Decoding "College" at CityUHK — The Naming and Nature of the University's Academic Faculties

This card belongs to Module 10 of the CityU Wild History project and pairs with the Residence & Hall System card. Its one core purpose: to stop readers from mistaking CityUHK's "Colleges" for CUHK-style residential colleges. A CityUHK "College" is an academic faculty, not a residential college. For the substance of the academic structure (departments, programmes, academic system), see Module 01 — Academics; for accommodation, see Residence & Hall System; for the governance of the College of Business and its triple-crown accreditations, and for the founding of the College of Computing, see the dedicated cards College of Business: Triple Crown and The Founding of the College of Computing.

A fresh offer-holder at CityUHK will often read in their admission letter that they have been "admitted to the College of Business," then look it up online and find that at the neighbouring Chinese University, "College" means Chung Chi, New Asia, United — residential colleges. The natural worry: do I have to choose a "college" to live in? The answer is no. At CityUHK, "College" has nothing to do with residence. This card exists to settle that confusion once and for all.

# 1. Why this card is needed: one word, two meanings

The English word "College" carries at least two completely different senses in Hong Kong higher education:

• At The Chinese University of Hong Kong: "College" means a residential college (Chung Chi, New Asia, United …) — a community for whole-person education built around general education, residence, shared meals and mentorship.
• At City University of Hong Kong: "College" means an academic faculty responsible for teaching and research in a discipline — for example the College of Business or the College of Engineering. It is not a residential unit; students do not "live in" a College.

So when you see "College of XXX" at CityUHK, do not think of a CUHK-style college. A CityUHK student belonging to a College simply means "studying a programme in that faculty"; it has nothing to do with residence or a general-education community. Housing at CityUHK is handled by the "Hall" system — see Residence & Hall System.

To stop the confusion before it starts, here is the key terminology aligned in one table — treat it as the glossary for this entire card:

Remember one rule: at CityUHK, anything called "College / School / Faculty" is an academic faculty; only things called "Hall / 舍堂" are residential. The two lines never cross.

# 2. CityUHK's current academic structure: seven Colleges + four Schools + the School of Graduate Studies

According to CityUHK's official "Colleges, Schools and Departments" page, the University's current academic structure comprises seven Colleges, four Schools and the Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies — all of them academic units. The University states plainly that their purpose is to "pursue excellence in professional education," not to serve as residential colleges. (Official)^※

# 2.1 The seven "Colleges" (academic faculties)

Note: the old formulation "CityUHK's four colleges" is out of date — the College of Computing (2024) and the College of Biomedicine (2025) are recent additions. The "founding milestone" column records only when a college became an independent faculty under its current name; it is not the starting point of its constituent departments, several of which predate their colleges by years. For department-by-department detail on programmes and research strengths, see Module 01 — Academics and Module 04 (Research); Section 4 below gives a fuller founding-and-naming record for each of the seven Colleges.

# 2.2 The four "Schools" (academic faculties, not residential)

CityUHK uses both "College" and "School" to name its academic faculties. Both are academic units; the difference is purely a matter of history and organisational level, and neither is a residential college. The definitive structure of each School/College is the official "Academic Units" directory. (Official — Academic Units)^※

Seven Colleges plus four Schools: CityUHK currently has eleven academic units, one of which — the Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies — is dedicated to postgraduate coordination. In external communications the University often simply says it has "11 colleges and schools" spanning business, computing, science, engineering, liberal arts and social sciences, law and veterinary medicine. (Wikipedia)^※ Readers need not agonise over whether "College" or "School" outranks the other — in the CityUHK context this is more a legacy of historical naming than a strict administrative hierarchy. The only distinction that matters is this: they are all academic faculties, none of them a residential college. Below the faculties sit departments — the College of Business, for instance, houses the Department of Accountancy, the Department of Economics and Finance and others. The department is the basic teaching-and-research unit where students actually study; the definitive list is the official directory.

