Xiangtan University

Xiangtan University was founded in 1958 at the personal initiative of Mao Zedong. It is a comprehensive national key university, a national “Double First-Class” university and a university jointly developed by the Hunan Provincial People’s Government and Ministry of Education. It is among the few local universities in China to appear simultaneously in authoritative international rankings such as THE and U.S. News.

It has a graduate school and 24 schools or teaching departments, covering ten disciplinary categories: philosophy, economics, law, education, literature, history, science, engineering, management and arts. Mathematics is a World-Class Discipline Development subject. Chemistry, materials science, engineering, mathematics, computer science, environment/ecology and physics rank in the ESI top 1% among universities and research institutions worldwide. It has 1 world-class development discipline, 3 national key disciplines, 1 discipline being cultivated toward world-class status and 13 Hunan key disciplines under the 14th Five-Year Plan. It has 18 first-level doctoral degree authorizations, 33 first-level master’s degree authorizations, 22 professional master’s degree categories and 16 postdoctoral research stations. It has 41 national and 15 provincial first-class undergraduate program development sites; 11 national and 23 provincial distinctive programs; 1 national and 8 provincial comprehensive program reform pilots; and 13 programs accredited in national engineering education.

The university follows an open educational path. It participates in international education platforms including the Ministry of Education’s China-Africa 100 Universities Cooperation Plan, China-Africa Universities Alliance, Yangtze-Volga University Alliance and Belt and Road University Alliance, and is a partner in the UK-China University Consortium on Engineering Education and Research. It jointly operates Confucius Institutes with the University of León in Spain and Makerere University in Uganda. It was among Hunan’s first institutions qualified to admit international students and hosts recipients of the Chinese Government Scholarship and International Chinese Language Teachers Scholarship. It is accredited for the quality of higher education provided to international students in China. It has extensive exchanges and partnerships with over 80 universities and research institutions in more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, United Kingdom and Japan. It operates over 30 international joint training programs and a Sino-foreign cooperative education program with the University of León in Spain.