In 1903, during the final years of the Qing dynasty, the Hunan Institute of Higher Education was established. In 1926, the name of the institution was then changed to Hunan Normal College, and then Hunan Public Polytechnic School, before finally arriving at the name Hunan University.[4]
In 1937, the academy was transformed from a provincial university into a national university, renamed the National Hunan University, and designated by the Ministry of education, becoming the fifteenth national university.[5]
From April 1938 to May 1941, the National Hunan University suffered serious losses and, made it difficult to run the school. During the Battle of Changsha, the National Hunan University was suspended.[5]
In 1949, the name Hunan University was again adopted, and the calligraphy of "Hunan University" was written by Mao Zedong in 1950 as soon as the People's Republic of China was founded.[6][7]
In 1959, Hunan University was officially restored after the national readjustment of higher education institutions.[8]
In 1963, HNU was subordinated to the First Ministry of Machinery Industry.[6] In 1978, Hunan University's status as one of the 88 National Key Universities in China was reaffirmed.[8][9]
In 1996, Hunan University became one of the universities sponsored by Project 211.[10] In 2000, Hunan University was selected as a member of Project 985.[10][11]
In November 2010, the National Supercomputing Changsha Center was built on the Hunan University campus under the management and operation of Hunan University.[12] It is the first National Supercomputing Center in Central China and the third of its kind apart from other two national centers situated in Tianjin and Shenzhen.[13]
In 2011, HNU participated in the Excellence League, an alliance of 10 Chinese universities with a strong background in engineering.[14] In 2015, HNU joined the BRICS Universities League, a consortium of leading research universities from BRICS countries.[15]
The Administration Building of Hunan University was designed by Liu Shiying (Chinese architect), the founder of modern architectural education in China.
Hunan University is a national key university under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education of China and a member of Project 211 and Project 985, as well as the Double First Class University Plan.[9][11] The administration is led by a CPC secretary and a president. The current secretary is Deng Wei, and the president is Duan Xianzhong.
Central Teaching Building, at the south rim of the Central Quad, one of the major liberal arts teaching buildingsHunan University Stadium
It has the following colleges and departments:[18]
Architecture
Biology
Business Administration
Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
Chinese Language and Literature
Civil Engineering
Computer Science and Electronic Engineering
Design
Economy and Trade
Educational Science
Electrical and Information Engineering
Robotics
Environmental Science and Engineering
Finance and Statistics
Foreign Languages and International Studies
Journalism and Communication and Film and Television Arts
There are more than 30,000 full-time students, including more than 20,800 undergraduates and more than 14,000 graduate students.[21] Hunan University has started to recruit international students since 1990s and is one of the Project 985 universities in China to launch an international student program taught entirely in English.[22][23]
Hunan University was ranked 259th worldwide in 2024 in terms of aggregate performance by the three widely observed university ranking (THE+ARWU+QS) as reported by the Aggregate Ranking of Top Universities.[38]
Hunan University ranked 14th worldwide in the 2016 Nature Index Rising Stars.[40] In 2018, Hunan University was elected among 16 universities in the world by Nature, called "Movers and Shakers".[41] In the 2024 Nature Index Research Leaders, which measures the largest groups of papers published in 145 leading high-quality science journals,[42] Hunan University ranked 45th among the leading academic institutions globally and 24th in the Asia-Pacific region.[43]
Hunan University was ranked 105th globally by the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2024 based on the number of their scientific publications in the period 2019–2022.[37] For the proportion of their scientific publications that rank among the top 10% and 50% in their fields by citations in the 2024 CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition, Hunan University ranks 7th globally (1st in Eurasia) and 1st in the world, respectively.[44]
In 2020, a research paper by Loet Leydesdorff, a famous scientometrician, employs data from 205 China's leading research-intensive universities, including in the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2020, to classify them into three main groups: Top, Middle, and Bottom. Hunan University (with a Z-score of 10.2) ranks 2nd only to Tsinghua University (z=11.0), which leads the "High Group of 32 Universities".[45]
In 2022, 32 HNU faculty members were included in Clarivate's list of Highly Cited Researchers, placing HNU at No. 33 globally and third in China, behind only the Chinese Academy of Science and Tsinghua University.[46][47]
Subject Rankings
Hunan University has been ranked in the top 30th global universities in "engineering" by several international rankings, including U.S. News Rankings, URAP ranking, and NTU Ranking.[48][49][50]
Guo Songtao, China's first ambassador to a foreign country
Wang Fuzhi, a celebrated philosopher in Chinese history
Wei Yuan, a reformist who first advocated to learn from the West
Xiong Xiaoge, the first person to introduce high-tech venture funds into China
Zeng Guofan, the first Chinese to initiate the Modernization Movement (at the time called Yangwu Yundong, a movement to imitate overseas technology and industry) and to make arrangements for a modern factory in China
Zhang Fengxuan, the first Chinese to set foot on the continent of Antarctica[52]
Zuo Zongtang, a national hero who arranged to build China's first modern navy and took great pains to defend and develop Xinjiang
^Studies (CWTS), Centre for Science and Technology. "CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition". CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition. Retrieved 2024-10-26.
^Leydesdorff, Loet; Wagner, Caroline S.; Zhang, Lin (2020-11-17). "Are University Rankings Statistically Significant? A Comparison among Chinese Universities and with the USA". arXiv:2011.08591 [cs.DL].
