This undergraduate roadmap for Computer Science in Hong Kong weaves together four-year curriculum planning, specialisation choices and career pathways into a systematic guide. According to data published by the University Grants Committee (UGC), the full-time employment rate for bachelor’s degree graduates in Computer Science and Information Engineering in the 2022/23 academic year was approximately 91.3%, with an average annual salary of HK$320,000. The timeline that follows breaks down the BEng and BSc Computer Science programmes at HKU, CUHK and HKUST, focusing on how the two most popular concentrations—Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science—are built step by step across four years.
Year 1: Building a Solid Engineering Foundation and Mapping the Credit Board
All three universities house their Computer Science programmes within the Faculty of Engineering or equivalent, and Year 1 is designed to balance general education with foundational technical work. The University of Hong Kong’s Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science operates on a four-year, 240-credit structure. About 30 credits are allocated to university language and common core courses, while roughly 36 credits cover mathematics, physics and introductory engineering subjects. The Chinese University of Hong Kong’s BSc in Computer Science has a graduation requirement of 123 credits; first-year students complete university general education, faculty foundation courses and an introduction to Computer Science, totalling around 30 credits. The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s BEng in Computer Science (120 credits) devotes most first-year credits to engineering fundamentals, including “Computer Programming (C++)”, “Introduction to Computing” and linear algebra.
During the same year, students begin to make their first moves on the credit board. HKU