A subway station in Changsha is named Changsha University, a stop on the city’s Metro Line 3 that tells you how tightly the city claims this school. The university’s roots reach back to a teachers training class of 1970, a basic college of 1978 and the Changsha University of 1983; in 2004 the former junior college was elevated to a full public undergraduate university. It is now a master’s degree granting institution, managed jointly by the province and the city of Changsha with the city in the lead.
Location explains part of the school’s identity. Its campus of about 1,970 mu, some 131 hectares, sits inside the core area of the Maling Shan video and cultural innovation park, a national demonstration zone for cultural industry in a city known as a world media arts capital. A provincial garden-style campus, it has been called one of the country’s most beautiful university grounds, with a library of 1.66 million volumes.
Sixteen schools and colleges offer 51 undergraduate programs, built around engineering application groups with cultural creativity and modern services as the two supporting wings. 11 national first-class programs and eight provincial applied-distinctive disciplines anchor the academic side, and the school grants professional master’s degrees in electronic information, biology and medicine, and drama and film, covering 13 directions.
The faculty of 1,260-plus, including 440 with senior titles and 520 with doctorates, teaches some 18,000 undergraduates and 146 postgraduates, with 600 more graduate students trained jointly with other universities over the years. Teaching leans on industry: partnerships with some 200 enterprises including Sany Heavy Industry and Zoomlion, and a competition record that placed the school ninth among China’s newer undergraduate universities and 180th nationally in 2019-2023.
Research serves the city directly. Among 36 provincial-and-ministerial platforms, the school co-built the Maling Shan new media college with the provincial radio and television authority, and its project on digital preservation of traditional villages was named one of ten representative achievements of the first decade of UNESCO’s international center on space technologies for natural and cultural heritage. It has led 209 projects funded by the national science and social science foundations and holds 412 invention patents.
More than 200 international students have studied here, agreements reach more than 50 universities and institutions in over 20 countries, and the school hosts a Changsha workstation of that same UNESCO center. The subway stop named after the university is the smallest sign of the bond between city and school, and the bond runs both ways.
Data Source: CCSU Official Website (as of 2026)