# 3. Where the "College" label came from: from polytechnic to multi-faculty university

CityUHK's "College" designation did not arrive in one step; it evolved with the University's administrative structure. CityUHK's predecessor, the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, was founded in 1984, and in 1994 it was granted university status and renamed City University of Hong Kong. (Wikipedia)^※ After the upgrade, the existing departments were progressively grouped into "Faculties." Over the following decades, some faculties were upgraded and renamed "College," while others kept "School." This parallel nomenclature persists today, and the newer faculties (College of Computing, College of Biomedicine) were both named "College" rather than "Faculty" — a sign that CityUHK has settled on "College" as the standard label for its flagship academic faculties. But the label changes nothing about their nature as academic units, a point that has never shifted through successive reorganisations.

Most of this "multi-college" expansion, together with the establishment of the two flagship colleges, took place under the tenure of the fourth president (in office 2008–2023) — the veterinary college's inception and the Cornell partnership, and the branding of the colleges' names, all advanced in this period. The fourth president's academic background and governing style are covered in Module 06 — People. Standardising on "College" and introducing named titles on a large scale made CityUHK's academic units more recognisable in external communications — but it also, precisely through this proliferation of "Colleges," deepened outsiders' confusion with CUHK's college system. What this card does is separate that surface impression from the structural facts.

Reorganisation has not always meant merging; sometimes it means splitting. A recent example: CityUHK previously had a combined College of Science and Engineering (CSE), which on 1 January 2019 split into two independent faculties, the College of Science and the College of Engineering. The lesson is that CityUHK's academic structure adjusts dynamically to disciplinary scale and strategy — the list of seven Colleges is not something that has always existed, but the accumulated result of decades of additions, splits and renamings. Through all the reshuffling, these units have remained academic faculties; none has ever become a residential college.

One more point worth noting: many of CityUHK's Colleges and Schools carry named prefixes reflecting their charitable endowments. Among the seven Colleges, the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences carries the "Jockey Club" name; among the four Schools, the Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies bears the name of its donor, Dr Chow Yei Ching. This tends to baffle new readers further — the more a name sounds like a person or an institution, the more it looks like a "college." But a named prefix is just a naming convention; it has nothing to do with the unit's structural nature. What carries the name is an academic faculty, not a residential college. The donor context is covered in Module 08 — Finance: Benefactors and Donors.

The Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences (JCC) is one of the youngest and most distinctive of the seven "Colleges": it is Hong Kong's only institution offering veterinary education, and the "Jockey Club" prefix reflects the Hong Kong Jockey Club's support for the College — the same charitable lineage that names several Halls in the residence system (Hall 1, the "Jockey Club Huai Tsing Hall," and Hall 4, the "Jockey Club Chan Chun Ha Hall," among others). But the two are entirely separate matters: one is the naming of an academic college, the other the naming of residential halls. They should not be conflated.

# 4. The seven "Colleges" at a glance: founding dates and naming origins

The table below sets out, for each of the seven Colleges, its founding milestone, its naming origin and a one-line description, so readers can tell at a glance which are the founding faculties and which are recent arrivals — and avoid mistaking a named prefix for a residential college. Department-by-department teaching and research detail belongs to Modules 01 (Academics) and 04 (Research); what follows is only what is verifiable at the structural level.

