Founded: 1920

Address: 92 Xidazhi Street

Nangang, Harbin

23 150001

China

Key Statistics

Harbin Institute of Technology was on the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2016 at the 501-600th position, Asia University Rankings 2016 at 75th position and on the BRICS and Emerging Economies 2016 at 40th. HIT has a staff to student ratio of 10: 8 and the Female: Male Ratio of 29:71.

Overview

Harbin Institute of Technology is a non-profit public higher education institution and a member of the C9 League in China. The research university has three campuses spanning the country from north to south including Harbin campus in Heilongjiang province, Shenzhen graduate school in Guangdong province and Weihai campus in Shandong province.

Harbin Insititute of Technology was founded in 1920 as the Harbin Sino-Russian School for Industry to educate the engineers through a Russian Method of instruction. The classes were taught in Japanese in 1935 after the Japanese invasion of China under the name National Harbin Polytechnic.

After 87 years, it has developed into a large multi-disciplinary nationally renowned university with engineering, research and science at its core. HIT has established unparalleled programs related to the field of astronautics, and the University is among the 15 key universities in China which receive preferential treatment from the government. HIT was appointed in November 1999 by the Central Government among the nine universities to be preferentially built by the standards of internally renowned universities.

HIT has utilised a cross-disciplinary curriculum to broaden the already established disciplinary programs. This has in turn formed such a comparatively full discipline system made up of supporting programs, emerging programs and key programs. HIT has from 1996 been part of Project 211 which has propelled the university to grow into a highly-competitive first-rate university with support from both the Heilongjiang Provincial government as well as the Ministry of Education. HIT equally supports students studying social sciences and humanities as well as science courses and basic engineering.

Hit is renowned for its schooling style that is so original: “ Being strict in qualifications for graduates, making every endeavour in educating students”. Today, there is a collective effort among the students, staff and faculty of HIT to bravely advance with full confidence towards the goal of building HIT into a renowned, world-class university.

Key Facts

Outstanding Disciplinary Influence

Currently, HIT has 21 departments/schools, 18 national key disciplines, 73 bachelors’ programs, 147 masters’ programs and 81 doctoral programs. HIT’s core strengths continue to be Engineering Technology and Scientific Research with strong faculties in Law, Liberal Arts, Management and Economic. According to research done in 2009 by Thomas Reuters, HIT was among the top 1% of institutions in the fields of chemistry, material Science, Physics and Material Science basing on the Essential Science Indicators (ESI). HIT also has 40 key disciplines that the PRC’s Ministry of Education granted.

First-Rate Faculty Team

HIT employs 2,944 full-time faculty members among them 884 professors and 1,202 associate professors. Among its faculty members, 22 are also academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Chinese Academy of Science. The number of international staff is 272. It also has around 640 doctoral supervisors as well as 12 principal scientists working on Projects 973 as well as 13 Young Experts with prominent contributions to the country. The faculty members churn out all-round graduates who can compete on the global scale. The students are taught laboratory skills as well as scientific research methods that enhance their innovative and creativity abilities.

Considerable Enrollment

Riding on the pattern of ‘One University, three campuses’, Harbin Institute of Technology enrols a considerable number of students. Presently, there are 42,695 full-time students at HIT which can be broken down into 4,389 doctoral candidates, 11,794 masters’ candidates and 25,035 undergraduate students. The university is also very dedicated to creating a globalised university hence it enrols 2, 300 international students for the exchange program, degree programs, language learning as well as research fellowships. This facilitates interaction between domestic students and their foreign counterparts which bridge their conceptualising of different cultures.

High-Quality Cultivation of Talent

It has indicators which affirm that Harbin Institute of Technology plays a major role in the development of talent in China. Some of the indicators include high employment rates as well as a high degree of job satisfaction among both graduate and undergraduate level alumni. There is also a high pass rate for major professional qualification exams among the Harbin Institute of Technology students. Once the students graduate from HIT, they are adequately equipped with the ability for practical application and with strong theoretical knowledge.

HIT has over 100,000 graduates who have entered into the society and warmly welcomed by the employers domestically and internationally. They have consistently risen the ladder into high-ranking managerial positions as well as working as specialists in education, economics, science and technology. A good number have also assumed leadership positions in government and CPC at various levels or even became academicians at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Science, as well as generals at PLA.

Continuous Increase in Quality of Education and Scientific Research Capacity

HIT has comfortably taken the leading position in research innovations. The University hasn’t shied away from taking on highly sophisticated and large-scale national projects. Among all the Universities in China, HIT’s ability for scientific research has been the strongest for so many years. HIT research funding had reached 1.1 billion RMB in 2007 and its scientific research programs ranked second in the 10-year comprehensive evaluation of project 863.

HIT has made major milestones in China’s hi-tech research by developing a good number of new scientific research inventions, for instance China’s first simulation computer, the arc-welding robots, intelligent chess-playing computer, and CMOS chip IC card with its own patent. Additionally, it has developed the first world advanced-level system radar, large-scale tank-head forming machine, giant computer-aided real-time 3-D image construction system, and microcomputer-operated fiber twiner.

The university has also developed close links with the space program of China as well as People’s Liberation Army as part of the key universities in China for defence and Space-related research. HIT made huge contributions to the infamous Chinese Shenzhou spacecraft project, and the Astronautics Innovation Research Center was established in 2010 at Harbin Institute of Technology as a collaborative effort with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, becoming the biggest investing of its calibre in China.

Leader in Global Exchange

Right from its establishment, HIT has remained international since the classes used to be conducted in Russian, then later in Japanese. When China reformed and established the open policy, HIT gained a footing in the global world. HIT has academic collaboration agreements with over 126 higher education institutions in about 24 countries including the UK, the US, Germany, France, Russia and Japan. Exchanges and cooperation are carried out between HIT and the universities via exchanging faculty and research staff, students, cooperating in scientific research as well as holding academic conferences.

Extracurricular Activities

HIT not only provides several academic to students such as the library, administrative services, study abroad and exchange programs as well as financial aids/scholarships but also non-academic facilities and services to including sports facilities and activities. The University encourages international students to join extracurricular activities so as to churn out well-rounded, competent individuals who can confidently compete on the global level. Some of the extracurricular activities organised include sports competitions, tourists’ visits to major tourist spots, graduation party, welcoming party and a New Year party.

 

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