CityU Has No College System — Halls, Residential Education and the Academic "Colleges

This entry belongs to Module 10 of the Wild History of CityUHK. It is a deliberately lean module — because City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK / 城大) has no residential college system. On the sister reference sites Wild CUHK and Wild HKU, this module covers the "collegiate system / residential colleges"; CityU's situation is entirely different, and this entry's first job is to make that point clearly: CityU has no college system; its residential education runs on the "hall system". For the naming and academic structure of CityU's various "Colleges", see naming-and-academic-colleges.md in this module; campus geography and buildings are covered in Module 05; the society politics and student life of the Students' Union and residents' associations belong to the Campus Life module.

A CUHK fresher's first task on enrolment is to be assigned to one of the nine colleges — from then on, that college's canteen, orientation camp and "I'm a Chung Chian / New Asian" identity stay with them for four years. A CityU fresher's first task is to open the Student Residence Office website and apply for a bed — succeed, and they move into a hall on Cornwall Street; fail, and they hunt for a flat around Kowloon Tong. Behind these two "first lessons" lie two fundamentally different institutional designs. What this entry sets out to clarify is precisely CityU's path: "no college, but halls."

# 1. In one sentence: CityU has no college system

It follows that everything other reference stations on this site list as "must-check items under the college system" is "not applicable to this University" at CityU. Below, this entry goes through each CUHK-style "college must-check" item and marks where it fails for CityU.

# 2. CityU vs CUHK: the fundamental difference between "college system" and "hall system"

Among Hong Kong universities, only the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) truly operates a collegiate system — it is the city's only college-based university, with 9 member colleges today, and every undergraduate is assigned to one of the nine on entry. The college supplements disciplinary training through four pillars: general education, residence, communal dining and mentorship. CityU is completely different.

In other words: at CUHK, "College" = college = where you live + your whole-person education community; at CityU, "College" = the academic faculty where you study, and where you live is called a "Hall". Both systems use the word College, but they mean very different things — this is the single most important point for understanding CityU's residential setup. For the academic naming details of CityU's "Colleges", see the companion piece naming-and-academic-colleges.md in this module.

# 3. CityU's residential system: the hall system

CityU's residential education is coordinated by the Student Residence Office (SRO), and spans two residence clusters: the Kowloon Tong Compound and the Ma On Shan Compound, opened in 2024. （官方·SRO）^※

# 3.1 Kowloon Tong: the Tat Chee Avenue / Cornwall Street student residences (11 halls + Jockey Club House)

CityU's main-campus student residences sit at 22 Cornwall Street, Kowloon Tong, at the junction with Tat Chee Avenue, beside Beacon Hill, （维基）^※ and comprise 11 halls (Hall 1 – Hall 11), plus the Jockey Club House inside the Academic Exchange Building on campus. （官方·Living at CityUHK）^※ The University officially calls these "11 halls at Cornwall Street and Jockey Club House", together providing close to 3,700 bed spaces for undergraduates and postgraduates. （官方·Living at CityUHK）^※

Each hall carries a name (mostly after a donor or institution); the list is as follows (Chinese and English names per official sources / Wikipedia; where they differ, the SRO's current published version prevails):

Sources: hall list cross-checked against the official SRO page and the Wikipedia article "City University of Hong Kong". （维基）^※（官方·SRO）^※ Hall structures change from year to year; per-hall details (facilities, orientation, hall culture, traditional events) belong to the Campus Life module and are not expanded here. Halls 10 and 11 are the "new phase" additions, which the University has described as a later expansion project. （官方·Living at CityUHK）^※

# 3.2 Ma On Shan: Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village (2024)

CityU's largest residential expansion in recent years is the Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village at Whitehead (Pak Shek), Ma On Shan.

How the name came about: The village is named after Dr Lee Shau Kee, founder of Henderson Land Development and a long-time supporter of CityU. In 2018 Lee, through the Lee Shau Kee Foundation, donated HK$120 million to the University to support its long-term development; CityU accordingly named the Whitehead student residence in his honour. （官方·2018-08-17 捐赠新闻）^※ Note: the Kowloon Tong Hall 6 "Lee Shau Kee Hall" and this Ma On Shan "Lee Shau Kee Student Residence Village" are two different facilities, both connected to Lee's donations — do not confuse them.

The naming and donor backstory belongs to the "Donor Name Directory" in Module 8 (Finance); this entry records only what concerns the residential facilities. With the Ma On Shan village in service, CityU's residence provision has grown from a single Kowloon Tong cluster into two clusters — Kowloon Tong + Ma On Shan — which is precisely why the SRO's website splits the residences into "Kowloon Tong Compound" and "Ma On Shan Compound". （官方·SRO）^※

# 4. The hall system's "residential education": Residence Master / Residence Tutor / Residents' Association / Hall Scholarship

CityU halls may not be colleges, but they do carry a measure of "residential education". The University's official framing of hall life is this: Residence Masters and Residence Tutors live together with students in the halls to form a community, thereby enhancing students' social, emotional and intellectual capacities. （官方·Living at CityUHK）^※ The organisational structure rests on four pillars:

1. Residence Master (RM) Each hall has one Residence Master (usually a staff member), responsible for hall culture, the annual plan and whole-person care. The official description of the role: helping to make the hall "a place where students can excel in both academic and non-academic activities". （官方·Hall 11 舍监页）^※

2. Residence Tutor (RT) Below the Residence Master sit a number of Residence Tutors, drawn from full-time research postgraduate students / final-year undergraduates / research staff / postgraduate employees, who assist the RM in providing pastoral care and intellectual guidance, organising activities, and maintaining hall order and day-to-day administration. （官方·Residence Tutor 招募）^※ When the new Ma On Shan residences opened, CityU also publicly recruited postgraduates and senior undergraduates to serve as Residence Tutors there. （官方·Living at CityUHK）^※

3. Residents' Association (RA) Each hall has a Residents' Association, elected by the resident students, representing them and organising hall activities and traditions. The CityU Students' Union structure also includes a constitution for the Residents' Associations. （自述·CityUSU Council 宿生会会章）^※ The society politics, elections and activities of the RAs are discussed in the Campus Life module.

4. Hall Scholarship team / learning community Each hall runs a scholarship team that promotes "broad-based learning" and a learning-community atmosphere through study tours, "scholarship journeys", and wellbeing workshops. （官方·Living at CityUHK）^※

# 5. CUHK-style "college must-check items" at CityU (the not-applicable checklist)

Mapping against the Module 10 must-check list of this site's other reference stations, item by item:

# 6. Relationship to other modules

• naming-and-academic-colleges.md in this module: the academic structure, naming and nature of CityU's various "Colleges / Schools" are clarified there — they are academic units, not residential colleges.
• Module 05 (Campus): the geography of the Tat Chee Avenue campus, the architecture of the residence buildings, and the buildings and siting of the Whitehead residence village, detailed there.
• Campus Life module — hall culture: the society politics of the Students' Union and each hall's RA, orientations, hall culture and traditions, and the lived experience of staying in hall, developed there.
• Module 08 (Finance): the context of named donations — Lee Shau Kee, the Jockey Club, HSBC, etc. — detailed in the "Donor Name Directory".
• Students' Union structure and elections: the overall SU structure to which the RAs belong, and its electoral system, covered in that piece.
• This entry does one core job: establishing the fact that CityU has no college system and runs on a hall system, and laying out the skeleton of the hall system and the comparison.