Guangdong University of Finance is a full-time higher education institution, which has grown out of the Banking School founded in 1950 under the administrationof the South-China Branch of the People's Bank of China and was promoted to Guangzhou College of Finance in 1985.
By the formal approval of the State Ministry of Education in May, 2004, it has been promoted again to Guangdong University of Finance (G.D.U.F).
The University now has 11958 full-time students and 925 staff members among whom 690 are teaching staff including 55 professors, 167 associate professors and 328 lecturers. Among them 351 teachers possess a masters degree and above: 48 doctors and 303 masters, and in addition, there are some scholars from outside the school and specialists in the field of finance who have been being invited as guests or honored professors.
The University is divided into two campuses: Main campus (Longdong Campus) and Zhaoqing Campus, occupying an area of 998 mu (ha.) in total with the construction area of 0.29 million sq.m.. The University's location and environment are beautiful and fully-equipped with facilities for both teaching and life, such as a computer network center, sound labs, multi-media classrooms, electronic reading-rooms, a library with 1.21 million paper books and 0.15 million electronic books and 2,167 magazines and periodicals, as well as a simulated bank, a simulated stock exchange and some special labs of Finance, International Trade, Electronic, Financial Accounting, Insurance, Industrial and Commercial Management, Business English and a Financial Museum of Currencies, the richest collection in South China.
The University has set up 12 teaching departments of Finance, Accounting, Insurance, Economic Trade, Industrial and Commercial Management, Computer Science and Technology, Law, Foreign Languages, Social Science and Basic Courses with 41 majors or orientations such as Finance, International Finance, Securities Investment, Insurance, registered Accountants, Accounting and Auditing, Computer Accounting, International Accounting, Financial Affairs Management, Computer Application, Network Projects, Economical Information Management, Electronic Business, Secretary in Economy, International trade, Economics, Economic law, International Economy and Law, Industrial and Commercial Management, Human resources Management, Marketing, Business English, and Administration Management, etc, of which Insurance is a state-level demonstration major for senior vocational or training schools; Finance is a province-level demonstration major and a key major of the Headquarters of the People's Bank of China. The first group of undergraduate majors includes Finance, Insurance, Accounting, Financial Affairs Management, Economy and Trade and Marketing.
The University has been paying much attention to scientific research by increasing more input, establishing stimulation system, selecting discipline leaders and building up scientific research institutions such as South-China Finance Research, Insurance Research, Research on Labor Economy and HRM, Research on Accounting and Auditing, Research on Industrial and Commercial Management, Regional Research Economy, Laws Research and Research on Computer Science and Technology, etc, forming a strong team of scientific researchers and having achieved some good results from it. In recent years, teachers of the University have taken charge of and completed 29 state-level and province-level research tasks and more than 26 bureau-level research tasks, publishing 1,900 treatises in public periodicals at home and abroad among which more than 30 treatises have been published in domestically authoritative periodicals such as Economy Research, Finance Research, Insurance Research, The Global Economy and Soft Science in China, etc, accompanied with 36 kinds of awards.
The University has increasingly strengthened international exchanges and co-operations. In May, 2002, the winner of the Nobel in Economy in 1999, Prof. Robert Mundell, the Father of the Euro, came to visit the University and was invited to become an Honored Professor of the University; The American SIGNA set up its sole LOMA Test Center in the University and some foreign higher education institutions, such as Gray Harbor College, U.S.A., London Metropolitan University, U.K. and Cobenhagan Business School, Denmark have respectively built up educational co-operation relationships with the University. Aviva, Winterthur, AXA and Sun Wah LINUX have founded premium programs for excellent teaching and learning in the University.