Educational cooperation between China and Germany strengthened over years

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany and also witnesses the development and strengthening of cooperation in education between the two countries in various ways.

The Sino-German College of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, a representative of cultural cooperation projects between Shanghai and Hamburg, is striding into the new stage of development while embracing new opportunities and challenges.

The history of the college can be traced back to 1985, when the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, or USST, and Hamburg University of Applied Sciences began to exchange visits.

In 1998, the two universities cofounded the Shanghai-Hamburg College and began to enroll students majoring in electrical engineering and automation, and mechanical engineering and automation. Then in 2002, they started to recruit students majoring in international economics and trade. The current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was then the first mayor of Hamburg, visited the college in 2011.

Over the past 10 years, the Sino-German College has been expanding the scope of cooperation, ranging from undergraduate education and graduate training to scientific and technical cooperation and the construction of international joint laboratories.

In 2014, the Sino-German College was authorized as a Chinese foreign cooperative school run by the Ministry of Education, which provides a broader platform for promoting international exchanges and cooperation.

To provide broader platforms for international exchanges and cooperation, the college has established partnerships with several first-class application-oriented technical universities in Germany.

At the college's joint commission on Oct 18, Regensburg University of Applied Science was admitted as a new committee member. So far, the number of German partners of the college has reached four.

Since 2014, the German Academic Exchange Service, or DAAD, has helped the college set up an online teaching platform, SHCneo, which guarantees the smooth proceeding of online courses during the pandemic.

The first phase of the e-learning platform started construction in 2014 and specializes in subject-related teaching. The second phase, which began in 2018, focuses on German language training.

USST is also one of the core members of the Sino-German Cooperation University Alliance, which was founded in October 2018 at the 19th China International Education Conference held in Beijing.

In 2016, universities, including USST, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, and Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, proposed to form the alliance.

It now has 20 members and each has Sino-German cooperation programs or institutes approved by the Ministry of Education.

The fifth theme forum of the alliance will be held in November in Henan University.

Experts and scholars are to discuss the construction of a quality assurance system of Sino-German cooperation in running schools from multiple perspectives.

The alliance has played an important role in promoting the internationalization of higher education in China, experts said.

In 2025, the Sino-German College of USST, the first college in Asia to pass the accreditation conducted by the German ASIIN, will welcome a new round of evaluation by ASIIN.

In 2004, the college's two majors — electrical engineering and automation, and mechanical engineering and automation — passed ASIIN's evaluation.

Since then, qualified graduates of these two majors can be conferred both Chinese and German bachelor's degrees upon graduation. Taking this opportunity, the college continues to improve the quality assurance system and promote the high-quality development of international education cooperation.

Xu Fang and Chen Jiayi contributed to this story.

haonan@chinadaily.com.cn