Student Exchange and Dual / Joint Degrees

This article belongs to the "HKU Wild History · Unofficial History of the University of Hong Kong (HKU)" site's 09 Internationalisation module, focusing on student-level international mobility: semester/year-long exchanges, dual and joint degrees, and summer or short-term study programmes. Information is current as of July 2026; figures and programme structures follow the HKU official pages and are adjusted annually — always refer to the official disclosures for the current year.

This article follows on from global-partnerships.md (the institution-level partner network and alliances) and narrows the focus to the concrete programmes students can actually join. HKU has publicly committed to giving "the vast majority of undergraduates" one overseas experience during their studies; operationally, that goal rests on three pillars: ① HKU Worldwide Exchange (university-wide student exchange); ② dual and joint degrees (undergraduate double degrees and postgraduate joint degrees); and ③ the Summer Institute and short-term study tours. The three differ in entry requirements, duration, and how many qualifications they confer — the sections below take each apart in turn, with a dedicated section pulling together the questions students ask first: money, credits, and who's on the list.

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# 1. HKU Worldwide Exchange

# 1.1 Scale

According to the HKU "International and Mainland Collaboration" page^※, HKU maintains exchange partnerships with over 380 institutions across 46 countries/regions, offering students semester- and year-long overseas exchange opportunities each year. HKU's official framing is that it expects "the vast majority of undergraduates" to gain an overseas experience during their studies.

# 1.2 Programme structure and eligibility (Main Round)

According to the HKU International Affairs Office "HKU Worldwide Student Exchange" page^※, exchanges are offered in three formats — full academic year / semester 1 / semester 2 — and applications are processed in rounds. The standard eligibility requirements (Main Round) are:

Note: The thresholds above reflect the Main Round for one application cycle and are adjusted slightly from year to year; refer to the International Affairs Office for the official announcement of the current year. Individual faculties maintain their own exchange lists and additional requirements.

# 1.3 Three application rounds — the later you apply, the slimmer the pickings

HKU exchange is not a one-shot affair; it is structured as Main Round first, with two supplementary rounds of clearing. According to the International Affairs Office's 2026/27 announcement, applications open in three windows: the Main Round runs from 20 October to 12 December 2025, the Late Round from 6 to 13 March 2026, and the 2nd Late Round from 30 April to 8 May (International Affairs Office)^※. Popular destinations (top partner institutions in the US, UK, etc.) tend to fill up in the Main Round; later rounds typically offer only leftover places and less sought-after regions. This is why student-facing advice consistently urges people to "watch the Main Round closely".

# 1.4 What the overseas destinations look like

According to HKU's official statements, exchange partners include leading universities in their respective countries, spanning North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Oceania. The full partner list is available on the International Affairs Office Partner List^※; some faculties (e.g. Law, Business and Economics) additionally run dedicated pages for their own faculty-level exchange partners.

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# 2. Exchange finances and credits: tuition, funding, and course selection

The three things exchange students ask about first are usually not "where do I go" but: whose tuition do I pay, will my credits count, and is there any money in it. This section brings together the official positions scattered across the International Affairs Office and the Academic Advising and Scholarships Office pages.

# 2.1 You pay tuition to HKU; flights and living costs are on you

HKU Worldwide Exchange operates on a reciprocal exchange model: during the exchange semester, students remain registered at HKU and continue paying their tuition to HKU, rather than paying a second round of tuition to the host institution. The host institution correspondingly waives its nominal tuition fee — that is the "reciprocal" in the name. Per the International Affairs Office, exchange students must bear their own airfare, local accommodation, visa, insurance, and living expenses — usually the bulk of the cost of an exchange (International Affairs Office)^※.

# 2.2 Whether credits transfer is up to your faculty

Subjects taken overseas do not automatically convert into HKU credits. Per the International Affairs Office, credit transfer requires prior approval from the student's home faculty — students are normally expected to submit their intended courses to the faculty for vetting before departure, then arrange the conversion on their return using their transcript. This "faculty gatekeeping" design means that the very same course at the very same host institution can be approved for one student and rejected for another, depending on whether it maps onto the graduation requirements of their particular major.

# 2.3 Funding: the government's Reaching Out Award and automatic consideration

Exchange is not necessarily self-funded. According to the HKU Academic Advising and Scholarships Office "Overseas/Exchange Activities" page^※, the best known scheme is the Hong Kong SAR Government Scholarship Fund's Reaching Out Award (ROA): aimed at UGC-funded full-time undergraduate and postgraduate students, covering outbound activities such as exchange, overseas study, internships, and competitions. Each award is HK$10,000, allocated competitively, with a minimum CGPA requirement of 3.20. Notably, students participating in any overseas programme organised by the International Affairs Office, or in designated international programmes managed by CEDARS, are automatically considered for the ROA — no separate application needed. The University also offers several donor-named exchange scholarships; amounts and quotas are announced each year, so refer to the Scholarships Office page for the current cycle.

