the two-year Columbia phase; tuition is likewise charged in two segments (CityU prices for the first two years, Columbia GS prices for the last two).
• Three official counts of the number of majors (overview 11 / press release 12 / direct-admission 9 tracks) stem from different counting scopes; this archive lists them side by side.
• Other overseas dual-degree partners span CentraleSupélec, ESSEC, Leuphana, NTU, Edinburgh, and Manchester in France, Germany, the UK, and Taiwan — mostly point-to-point collaborations in matched departments, with NTU the most extensive (6 majors).

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