-- Interview with professor Qiu Junping, director of the Center for Evaluation of the Quality of Chinese Education

Chinese alumni network recently announced the latest results of the assessment for the Chinese universities. Nine Universities including Wuhan University have entered Top 500 in three international university rankings, thus forming the "nine universities group (G9 group)".

According to the ranking lists of the recent years, we can see that with Wuhan University actively promoting the standard of world first-class university with Chinese characteristics, our core competitiveness and international influence keeps rising. But, how far are we from a world-class university? Professor Qiu Junping, director of the Center for Evaluation of the Quality of Chinese Education, has his answer.

Qiu Junping believes that in 2014 Wuhan University has made substantial progress in various aspects thanks to the improved quality of standards for the internal policies and regulations and emphasis on international cooperation by sending a large number of young teachers abroad and actively organizing or participating in international conferences. This significantly enhances the international profile of Wuhan University.

"A world class university mainly refers to universities with cultural and educational strength, high reputation in the society, and ranks top in the world," remarked Qiu Junping "In our assessment for world universities, world first-class university should have five criteria: first-class team, first-class disciplines, first-class achievements, first-class management and first-class benefits."

First-class team mainly refers to reasonable age structure and knowledge structure of faculty, high level teaching standard, especially the number of leading scholars with high reputation, influence, and important contribution. First-class disciplines request that schools must have a national key disciplines and first-class doctoral disciplines. First-class achievements refer to the Nobel Prize, the National Natural Science Award and a series of important awards for achievements. First-class management is the overall planning and management that mobilize faculties and students to improve the quality of teaching and scientific research. First-class benefits include economic benefits and social benefits, with higher input-output efficiency and greater contribution to society, increased international influence.

"Wuhan University should start from these five criteria, and narrow the gap with world-class universities." Qiu Junping said.

The United States ranks top in various university rankings. Qiu Junping believes that the advantages are mainly embodied in world-class talents, innovation and invention patents. And these are just what Wuhan University and Chinese universities lack.

Qiu Junping thinks that Wuhan University should improve the level of scientific research, continue to strengthen international cooperation, enhance the level of internationalization; encourage original innovation through more incentives and investment, and decrease low level, uncreative scientific research projects; strengthen the foreign language training of staff and students, and support faculty to go abroad to visit universities and attend meetings, etc.

(Translated by Wang Hanxu, edited by Diana & Sijia Hu)