Shantou University (STU), founded in 1981 in Shantou, Guangdong, China, is a young but vigorous university that grows with the tide of China’s reform and opening up. As the only public university in the world receiving constant subsidization from a private foundation, namely the Li Ka Shing Foundation, STU has made remarkable progress in internationalization as one of its top agendas, and secured global recognitions of its outstanding educational quality guaranteed by the access to the globally competitive educational and research resources provided by its high-calibre internationalized faculty and administrative teams who are committed to excellency in academic teaching, scientific research and administrative support. The university, by actively engaging in building platforms of academic cooperation and exchange for its faculty, researchers, administrators and students, has so far established close global partnerships with 130 higher institutions in more than 30 countries and regions including the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Australia, Russia and Japan.
1983 – First admission of undergraduates
1986 – Comrade Deng Xiaoping received Mr. Li Ka Shing in Beijing and suggested that STU be more open to the outside world, thereby gradually developing into a key university in China.
1986 – STU’s Chinese Language Training Center (also known as College of Chinese Language and Culture) was founded with the approval of the national Confucius Institute Headquarters (Hanban) to become one of the institutions in Southern China to provide Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) courses and professional training to prospective Chinese language teachers designated for South-East Asian countries.
1987 – Approved to recruit foreign students
1993 – Approved to grant Master degrees
1999 – Approved to grant PhD degrees
2002 – STU set the long-term goal of developing itself into an internationalized higher institution with global prestige and launched the comprehensive reform of undergraduate education, aiming for cultivation of professionals with strong global competitiveness.
2008 – STU became the designated university recruiting foreign students on the scholarships granted by China Scholarship Council (CSC), and launched the global talent recruitment initiative to attract more overseas and domestic experts.
2010 – STU’s strategic plan on internalization of internationalization to make internationalization embedded into STU’s distinctive identity
2011 – STU’s proposed program to transform itself into a self-governing institution of higher education was designated by the Guangdong provincial government as the “Guangdong Pilot Project of Comprehensive Educational Reform”. A pilot working group for internationalization of education reform has been set up.
June 2012 – Ministry of Education (MOE), the People’s Government of Guangdong Province and LKSF agreed on joint development of STU.
December 2012 – Praised as “a university closely connected to the world” by the assessment panel of internationalization of higher institutions in Guangdong Province
2015 – First time entered the Times Higher Education World University Rankings where STU has secured its places since then
2016 – MOE approved the formal establishment of GTIIT.
June 2018 – Founding of School of International Education (SIE), Shantou University
November 2018 – Approved as the first Higher Education Institutional Reform Experiment Demonstration University in Guangdong