Source: Graduate School
Written by: Graduate School
Translated by: Tan Shan

The third round of discipline assessment carried out by China Academic Degrees & Graduate Education Development Center (Hereinafter referred to as the Degree Center) in 2012 lasted a year and recently the Degree Center announced the assessment results. Sun Yat-sen University achieved significant results in the assessment. Based on “Degree Granting and Talent Cultivation Directory” enacted in 2011, the assessment has the most participating disciplines and the widest coverage among all previous assessments, and is the most authoritative inspection of the overall level of first-level disciplines in colleges and universities in China at present, with 4,235 disciplines from 391 units nationwide participating in it.

33 first-level disciplines of Sun Yat-sen University participated in the discipline assessment, including 31 first-level doctoral degree programs and 2 first-level master’s degree programs. According to the assessment results announced by the Degree Center, SYSU has achieved outstanding results:

According to the ranking of participating colleges and universities, in the 33 participating disciplines of SYSU, 12 disciplines ranked in top 5 and 23 disciplines ranked in top 10. If ranked according to the discipline level (excluding the ranking of tied disciplines), 32 out of the 33 participating disciplines of SYSU ranked in top 10 in terms of the overall discipline level, which indicates that the overall strength of SYSU disciplines is among the top in colleges and universities nationwide.

SYSU’s achievements in discipline construction are inspiring and encouraging from the analysis of ranking results. First, it has a good momentum in discipline construction. Compared with the last round of discipline level assessment, 85 percent of the participating disciplines of SYSU have improved their rankings among all participating disciplines nationwide, and most disciplines have higher speed of improvement than those in other participating colleges and universities. Second, major discipline areas show overall advantage. In the assessment, major disciplines such as Philosophy, Chinese Language and Literature, History, Sociology, Science of Public Management, Physics, Biology, Basic Medicine, Clinical Medicine, and Science of Business Administration entered the top 10% of all participating disciplines, which indicates that these disciplines are in the top among colleges and universities nationwide, considering that these disciplines have large coverage and there were a large number of participating units. Third, applied disciplines which are closely connected with national and Guangdong’s social and economic development have seen rapid growth. For examples, the discipline level of Ecology ranked first (tied with other disciplines), Science of Business Administration ranked second (tied), Science of Public Management and Marine Sciences ranked fourth (tied); disciplines such as Computer Science and Technology and Environmental Science and Engineering also gained a good ranking. The development of these disciplines further perfects the discipline layout of SYSU, optimizes the discipline structure of SYSU, and improves SYSU’s ability to serve the national and local economic construction.

Through this assessment, SYSU tested its achievements in discipline construction in recent years, and it provided a basis to review the past and plan for the future. Next, SYSU will summarize the experience comprehensively, think deeply about how to further strengthen discipline construction, enhance connotation construction to improve education and further carry out the discipline construction work, centering around the goal of building SYSU into a world-class university with extensive international influence where the humanities, science, medicine and engineering can integrate and develop while retaining their distinctive characteristics.

The Degree Center started discipline assessment in 2002 and has carried out a total of three rounds of assessments in ten years. The objects of assessment are disciplines with graduate education and degree-granting qualifications mainly in colleges and universities as well as in scientific research institutes. The discipline assessment reflects the university’s status in the country in terms of the overall level of first-level disciplines. It has guiding significance for the university’s discipline construction, reference value for students in their choice of universities and talent flow, as well as social influence.