Introduction to Guangdong Baiyun University (baiyunU)
Guangdong Baiyun University (baiyunU) is a private and full-time tertiary institute of bachelor degree education.
Its predecessor is the Guangzhou Baiyun School of Applied Technology founded by Mr Xie Ketao in 1989 and was upgraded later in 1999 to Baiyun Vocational and Technical College (BVTC) approved by the Ministry of Education(MOE). In 2005, BVTC was upgraded again to Guangdong Baiyun University (baiyunU). The baiyunU passed the assessment to be qualified for a permit to offer Bachelor Degree programs in 2009 and passed the MOE’s Compliance Assessment of Undergraduate Degree Offerings in 2011.
The baiyunU is situated in Guangzhou City and has a land area of 1,350 mu (666.67 square meters per mu) with more than 18,000 students on campus. It has a total of over 1,150 academic and administrative staff, of which there are more than 940 academic staff. It has the tract and field, stadium and tennis courts of high standards. Student dormitories are all equipped with hot-water supplies, air conditioners and broadband wireless. There are more than 260 laboratories and workshops for teaching purposes and entrepreneurship projects. The Library has more than 1.4 million volumes of books and digital resources. The campus is digitalised with a capacity of more than 1000 TB and is managed through the computerised system.
While focusing mainly on undergraduate applied education, the University is actively developing postgraduate professional education, steadily expanding international education and vigorously promoting continuing education, which forms a system of programs to develop the multi-level and various-type of graduates. The University has 16 Faculties offering 47 specialised undergraduate programs. A multi-discipline structure has been formed with engineering as the dominant discipline along with science, economics, management, literature, law and arts that have developed in a well-coordinated way. There are 3 Key Disciplines accredited in Arts and Design, Mechanical Manufacturing and Automation, and Business Management by the provincial department of education and 9 Key Disciplines approved by the university management and 4 Demonstration Centers for Experimental Teaching for the institutions in Guangdong province. BaiyunU as the authorised base for developing personnel of applied skills in the Artificial Intelligence of Manufacturing Engineering is the platform of collaborative education of institutes in Guangdong province and the Research Center, as a decision-consulting base for the provincial government departments, of Urban and Rural Comprehensive Development and Social Governance in the Pearl River Delta Region.
The baiyunU adheres the direction of socialism, upholds its mission to “meet the market needs and serve the communities”and the motto of “Character Cultivation, Motivated Learning, Truth Pursuing and Action Orientation” , carries forward its spirit of “pursuing excellence and daring to pioneer” and implements its educational concept of “students centered learning”. By applying “Internationalization of Education as a leading strategy” and “Digitalization of Education as a supporting strategy”, the baiyunU is deepening the reform of its model of “production-teaching integration, university-enterprise cooperation, work-study combination” to cultivate its graduates of applied high skills and high competence who meet the needs of Research and Development of applied technology and the needs of local economic and social development in Guangdong region, therefore to build baiyunU as a domestically well-known university with the outstanding strengths in applied disciplines in tertiary education as well as the distinctive features in vocational education.
The baiyunU has actively developed its partnership of more than 60 double-degree and degree-to-master education programs through credit transfers with more than 25 universities in more than 10 countries such as Edith Cowan University, Western Sydney University in Australia, Purdue University and Midwest State University in USA, Okayama Shoka University and Hokkaido Bunkyo University in Japan, Wonkwang University and Busan University of Foreign Studies in South Korea, University of Polymouth and Middlesex University in UK.
The baiyunU has been nominated as Number One among “the Top 10 Private Universities in Guangdong Province” for 12 consecutive years from 2003-2014. It became one of “the Universities Under Strategic Research on Reforming Towards Universities of Applied Technology” and a founding member and Standing Member of ”China Alliance for Universities of Applied Technologies”in 2013 and was accepted as among the first batch of “Universities Piloting on Transformation to Universities of Applied Technology”in 2016. The baiyunU also has the honor of been awarded as “the Excellent Organization at the Primary Level Of the Communist Party of China”. It was appraised as “A Banner for Private Education in Guangdong Province”by Mr Zhang Dejiang, the former Chairman of China National People’s Congress and the former Party Secretary General of Guangdong Province and was appraised as “the Benchmark for Private Education in Guangdong Province”by Mr Wang Yang, the former Party Secretary General of Guangdong Province.