The first four — Business, Engineering, Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, and Science — are CityUHK's "old guard" from its upgrade to university status. The College of Business, the College of Engineering and CLASS were largely formed by grouping departments that existed at the University's founding, and they remain the largest faculties in both size and calibre of admitted students. The College of Science, as noted, split off from the combined College of Science and Engineering in 2019. Each of the four houses several departments (Accounting; Economics and Finance; Marketing, and others in Business) — and the department, again, is the basic unit in which students actually study. None of them carries a named prefix, and in nature they are identical to the three younger colleges (Veterinary, Computing, Biomedicine): all are academic faculties, differing only in when they were founded and whether they bear a name. (Official — Academic Units)^※

The JCC's backstory best illustrates the separation of naming from institutional structure. CityUHK set its sights on "running Hong Kong's first veterinary school" from 2008, and in 2009 established a partnership with Cornell University to plan the college and develop its curriculum together. (Official — The College)^※ The unit was established in 2014 under the name "School of Veterinary Medicine"; a joint interdisciplinary doctoral programme in veterinary medicine with Cornell followed in 2015; the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine (BVM) programme launched in 2016; and in 2017 the first undergraduate cohort arrived — the same year the college adopted its present name, "Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences," after receiving a donation from the Hong Kong Jockey Club. (Wikipedia)^※ Its six-year BVM curriculum was developed jointly with Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine, and graduates can pursue a "dual-accreditation" pathway toward both Hong Kong and international veterinary licensure. The college is housed on campus in the "Jockey Club One Health Tower," built with a donation of about HK$500 million from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust; the naming ceremony was held in August 2018. (Official — 2018 naming ceremony press release)^※ A veterinary college named after the Jockey Club and housed in a "One Health Tower" — from name to building, it is easy to mistake for some kind of "college" in the residential sense. From start to finish, it has been an academic faculty. For the academic and clinical substance of its veterinary education, see Module 01 — Veterinary Academics and Module 11 — Medical: Veterinary College.

The College of Computing and the College of Biomedicine are the two newest pieces of the puzzle. The College of Computing was established on 1 September 2024, consolidating computer science, data science and statistics into one flagship faculty in response to demand for talent and research in artificial intelligence and data science; its founding story and the disciplinary restructuring behind it are covered in The Founding of the College of Computing. Hard on its heels, the College of Biomedicine was established on 1 January 2025; the University states that it launched with three departments — biomedical sciences, biomedical engineering and neuroscience — integrating existing research strengths such as digital medicine, with the aim of addressing frontier issues in life and health sciences across disciplines and training talent versed in both biomedicine and engineering. (Official, 2 January 2025)^※

It is worth adding that the College of Biomedicine belongs to the same "life and health" thread as the University's long-discussed plans for medical education dating back to the 2010s — but it is an academic faculty, and should not be conflated with the separate public discussion of a "CityUHK medical school / teaching hospital," which belongs to Module 11. The two new colleges were inaugurated barely four months apart, and both took the name "College" rather than "Faculty" or "书院" — direct evidence that CityUHK's naming convention is now firmly fixed, and a hint that for the foreseeable future "College" at CityUHK will continue to mean an academic faculty, not a turn toward the residential college system.

# 5. The four "Schools" and the School of Graduate Studies: why "School"?

Given that all are academic faculties, why does CityUHK call some "Colleges" and others "Schools"? There is no strict hierarchical formula: both are academic units, and the difference lies in historical convention and organisational habit, not rank. Some Schools kept "School" because their fields are relatively focused (Law; Energy and Environment); one (Creative Media) was founded under the name "School" and has kept it ever since; and the School of Graduate Studies is a "School" because its function is university-wide coordination. One-line descriptions of the four Schools:

Of the four Schools, the School of Creative Media (SCM) is the most distinctive — the University describes it as the first school of its kind in Hong Kong and the region, cultivating creative-media talent across art and technology, and a flagship of CityUHK in arts technology. (Official — SCM introduction)^※ The School of Energy and Environment (SEE) and the School of Law each focus on a single professional field: the former on energy, environment and sustainability in teaching and research, the latter on legal education. Although the three go by "School" rather than "College," in CityUHK's structure they sit alongside the seven Colleges as academic faculties, with no hierarchy between them — each simply kept the naming convention established at its founding. The definitive structure of each School/College is the official Academic Units directory.

The Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies is the one whose name is most easily misread as a residential college. The School coordinates postgraduate programmes and degree matters University-wide. It admits no undergraduates and provides no accommodation; it is purely an administrative and academic-coordination unit. Its name honours the donor Dr Chow Yei Ching — according to the University, the School of Graduate Studies adopted the name in 2006 following a donation from Dr Chow. (Official — About Us)^※ Readers who come across "Chow Yei Ching School" on CityUHK's website should read it as "the School of Graduate Studies," not some "Chow Yei Ching College" — it enrolls no undergraduates, offers no housing, and bears no resemblance to a CUHK residential college. Its role is University-wide postgraduate coordination: admissions for research postgraduate students, degree regulations, research training and quality assurance, while the actual teaching and research continue to take place in the individual Colleges/Schools and their departments. (Official — About Us)^※ For postgraduate structure and programmes, see Module 01 — Academics.

A practical rule of thumb: ask whether the unit manages housing or enrols undergraduates in a "lifelong" affiliation. No CityUHK College or School does either; the only units that manage housing are the "Halls" under the Student Residence Office. Any CityUHK unit with "College / School" in its name is an academic faculty.

# 6. A cross-institutional comparison: how Hong Kong universities name their academic units

CityUHK calling its academic faculties "Colleges" is not a Hong Kong norm; on the contrary, each of the eight publicly funded universities has its own naming habits — and that is precisely why "College" with two meanings causes so much confusion. Putting the major universities side by side makes it obvious why "College" cannot be taken at face value:

(Wikipedia — English entry)^※

Three points stand out. First, only at CUHK does "College" mean a residential college — CUHK is Hong Kong's only college-system university, where "College" denotes its nine colleges: Chung Chi, New Asia, United, and the rest. At CityUHK, HKUST and others, "College / School" means an academic faculty. Second, HKUST and CityUHK both prefer "School / College" to "Faculty" for their academic units, yet neither has a residential college system. Third, the same English word "College" is at CUHK "where you live + a whole-person education community," and at CityUHK merely "the academic faculty where you study." When comparing across universities, always check which institution's usage you are looking at before deciding what the word means. The structural differences between CityUHK and CUHK on exactly this point are laid out dimension by dimension in Residence & Hall System.

One further layer: even where the word "College" appears, its meaning may still differ. HKU has several Residential Colleges — communities of a hostel nature — but these are not the academic college system found at CUHK, with its lifelong affiliation at matriculation and college-run general education. In other words, "Residential College" is a residential label: CityUHK uses "College" for academic faculties, CUHK uses it for academic residential colleges, and HKU uses it for purely residential communities — three different referents for one word. This is why judging by the English word alone is impossible: the same "College" can mean an academic faculty, an academic residential college, or a purely residential community, depending on the university. Identifying the institution and the context is the only reliable way.

This "one word, two meanings" trap is especially likely to snare applicants from mainland China and overseas. In mainland universities, 学院 means a teaching faculty with nothing to do with residence; a mainland applicant who reads CityUHK's "College" with that habit of mind will actually not go wrong. The people who truly stumble are those who first encountered CUHK's college system and then meet CityUHK's Colleges, assuming the two universities use the word the same way. For mainland students' admission and adaptation issues at CityUHK, see Module 16. The safe rule for any cross-university or cross-border comparison of faculty names: identify the institution first, then the meaning.

# 7. If I see "Faculty" on CityUHK's website, does it mean a residential college?

Some of CityUHK's administrative documents and historical archives still occasionally use "Faculty" to mean an academic faculty — the standard international term for a "division of study," synonymous with "College" in the CityUHK context, and likewise not a residential college. In fact, HKU, PolyU and CUHK still use "Faculty" as the official term for their academic units, and CityUHK did too in its early years before increasingly adopting "College" for branding. Readers who encounter an older term such as "Faculty of Business" in CityUHK documents should read it as an alternative historical/administrative name for the College of Business — not as evidence of a parallel residential college system.

