Dali University

Dali University is located in Dali, a historic and cultural city in China. Among universities in Yunnan Province located outside the provincial capital, it is the earliest established and the only institution authorized to award master’s degrees and designated by the province for development as a new doctoral degree-awarding institution. Drawing on 40 years of undergraduate education, it has developed into a comprehensive university with strengths in medicine, pharmacy, education and biology, distinctive features in ethnology and the arts, interdisciplinary integration and coordinated development across multiple educational levels.

Dali University has two campuses covering more than 2300 mu. It has 17 teaching schools, 2 directly affiliated Grade III Class A hospitals and 8 other affiliated hospitals. It offers 62 undergraduate programs, master’s degrees in 6 first-level and 33 second-level disciplines, and 6 professional master’s degree categories. It has more than 17000 full-time students and over 30000 continuing education students. Of its 1069 full-time teachers, 493 hold associate senior or higher professional titles and 145 are professors; more than 700 have master’s degrees or above. Experts and scholars have received more than 70 selections or appointments across programs including Changjiang Scholars, national experts with outstanding contributions, leading philosophy and social science talent and outstanding young talent under the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee’s Ten Thousand Talents Program, nationally renowned cultural professionals and the Four Batches talent program, national selections for the Hundred, Thousand and Ten Thousand Talents Project, the Ministry of Education’s New Century Excellent Talents Support Program, and Yunling Scholars.

The university has made full use of its geographical advantages to establish a distinctive international development path for a local university outside a provincial capital. It has educational, teaching, exchange and cooperation partnerships with 44 overseas universities in 19 countries and regions. It established the first Chinese-language degree program in Cambodia and Chinese-language internship bases in Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. It is among Yunnan’s first pilot universities for “going global” and a training base for internationally oriented applied professionals. It has been approved as the Chinese host institution for Thailand’s Maritime Silk Road Confucius Institute, an institution qualified to recruit Confucius Institute Scholarship students worldwide, and a test center for the Certificate for Teachers of Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages. According to the latest Ministry of Education data, its number of full-time international undergraduate students ranks 10th among Chinese universities and 1st in western China. In the 2018 Best Chinese Universities Ranking published by ShanghaiRanking, Dali University placed 16th nationwide on the student internationalization indicator, with international students comprising 6.97% of its student body.

The university’s service mission is to “be rooted in Dali, serve western Yunnan, reach Yunnan and neighboring provinces and regions, and extend its influence to South and Southeast Asia.” It upholds the philosophy of “bringing together the cultures of the world and forging the spirit of a university” and its motto, “Extensive Learning to Reach Truth; Great Virtue to Attain Principle.” Guided by “three modernizations and one breakthrough,” it is advancing modern educational thinking, information-based management and international educational standards, while seeking its first doctoral degree authorization. It is deepening comprehensive reform, improving teaching quality and institutional standards, and working to become a high-level regional comprehensive university that is first-class in the province, well-known nationally, and influential in South and Southeast Asia.