University of Chinese Academy of Sciences to Become a Partner Institution in CDA’s Global Network

Located in Beijing, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences was established in 1978 with the approval of Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Its predecessor, Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (GUCAS), was the first graduate school in China. UCAS graduated the PRC’s first doctoral student in science, first doctoral student in engineering, first female doctoral student, and first student with double doctoral degrees. In June 2012, GUCAS was renamed UCAS. Now UCAS includes campuses at the four locations Zhongguancun, Yanqi Lake, Yuquanlu and the Olympic Village - with Yanqihu Campus being the largest one - and has provided high quality education to over 170,000 students.

Birds-eye view on Yanqihu Campus with the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences on the left hand side in front and the sphere of the APEC Summit hotel in the back on the shore of Yanqi Lake.

UCAS and Chinese Academy of Sciences

UCAS is administered and managed by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), established in 1949. Comprising some 116 institutes, CAS is China’s highest academic institution in the Natural Sciences, the highest-ranking consulting institution in science and technology, the preeminent research and development center for the Natural Sciences and high technology, and the most important base in the training of advanced scientific talents.

UCAS Education: “The Fusion of Scientific Research and Education”

UCAS espouses the philosophy of “The Fusion of Scientific Research and Teaching” as its basic system of education. The fusion of UCAS and CAS institutes in terms of management, education, faculty, training, and scientific research is fully supported and facilitated by and under the auspices of CAS. Most CAS institutes shoulder the main responsibilities of graduate education, and also provide tutors, practice, and experience bases for UCAS undergraduates. A high-level CAS institute and supported by several other relevant CAS institutes typically oversee all amalgamated UCAS schools of science and engineering. The leading institute is the first party of responsibility, its juridical person serving as the dean or executive vice dean who takes comprehensive control of all education and management affairs. All colleges are organizationally structured as either “College-Teaching and Research Sector” or “College-Department” educational bodies. As of 2021, UCAS had 62 schools and colleges. UCAS has also established 16 affiliated hospitals.

UCAS boasts a team of highly qualified faculty consisting of distinguished professors from CAS institutes, strong at both education and scientific research. UCAS also provides first-class research conditions for students to conduct scientific research. As of August, 2020, UCAS had 3,090 professors, 11,257 graduate supervisors (12,880 in 2021), including 176 CAS Members (239 in 2021) and 6786 doctoral supervisors (7,537 in 2021) from three national research centers (or labs), 73 national key labs, 191 CAS key labs, 39 national engineering research centers (labs) and various national frontier scientific research projects (all these numbers for 2021). This outstanding faculty are, thus, able to provide a grand and vast educational platform for students to engage in scientific research.

Being the largest graduate educational institution, the main task of UCAS has long been graduate education. As of December 2019, UCAS had over 51,700 postgraduate students (57,375 in 2021) enrolled, 52% of which are doctoral students (29,416 in 2021); 1,625 undergraduates (1,640 in 2021); and 1,734 international students (1,808 in 2021) from 96 countries, of whom 1,055 were doctoral students (1,144 in 2021).

UCAS is authorized to confer all Master’s and doctorate degrees in the scientific disciplines, as well as 90% degrees in engineering disciplines. UCAS is also authorized to confer professional Master’s degree in such disciplines as engineering, business administration, finance, applied statistics, applied psychology, translation and interpreting, agricultural extension, pharmacy, engineering management, and public management. From 1978 to 2019, UCAS had conferred degrees on 171,526 students, including 83,561 Ph.D., 87,367 Master’s and 598 Bachelor’s degrees. 137 UCAS graduates were elected Full and Emeritus Members of CAS and Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).

International Cooperation

Based on CAS and its extensive international network of scientific cooperation, UCAS has established close ties and partnerships amongst others with Harvard University, MIT, Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, Munich University of Technology, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Australian National University, Sorbonne University (Paris), the University of Toronto, the National University of Singapore, the Royal Society, the Max Planck Society (Germany), the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, the National Center for Scientific Research (France), the Russian Academy of Sciences as well as many other world-renowned universities. UCAS is also a member of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU).

UCAS has co-founded the Sino-Danish College in China with the Danish Ministry of Science and Education and eight Danish public universities, and has established the International Centre for Theoretical Physics Asia-Pacific (ICTP-AP) with UNESCO. Supported by the Kavli Foundation of the United States, UCAS has also founded a Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences, one of the 20 Kavli institutes across the world. To help promote education in Belt and Road countries, UCAS has been involved in international projects, including ANSO fellowship and the CAS “The Belt and Road” Master fellowship program.

School of Economics and Management (UCAS SEM)

School of Economics and Management at University of Chinese Academy of Sciences is one of the most prestigious business schools for educating senior management talents. Under the education mode of “integration of schools with institutes”, both the School of Economics and Management and various institutes of CAS are jointly responsible for the graduate education. Such education mode enables our school to have an exceptional group of internationally renowned professors, who are dedicated to many monumental research projects which attract considerable attention from not only domestic and international academia, but also government and business.

Already Since 2013 UCAS (UCAS SEM) and some twenty European and Chinese universities and colleges are the founding members of the Alliance of Chinese and European Business Schools (ACE), which is under the patronage of the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD). EFMD is the European partner in the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), a joint venture with Shanghai Jiaotong University established as the first international business school with autonomous status in 1994 under an agreement between the European Commission and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. EFMD is also founding partner of the Global Foundation for Management Education (GFME), which is a joint venture with the US-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International).

UCAS maintains numerous double/triple degree programs with European universities. Amongst them are Groningen University, University of Copenhagen and Politecnico di Milano as well as faculty/student exchange and visiting programs amongst others with Aalborg University and Kings College London.

The CDA-UCAS SEM Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) laying the foundation for the institutional partnership of the two organisations is available online here in the English and Chinese version.