One further confusion needs clearing up: the English word faculty also means "teaching staff" — the professors and lecturers collectively, as in "faculty members." The same word, capitalised as the name of an institution (Faculty of X), means a faculty; lowercase and generic, it means the teaching staff. Both uses appear on CityUHK's website; context is the guide, and "faculty members" should never be misread as "membership of a particular college." CityUHK has never operated — and does not operate — any form of residential college or "Academy"-level residential academic unit. Section 5 of Residence & Hall System provides a dedicated "CUHK-style college checklist" explaining point by point why none of it applies here.

# 8. Three questions we are often asked

Q: Does CityUHK have something like a "Residential College" that just isn't called 书院? No. According to the Student Residence Office and the official academic structure pages, CityUHK's residential units are uniformly called "Halls" (舍堂) and administered by the Student Residence Office (SRO); its academic units are uniformly called "College / School" and administered by the academic registry and the faculties. The two administrative lines are entirely separate; there is no third, hybrid "semi-academic, semi-residential" structure.

Q: Does "Jockey Club Academy Hall (Hall 4)" mean CityUHK has a "college-style residential learning programme" because of the "Academy" in its name? No. As explained in Residence & Hall System, Section 5, "Academy" here is simply the Hall's proper name (the naming convention is consistent with other halls named after institutions or individuals). It denotes no formal "Academy residential education programme" or college structure.

Q: Will CityUHK ever adopt a residential college system like CUHK? As of the last update of this card, CityUHK has never published any public plan or consultation document proposing a residential college system. Should the University ever make such a move, this card and Residence & Hall System will be updated accordingly. Until then, the accurate description is: "CityUHK has no residential college system; it operates a Hall system."

Q: My offer letter says "admitted to College of Business" — do I need to "choose a college" separately? No. That sentence simply means you have been admitted to the College of Business and will pursue your degree programme there. Admission to CityUHK does not include a "choose your college" step. Housing is a separate process: you apply to the Student Residence Office for a hall place, independently of which College you belong to — and not everyone gets a place. Do not read the College in your offer letter as a residential college you need to pick.

Q: On exchange or graduate-application forms, what do I put in the "Faculty / College" field? Put your academic faculty (e.g. College of Business, School of Law). "Faculty," "College" and "School" on overseas institutions' forms all mean an academic faculty in this context; the three words can be treated as synonymous, and filling in your faculty's official English name will never go wrong. Whatever you do, do not take it to mean you should name a "residential college" — CityUHK has no such thing.

Q: Will my College affiliation appear on my degree certificate or transcript? Degrees relate to your faculty and programme, and transcripts and degree documents will typically show the faculty and programme you studied in. But this remains an academic affiliation, not a "residential college" affiliation — hall life at CityUHK is not part of your academic record, nor does it become a lifelong identity label the way a CUHK college does. The fact that after graduation you are recognised as a "CityUHK College of Business alumnus" rather than "a member of a particular college" is one more point where the Hall system and the college system diverge in identity.

Q: How should I write my CityUHK faculty name on a CV or paper byline? Use the official English name — for example, "College of Business, City University of Hong Kong" or "School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong." Research postgraduate students affiliated with the graduate school may write "Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies." These are all academic-unit attributions and have nothing to do with residence; for the authoritative forms, consult the official Academic Units directory.

# 9. Bottom line and where to go next

# Further reading

• Residence & Hall System (CityUHK has no college system; the Hall system) — the companion card to this one; it covers the residential half.
• College of Business: Triple Crown — the most heavily accredited of the seven Colleges.
• The Founding of the College of Computing (2024) — the founding story of one of the two newest Colleges.
• Module 01 — Academics: The Academic System and Veterinary Academics — depth on departments, programmes and academic structure below the faculty level.
• Module 08 — Finance: Benefactors and Donors — the backstory of named donations from the Jockey Club, Chow Yei Ching, Lee Shau Kee and others.