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# 3. More than one university-wide list: faculty-specific exchanges

HKU Worldwide is the university-wide channel, but it is not the only door in. Several faculties run their own faculty-specific exchange networks, and students can pursue this route in addition to the university-wide list.

Take the Faculty of Law. According to the HKU Law "Outgoing Exchange · Partner Universities" page^※, it maintains its own network of over 70 partner law schools spanning Asia-Pacific (Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.), Europe (England, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Nordic countries, etc.), and North America — the list includes Cornell, Georgetown, Penn, UCL, McGill, Toronto, and Melbourne, among others. The page also notes that students nominated via the university-wide HKUWW route to certain comprehensive partners may not necessarily be able to enrol in the host institution's law courses — which is precisely why the faculty-specific list exists: it locks the guarantee of "being able to take courses in my own discipline" at the faculty level. The Faculties of Business and Economics, Social Sciences, and Engineering maintain similar arrangements of their own; see each faculty's current-year page for specific partners and quotas.

A note on scope: the university-wide list and faculty lists overlap but are not identical; the same overseas institution can appear on both, while the available courses, quotas, and selection criteria are determined separately by each channel. In practice, when applying, students typically weigh destination against which courses they can actually take, choosing between "university-wide" and "faculty-specific" routes.

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# 4. Dual and Joint Degrees

HKU offers several dual degree programmes: students study at two universities in sequence and, on completion, receive a degree from each institution. According to the HKU Admissions "Dual Degrees and University Collaborative Programmes" page^※, the current undergraduate dual/collaborative programmes include:

Note: The table above is compiled from the HKU Admissions Office's current-year page; programme offerings, year allocations, and operational status are adjusted annually — refer to the Admissions Office's official disclosures for the current year. At the postgraduate level there are additional arrangements, including double master's and joint doctorate programmes with Peking University and other institutions; see the relevant faculty pages and the "joint doctoral programmes" mentioned in global-partnerships.md.

# 4.1 A clarification on terms

In Chinese, "dèng lián xuéwèi" (dual degree) and "liánhé xuéwèi" (joint degree) are often used interchangeably, but the structures differ: a dual degree means studying at two institutions in sequence, with each granting its own degree; a joint degree is co-designed by both institutions and may result in a single degree issued jointly. The HKU undergraduate programmes above are mostly dual (each granting a separate degree). This site labels each programme's structure faithfully according to its official page, without conflating the two.

# 4.2 HKU–UC Berkeley: two years in Hong Kong, two years in the Bay Area

The HKU–UC Berkeley dual degree has its own dedicated joint website (hku.berkeley.edu) — something few of HKU's dual-degree programmes have, which hints at the depth of the partnership. According to the HKU–Berkeley joint programme website^※, students spend the first two years at HKU and the final two at Berkeley, and on completion receive an HKU Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Social Sciences, plus a Berkeley Bachelor of Arts from the College of Letters and Science. During the HKU phase, students take both their major courses and some of the prerequisite and breadth requirements for their Berkeley degree in advance; once at Berkeley, they can choose from over ten majors in the College of Letters and Science. The programme is jointly run by HKU's Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences, and is one of the few channels through which HKU embeds undergraduates directly into a US public research flagship.

# 4.3 HKU–Sciences Po: four HKU degrees against one Paris certificate

The HKU–Sciences Po dual degree is a four-year path of two years in France, two in Hong Kong. According to the Sciences Po Admissions "Dual bachelor's degree with the University of Hong Kong" page^※, students spend the first two years at one of Sciences Po's European campuses — Le Havre, Menton, or Reims — then move to HKU for the final two. On graduation, in addition to the Sciences Po bachelor's, they receive one of four HKU degrees: the Bachelor of Arts, the Bachelor of Arts in Humanities and Digital Technologies (BA(HDT)), the Bachelor of Social Sciences, or the Bachelor of Business Administration. International applicants must apply through the Sciences Po platform and list this programme as their first choice; the application deadline for 2026 is 10 March. This "one Sciences Po against four HKU directions" design lets students from humanities, social science, and business backgrounds all plug into the same Sino-French dual-degree pipeline.

