Founded in September 1958, Jishou University is a publicuniversity in the western part of Hunan Province and the only comprehensiveuniversity in the border areaof Hunan, Hubei, Chongqingand Guizhou provinces. The University is composed of two campuses in Jishou andZhangjiajie cities, with the main campus in Jishou City, the capital city ofXiangxi Autonomous Prefecture.

In 2003,theuniversity was entitled the right to confer master’s degrees. In October2006,the university successfully passed the undergraduate education evaluationon regular institutions of higher learning organized by the Ministry ofEducation with a comment of “Excellent”. The year of 2012 saw the universityrank among “universities of capacity construction project in mid-west”. At thesame year, the university was approved to carry out “Ph. D program catering forspecial demands of our country”.

The universitycovers an area of 1.29 million square meters with the total building area of600,000 square meters. Presently, the university has been equipped with variousteaching and scientific researching instruments and equipments with a totalvalue of over RMB 170 million as well as a book and literature collection ofover 2.3million volumes. The university currently has over 1000 full-timeteachers, of which 86% are provided with doctor’ s or master’s degree.

At present, thereare 70 undergraduate majors offered by the university, among which 3 are nationalcharacteristic majors, 8 are provincial characteristic majors.8 are provincialkey majors. The university is now operating 1 Ph.D program catering for specialdemands of our county,14 first-grade disciplines for master’ a degree, 1professional master degree program and 1characteristic, advanced and key discipline,covering 11 main disciplines. In addition, there are 14 provincial andministerial level key research bases,1 national experimental teachingdemonstration center,5 provincial practice teaching demonstration centers.

The students ofvarious types total over 30,000,of which over 18,000 are full-time undergraduatestudents, over 800 are graduate students. The number of undergraduates in theindependent college is almost 8,000,and that of adult diploma educationstudents is over 7,000.

Over half acentury, the university adheres to the educational philosophy of “PopulaceUniversity”, regards it as its own duty to serve for the regional economic andsocial development, fulfills irreplaceable educational function in the west ofHunan and in the border area of Hunan,Hubei,Chongqing and Guizhou provinces, formingdistinguished schooling-running characteristics and being widely approved byall sectors of the society.