XN000022-1995-02-15 — Page 76

(b)

(c)

54 -

whether there is any difference in the proportion of actual provision to expected provision of hostel places among these institutions; if so, what the reasons are; and

whether the Government has formulated any plan to ease the shortage of student hostels; if so, what the details are; if not, why not?

Reply:

Mr President,

(a)

The levels of provision of student hostels at the institutions funded by the University Grants Committee (UGC) are different largely because of historical and locational reasons. The Government does not specify the percentage of hostel places to be provided for students studying at different levels. It is up to the institutions to allocate the hostel places.

Publicly-funded student hostels are not provided for three of the UGC- funded institutions i.e. the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), the City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and the Baptist University (HKBU). The existing planning standards for the provision of publicly- funded hostels places at the other four institutions, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the Lingnan College (LC) are -

HKU

CUHK

HKUST

LC

up to 25% of the full-time student population

up to 50% of the full-time student population

up to 30% of the full-time student population

up to 50% of the full-time student population.

The current practice is that these institutions are required to meet at least 25% of the total construction costs of the "approved hostel places" from private donations. At Annex A is a breakdown of the actual number of hostel places provided at the relevant institutions in the current academic year i.e. 1994-95.