The Tung Wah Group of Hospitals is one of Hong Kong's oldest and largest charitable organisations, with roots reaching to 1870. For most of that history, the Group operated hospitals, schools, and social welfare services — but not a tertiary institution of its own. That changed in 2010, when the Board of Directors formally established the Tung Wah Tertiary Institute. The following year, it was renamed Tung Wah College and accredited by the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications and recognized by the Education Bureau. Its location in King's Park, Kowloon, places it within the cluster of medical and government facilities that have historically occupied that elevated ground above Yau Ma Tei. The college is registered under the Post-Secondary Colleges Ordinance (Cap 320) and, from the beginning, positioned itself toward healthcare and professional training rather than the broader liberal arts model that characterizes Hong Kong's publicly funded universities.

Tung Wah College has been accumulating professional distinctions steadily since its first programmes launched. In 2017, its Bachelor of Science in Occupational Therapy became the first professionally accredited occupational therapy programme offered by a self-financing institution in Hong Kong. The same year, it became the first self-financing college registered under Cap 320 to offer an accredited early childhood education degree. Its Bachelor of Science in Physiotherapy, launched in 2018, was the first such degree at any self-financing institution in Hong Kong; by 2022, it had also become the first self-financing physiotherapy programme to receive professional recognition from the Supplementary Medical Professions Council. These are not trivial distinctions in a city where professional licensing bodies govern entry into healthcare practice. Each accreditation opens a door for graduates that would otherwise remain closed.

Over 4,500 students are currently enrolled across four schools — Management, Medical and Health Sciences, Arts and Humanities, and Nursing — pursuing some 20 degree, sub-degree, diploma, and certificate programmes. The selection is deliberate: medical laboratory science, radiation therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, medical imaging, applied gerontology. These are fields where Hong Kong faces real shortages, where the pipeline of trained graduates matters to the functioning of public hospitals. Several programmes have been included in the government's Study Subsidy Scheme for Designated Professions/Sectors, making them financially accessible to students who might not otherwise pursue them. In 2023, the Social Welfare Department commissioned the college to provide 150 fully subsidised nursing diploma places through 2028, a direct signal of where the city's staffing pressures lie. The college's School of Nursing also offers a Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing — the full range, from diploma to doctorate, within a single institution.

Hong Kong's higher education landscape is dominated by publicly funded institutions with long histories and strong global rankings. Tung Wah College occupies a different space: self-financing, focused, and oriented toward professional outcomes in fields that the larger universities either do not offer or offer in limited numbers. That position requires constant demonstration of quality. The college's accreditations, its inclusion in government subsidy schemes, and its steady expansion of professionally recognized programmes have been the mechanism for that demonstration. By 2020, it had acquired programme area accreditation in occupational therapy at QF Level 5 — a step explicitly described as supporting its goal to become a private university. Whether that transition happens, and when, depends on decisions still to be made. What is already clear is that a Group whose charitable work began in a hospital in the 1870s has found, in Tung Wah College, a new way to deliver on its founding purpose: meeting the practical needs of Hong Kong's people.