| Central University For Nationalities |
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ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES The university awards Undergraduate -level degrees in over 40 academic subjects, usually after four years' study. Postgraduate programmes are offered for about half of these. Young people from the dominant Han group are the largest single ethnicity amongst the 8,000 or so students. However, the minority nationalities provide the great majority of the students and over one-third of the academic staff. By far the strongest research area is school and the various minority language and literature departments. Other subjects are often studied from the ethnic minorities' perspective, e.g., biology courses may focus on the flora and fauna found in ethnic minority areas of China. CUN is the pinnacle of a national network of institutions maintained by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, although academic standards are also monitored by the State Education Commission , which means some students end up sitting two sets of exams. Its main partners in the English-speaking countries are the University Of East London , United Kingdom and the Oregon University System , USA . HISTORY The Chinese Communist Party first established a Nationalities Institute in its Civil War stronghold of Yan'an , in central China, in October 1941 . In 1950 - 1952 , this was merged with other ethnolinguistic and sociological departments, including elements of Peking University and Tsinghua University . The result was the Central Institute for Nationalities, which officially opened on 11 June 1952 . The Institute was assigned a large area of parkland on the outskirts of Beijing (south Haidian) as its campus. Both the Yan'an and Central institutes were intended to train cadres (officials) for ethnic minority areas, as well as providing a Liberal Arts education for promising students from the minorities. Their research was and is intended to support the policies of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. In its early years, the Institute was caught up in the sensitive issue of classifying China's vast population into official ethnic groups, until the Cultural Revolution made conventional education almost impossible. With the advent of Deng Xiaoping 's reform and opening up policy (c. 1978 ), the Institute went through considerable changes. On the down side, it lost most of its campus to a variety of development projects and it is now in a heavily built-up area. Financial pressures have led to a rapid rise in student numbers, particularly of Han students (who are usually more qualified and wealthier). A major building programme is currently ( 2004 ) underway to facilitate this. A more long-term difficulty is posed by the legacy of so-called Han Chauvinism in previous centuries. On the other hand, the Institute expanded into science subjects during the 1980s and achieved university status on ) when Beijing's Uyghur community was dispersed. SEE ALSO Other universities for ethnic minorities in the People's Republic of China:
REFERENCE ''The Central University for Nationalities'' (undated, but c.2000). Beijing: CUN International Relations Office. A prospectus for Chinese and foreign students; the source for almost all of the dates and statistics in this article. EXTERNAL LINKS
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