Date: May 13,2021

From: Nanfang Daily

Author: Written by Zhong Zhe; photo by JinDi

Business study has been part of JNU since its very beginning, and economics disciplines have been a golden signboard of JNU for more than a century. In 2016, the Institute of Economic and Social Research (IESR) first enrolled students in its international innovation class in economics; they graduated last year. Of the 20, 19 have been admitted to prestigious universities in China and abroad, and two  have gone directly to elite world universities for doctoral study. 

Prof. Feng Shuaizhang, dean of School of Economics and IESR, said he use the sentence look at the international based on the local to summarize the training characteristics of the innovation class. On the one hand, the innovation class refers to the model of the world's first-class departments of economics. The curriculum, teachers and the scientific research environment have obvious international characteristics. IESR adopts the English teaching model and promote small-class teaching with a teacher-student ratio of about 1: 1. In the undergraduate stage, the entire professional tutor system is implemented to encourage students to start their own scientific research and exploration as soon as possible. On the other hand, IESR hopes that students can understand and study China to do the down-to-earth investigation and research. 

Feng said more than 90% of IESR's full-time faculty members graduated from prestigious overseas universities, including the University of Chicago, the University of California, Berkeley, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Moreover, the Institute has established an extensive academic exchange network with many overseas universities and research institutions and regularly organizes various forms of academic activities. In the five years since IESR was established, more than 800 scholars from more than 200 top universities have come to exchange ideas. Also, students in the innovation class can have face-to-face communication with Nobel Prize winners. Some may even work as their research assistants.

（IESR）

In addition, IESR attaches great importance to the study of issues in China. The Project of Investigation on a Thousand Villages in Guangdong, launched in 2018, is a large-scale activity covering rural areas throughout the province, carried out for three consecutive years, from which students can truly and more deeply understand the reality of the rural areas and the mission of economics.