# 4.4 HKU–PKU Law: one common law degree, one civil law degree

Among the various dual degrees, the Law dual degree between HKU and Peking University is the most institutionally meaningful in structure. According to the HKU Law Faculty programme page^※, students spend 2.5 years at HKU + 2.5 years at PKU, and on completion receive the HKU LLB (in the common law jurisdiction) and the PKU LLB (in the civil law jurisdiction). Two diplomas corresponding to two legal systems means graduates hold foundational entry qualifications in the legal systems of both Hong Kong and mainland China simultaneously — in the context of legal talent exchange between the two places under "one country, two systems", this is a dual-track arrangement that was explicitly designed rather than accidentally stacked. The broader two-way legal education context can be found in greater-bay-area-and-national-role.md.

# 4.5 The other three: Cambridge, UBC, and Geneva in structural comparison

Also branded as "dual degrees", the Cambridge, UBC, and Geneva paths differ sharply in duration allocation and qualification mix, and deserve to be set side by side. HKU–Cambridge (Engineering) is the only "short HKU, long overseas" structure: 2 years at HKU + 3 years at Cambridge, five years in total, matching Cambridge's four-year engineering undergraduate tradition against HKU's two-year grounding (HKU Admissions)^※. HKU–UBC (Business Administration) links HKU Business School with UBC's Sauder School of Business — 2 years at HKU + 2 years at UBC — and functions as a dedicated northbound channel for HKU business students. HKU–Geneva is the most unusual: according to the HKU Faculty of Social Sciences dual-degree overview^※, it is not two parallel undergraduate degrees but an undergraduate-to-master's ladder — a Bachelor of Social Sciences (BSocSc) topped with a master's (MA) from the Geneva Graduate Institute, with 3 years at HKU + 2 years in Geneva, ending with a postgraduate qualification. Set together, the three show that "dual degree" in HKU's vocabulary is a loose umbrella term: some paths yield two undergraduate diplomas, some chain bachelor's to master's, some accommodate a partner's longer degree cycle. Prospective students need to read each programme's duration and exit qualification line by line, rather than taking the label "double degree" at face value.

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# 5. Summer Institute and short-term study programmes

# 5.1 HKU Summer Institute

According to the HKU Summer Institute website^※, the HKU Summer Institute (HKUSI) aims to provide learning opportunities for secondary school, undergraduate, and postgraduate students from around the world. Its courses span engineering, artificial intelligence, business, humanities, sciences, and languages, with durations ranging from roughly five-day intensive courses to about a month; most are non-credit bearing, while some carry credit (e.g. 6 credits). Participants include secondary students (S1–S6 / Year 8–13 / Grade 7–12), undergraduates, and postgraduates, and international applicants are welcome.

# 5.2 Who comes, and recent expansion

In recent years HKU has positioned the Summer Institute as a vehicle for "attracting non-local students and expanding short-term international exposure". According to HKU's published disclosures, in 2024 its first undergraduate intensive course drew over 110 students from the Greater Bay Area and around the world, while the two-week "Embodied AI 101" programme attracted another 90-plus participants (HKU Summer Institute)^※. Across past cohorts, a significant share of participants came from mainland China, South Korea, India, Australia, the US, and the UK. HKU has also said it will expand the summer programme roster to approximately 35 courses and offer full scholarships to outstanding non-local students — consistent with Hong Kong's recent policy push to attract short-term students. The Faculty of Arts additionally runs a separate Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities, offering theme-based courses at undergraduate and senior-secondary levels.

# 5.3 Other short-term mobility

According to the HKU website, besides semester/year-long exchange, students can gain overseas experience through visiting programmes, summer overseas study tours, and other short-term student mobility schemes (HKU website)^※. For mainland China–bound directions, the "China Vision Programme" and similar initiatives cover academic courses, research projects, cultural visits, field studies, and social service; see greater-bay-area-and-national-role.md.

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# 6. Cross-references and related reading

• Institution-level partner networks and international alliances (incl. the U21/APRU/WUN clarifications) → global-partnerships.md
• Universitas 21 and global alliances in detail → universitas-21-and-global-alliances.md
• Mainland China exchange programmes (China Vision), Greater Bay Area provision, and two-way legal education → greater-bay-area-and-national-role.md
• Overseas offices and international research collaboration → overseas-presence.md
• The Paris campus and overseas teaching platforms → hku-paris-and-overseas-platforms.md
• Belt and Road scholarships and outward-facing funding → hku-belt-and-road-scholarship.md
• Undergraduate admissions and tuition → ../02-admissions/
• Internationalisation components in global rankings → ../03-rankings/

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