In June 2019, the People’s Government of Sichuan Province received the official reply of the Chinese Ministry of Education regarding the approval of the establishment of SWUFE-UD Institute of Data Science at Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (License No.: MOE51USA02DNR20191972N) with no legal person status, which is jointly established by Southwestern University of Finance and Economics and University of Delaware. After the approval for operation of the three other Chinese-Foreign Joint programs, this is SWUFE’s first Chinese-Foreign Joint Educational Institute with no legal person status approved by the Ministry of Education. It is also the first approved Chinese-Foreign Joint Educational Institute among all finance and economics universities in China.
The University of Delaware (UD), founded in 1743 and well known as the "public ivy league" institution, enjoys a high reputation in the national and international academia and ranked 38th among national public universities as well as 89th among national universities by US News in 2019. Besides, UD's Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics ranked 61st in the United States this year by the Poets & Quants, a widely-recognized website focusing on business education, USA. As a matter of fact, SWUFE and UD have been cooperating with each other for more than a decade. In October 2016, SWUFE officially started to prepare for the the application of the establishment of SWUFE-UD Institute of Data Science. After rounds of bilateral negotiations and collaborations with UD, we SWUFE submitted all application materials to the Ministry of Education, China in November 2017,which went through multiple rounds of experts’ review such as letter evaluation, panel defense, meeting-based evaluation etc., and finally got approved after 3 years’ efforts owing to the concerns, collaboration and assistance from UD, SWUFE, and the Ministry of Education, China.
SWUFE-UD Institute of Data Science will provide three undergraduate programs：Management Information Systems, Financial Mathematics, and Operations Management. The institute adopts 4+0 education mode, which means the students who meet the requirements of both universities will be awarded SWUFE’s Bachelor’s degree certificate and graduation certificate and the corresponding UD’s degree of Bachelor of Science certificate for Management Information Systems, Finance and Operations Management. It doesn’t necessarily require the students to study at UD for the issue of UD’s degree certificate. The institute has a total enrollment scale of 720 students, and starts to enroll 60 science students from high schools for each of the three programs respectively since 2020.
The establishment of SWUFE-UD Joint Educational Institute of Data Science is an important action for SWUFE to boost the construction of "Double First-Class" university. The institute aims to become internationalized innovation demonstration zone of the construction of first-class disciplines and undergraduate programs. In order to nurture interdisciplinary professional talents with global competency, solid theoretical foundation in data science and broad vision on data application, the institute strives to build the internationalized talent cultivation highland of interdisciplinary undergraduate programs, and makes great efforts on the development and propulsion of SWUFE’s internationalization strategy and "Double First-Class" construction by adopting the approach of local internationalization, innovative talent cultivation mode and persisting with the fundamental obligation of cultivating talents through strengthening moral education.
