China, Tangshan

North China University of Science and Technology (NCUST), co-constructed by Hebei Provincial Government, the former State Administration of Work Safety, and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, is one of the top-ranking universities in Hebei province. It has a comprehensive range of disciplines covering 9 categories: science, engineering, humanities, medicine, economics, management, law, education and art, taking engineering and medicine as its backbone. Education programs at different levels are provided for doctors, masters, bachelors, international students and adult students. NCUST ranks 161st in Best Global Universities in China and 2nd in Hebei province according to the 2020 U.S. News Rankings.
In May 2010, the former Hebei Polytechnic University and the former North China Coal Medical College merged into Hebei United University, and then in 2015, it was renamed North China University of Science and Technology. The former Hebei Polytechnic University, which was founded in 1958 as a Mining and Metallurgy Institute, originated from the Department of Mining of Peiyang University founded in 1895 as the first higher educational institution in China, once named as Tangshan Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Hebei Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Tangshan Institute of Engineering and Technology, and Hebei Institute of Science and Technology, while the former North China Coal Medical College which was established as a medical college in 1963 and was named as Tangshan Coal Medical College and Hebei Medical College, traces its history back to Kailuan Advanced Nurse School founded in 1926.
NCUST is currently attended by 40,747 full time students, including 31,482 undergraduates, 3,590 master and PhD candidates, and 255 international students. It has 19 administrational departments, 33 teaching units, 9 teaching auxiliary organizations, and 5 subordinate units. Since August 2016, the brand-new campus, occupying a space of 300 hectares, and advanced facilities, with a floor space up to 1.036 million square meters, including language laboratories, multimedia classrooms, E-reading rooms, CAD centers, computing centers, audio-visual center, and computer network center has been put to use. The university library, with a floor space of 78,000 square meters, has a collection of 2.7 million volumes and 38 large-scale databases in Chinese and Foreign languages, which has ebook collection up to 96.5 TB. The layout of resources is organized according to discipline groups and one-stop discipline services are provided. NCUST is the publisher of 5 national influential academic journals in the area of natural science, medical science, and social science. Besides, it has 25 directly and indirectly affiliated hospitals.
To meet the needs of economic and social development, NCUST adheres to the principle of featured development and interdisciplinary construction. The university has 3 disciplines authorized by the state to grant doctoral degrees, 27 disciplines for master’s degrees, and 21 authorization categories for professional master’s degrees, 95 undergraduate programs and 1 post-doctoral research station, building metallurgical engineering as the world first-class discipline, mining engineering, and public health and preventive medicine as the national first-class disciplines. Besides, it has 2 national first-class specialties, 14 provincial first-class specialties, 10 state level characteristic specialties, 18 national and provincial key disciplines, 17 national and provincial technological innovation platforms, 1 provincial technology transfer demonstration agency, 1 national and 3 provincial collaborative innovation centers, 38 municipal level technological innovation platforms, 1 technology contract recognition and registration organization and 1 industrial consultancy of Hebei province, 10 provincial and 13 municipal technological innovation voucher providers, 10 enterprise consultancies and 1 mass innovation space of Tangshan. NCUST also possesses Mine Medicare Center Training Base of the former State Administration of Work Safety, Hebei Intellectual Property Training Base, Injury Research Institute of Hebei province, Hungary Research Center approved by Ministry of Education, Hebei Integration Research Base for Integration of Urban and Rural Areas, Tangshan Scientific Development Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tangshan Integration Research Center for Integration of Urban and Rural Areas, and Tangshan Academician Workstation.
NCUST has fully implemented the plan of “Double First-class” construction of Hebei province, systematically promoted the construction of the “3433”discipline groups, which means focusing on the construction of 3 strong characteristic disciplines: metallurgy and materials, mining and safety, and occupational health and safety, vigorously developing 4 key superior disciplines: chemical engineering and environment, architecture and civil engineering, advanced manufacturing and equipment, and basic medicine and clinical medicine, appropriately expanding 3 basic liberal arts and science disciplines: economics and management, law of humanities and art, information and computing, and actively supporting 3 new cross disciplines: life science, marine science and brain cognitive science.
NCUST has been committed to the connotative development with quality as the first priority, cultivating applied research and innovative talents with strong adaptability and high comprehensive quality. It owns 1 distinguished teacher of the state’s Ten Thousand Talents Plan, 12 distinguished teachers of Hebei province, 9 national and provincial teaching teams, 54 national and provincial high-quality resource sharing courses and high-quality courses, 14 provincial high-quality online open courses, 17 provincial first-class courses, 9 national and provincial specialty comprehensive reform pilot projects, 3 national Excellent Project programs, 12 national and provincial experimental teaching demonstration centers, and 4 national and provincial off-campus practice education bases for college students. NCUST has exhibited great strength in research and made remarkable achievements over the past five years. It has trained over 100,000 professional technical and management talents, and has become the cradle of general managers and chief engineers in metallurgy, mining and heavy chemical industries, as well as senior medical talents in the coal industry and the occupational disease prevention and control. NCUST graduates have the characteristics of high quality, strong ability, practical work style and adapting to social needs, and the employment rate has reached up to 95% for consecutive years, ranking among the best in Hebei province.
NCUST has been committed to building a team of high-quality professional teachers with noble ethics and superb professional capacity, adhering to the development strategy of strengthening the school with talents. At present, it has more than 4,000 professional and technical personnel, including 1,834 full-time teachers, 645 teachers with doctorate degrees, and more than 1,000 teachers with senior professional titles. The university has recruited more than 100 outstanding experts, including academicians, national candidates in the New Century Talents Project, experts of special allowance of the State Council, high-end talents of Hebei province, Yanzhao scholars, provincial excellent experts and so on.
NCUST adheres to the reform of innovation and entrepreneurship education and cultivates students’ innovative spirit and practical ability. Over the past five years, about 25,000 students have participated in various competitions at all levels and won more than 4,500 international and domestic awards, including over 2,000 awards at or above the state level. The total number of innovative entrepreneurship training programs for college students has reached 1,922, including 190 at the state level and 286 at the provincial level. Students have published more than 350 academic papers, among which more than 30 have been searched by SCIE and more than 60 have applied for patents. NCUST actively instills the education of innovative consciousness and entrepreneurial spirit “into the classroom, into teaching materials, into credits”, builds high-level Maker Space and Incubation Base successfully incubating more than 240 entrepreneurial projects, and selects more than 100 full-time teachers and out-of-campus mentors giving lectures to students through the Entrepreneur Lecture and the Yisheng Lecture. It is awarded Advanced Unit for the Implementation of National College Students’ Innovation and Entrepreneurship Training Program (2012-2014) and ranks 120th on the Top300 list of undergraduate students in the Evaluation Results of Innovative Talents Training and Discipline Competition of Chinese Universities (2015-2019).
NCUST persistently carries out the strategy of developing basic research, applied technology research and transfer together with scientific research of national defense industry, upholding the idea of basic study to the utmost, application development to the bottom and cultivating talents by implementing innovation. Over the past five years, the university has won 1 Second Prize of National Technology Invention Award, 2 Second Prizes of National Science and Technology Progress Award and 115 provincial and ministerial scientific research awards. It has undertaken 181 projects from The National Science and Technology Support Program, the National Key Research and Development Program, the National Special Project for International Science and Technology Cooperation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Social Science Fund of China with an average annual scientific research fund of nearly 100 million RMB. The university boasts an international level in the fields of energy saving and emission reduction in the steel industry, high quality steel production technology, occupational health and safety, efficient mining and utilization of metal, mineral resources, bimolecular genomics, industrial robotics research and development etc. The university also actively engages in social services and contributes to the province and the national socio-economic development, yielding a series of representative results and establishing 4 industry standards. The genomic informatics team has been actively engaged in international collaborations, publishing 50 papers in world top journals such as Nature, Science and Advanced Materials. NCUST ranks 169th in China and 3rd in Hebei province in the 2019 ranking of science and technology contributions of Chinese colleges and universities released by The Institute for Lande Technology & Education Evaluation at Z-park. Also in 2019, it ranks 159th in ESI world academic level of universities and scientific research institutions, and 4th in Hebei province.



