Shenzhen’s higher education has developed rapidly. It has 11 institutes of higher learning, and the University Town has attracted 48 universities to settle down there. In 2006, the city enrolled 17,900 new college students, pushing the total enrollments to 51,200 students.
○Shenzhen University
Shenzhen University, a full-time comprehensive university funded by the Shenzhen Municipal Government, was founded in 1983 and started to enroll students the very same year. Situated on the picturesque Shenzhen Bay, the university covers an area of 1.44 square kilometers and boasts a library collection of 2.59 million volumes of books. In 2004, it started a joint program with Huazhong University of Science and Technology to offer Ph.D. degrees. Eighteen local State-owned enterprises are members of its board of directors. Its 13 colleges provide 48 undergraduate programs covering economics, law, literature, engineering and arts. Now the university has a teaching and research faculty of more than 1,100, one academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, six academicians employed by two academies, and 37 tutors in the Ph.D. program. In 2006, there were 20,000 full-time undergraduates, 1,600 graduate students, and more than 400 foreign students.
○University Town
Since the western campus of the University Town was put into use in 2003, famous universities, such as Qinghua University, Beijing University and Harbin Institute of Technology, have established graduate schools there, enrolling nearly 2,000 full-time graduates.
○Southern University of Science and Technology
The preparation work for establishing the Southern University of Science and Technology will begin in 2007.