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CityU school will move to bigger facility to cater for numbers

Creative media, Chinese business and information technology are among the most popular undergraduate programmesat City University.

'Other consistently popular programmes include marketing, accounting and social work,' said Richard Ho Yan-ki, dean of undergraduate education at CityU.

'These subjects have seen a high number of applicants over a long period.'

The school of creative media is especially overflowing with applicants, reflecting Hong Kong's steadily growing demand for media professionals schooled in top-notch technology.

'This is really our cutting-edge programme,' Professor Ho said. 'We expect it to pick up very strongly in 2009 because we have far more applicants than we can admit. We are going to move to a bigger facility, and by 2009 we will have much more capacity,'

Surprisingly, information technology programmes are back in demand.

'After the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, applications for IT-related programmes dropped to just a few hundred per term. This year it jumped to more than 1,000 entries. IT has really bounced back.'

Another popular item is the China-related business programme. Hong Kong has had a long-standing business relationship with the mainland, but in recent years a sharp increase in the popularity of China business has been observed.

'Our Japan business programme used to be huge, but it has been overtaken by its Chinese counterpart,' Professor Ho said.

'In the past, many young Hongkongers were reluctant to move north. Now they are more knowledgeable about China and therefore they are more willing to get involved.'

CityU offers strong extra-curricular support to China business students.

'Each year, under our industry attachment scheme, we sending 500 to 600 students to work for corporations in the mainland for three months,' he said.

'This gives students an opportunity to get to know the environment there, and potential employers can have a first taste.'

The university is quick to respond to changes in the constantly evolving job market. Professor Ho said  application-oriented education was a key feature of CityU.

The latest example of this orientation is e-logistics, scheduled to start this autumn.

'E-logistics is a marriage of IT, engineering and manufacturing,' he said.

'Logistics is one of the pillars in the growth of the Hong Kong economy, and the new programme is designed to bring together skills crucial in this field. This will be important in Hong Kong, and we hope the programme will fly high.'

Students seem to make good choices.

'Some 97 per cent to 98 per cent of our graduates find a job after leaving college,' Professor Ho said.

But success also depended on the economic situation, he said.

'I have some scattered information, things I hear from former students, that the most recent situation is even better than in past years,' he said. 'Now people often have a choice of different job offers. It seems the good years are back in Hong Kong, just like before the downturn in 1997.'



Creative media popularity at  a peak, and IT bounces back