NCUST values the international academic exchanges and cooperation, and has established contacts and cooperative relationships with over 50 high-level universities and institutes of more than 10 countries including University of British Columbia and Georgia Regis University etc., carrying out international exchanges and cooperation in fields of student and teacher exchange, joint education program, joint scientific research and conference organizing. In 2015, the university established the first Confucius Institute featuring Chinese medicine in Central and Eastern Europe, Confucius Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, cooperating with University of Pécs in Hungary. NCUST co-organizes China-Hungary Medical Forum with University of Pécs every two years. It has undertaken 6 China-Hungary intergovernmental science and technology cooperative projects with Hungarian Acupuncture and Moxibustion Rehabilitation Society, University of Szeged and University of Debrecen and 8 other provincial and ministerial-level international scientific and technological cooperation projects. Besides, the university has 3 international scientific research cooperation bases. Approved by the Ministry of Education, NCUST cooperates with Heidelberg University of Applied Sciences in Germany in running undergraduate joint education programs of electrical engineering and automation, mechanical engineering and manufacturing and chemistry program in cooperation with Tomsk State University in Russia.



Standing at a new historical starting point, the century-old university is full of new vitality. NCUST will always adhere to the school philosophy of “cultivating science and technology, advocating the application, relying on industry and serving the regional development”, abide by the school motto of “Remaining virtue and erudite; Being diligent and practical”, implement the development strategy of “establishing the school with characteristics, developing the school by cultivating talents and strengthening the school with high quality”, and comprehensively improve the school’s overall strength and core competitiveness to write a new glorious chapter.