Tue, July 17, 2012
By Ma Qian
China's first graduate school Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (GUCAS) has been renamed as Univerisity of Chinese Academy of Sciences with the ratification of the Ministry of Education (MOE), according to a news release from its official website.
Founded in Beijing 1987, GUCAS was the first graduate school in China with the approval of the State Council. As a comprehensive and prestigious post-graduate education institution, the institution covers a wide range of specialties and research fields in science and technology. To date, 47,000 Ph.D students and 53,000 Master students have graduated from the univerisity.
As disclosed in the official announcement, the previous name---Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences---does not fall in line with the interim regulations concerning the setting up of graduate schools implemented by the MOE in 1995. The name "graduate university" left much ambiguity for the outside in defining its management and operation, and also caused problems for relevant policy-making.
Despite the new name, the university retains such basic functions as the cultivation and management of postgraduates and degree-conferred competences of its own. Moreover, its status of a legal person, staffing and administrative subordination all remain unaltered.
There are numbers of selective universities that specifically offer postgraduate and postdoctoral education around the world, such as the Rockefeller University in the U.S., Japan's Graduate University for Advanced Studies and South Korea's Korea University of Science and Technology. In China, Peking Union Medical College specializes in post-graduate studies on medical science.
