Wenzhou, which lacks high-quality universities, is accelerating its efforts to make up for this shortcoming.

The Paper reported that recently, the News Network of Wenzhou University of Technology published an article titled "Wenzhou University of Technology: High-Quality Party Building Leading the Leapfrog Development of the University — A Documentary of Reform and Development Over the Five Years Since Its Inauguration", revealing the university's development goals for the 15th Five-Year Plan period.

The article stated that the 15th Five-Year Development Plan of Wenzhou University of Technology further clarifies its striving objectives: by 2030, the university will be basically built into a first-class applied science and engineering powerhouse in the region of southern Zhejiang, northern Fujian and eastern Jiangxi; by 2035, it will strive to successfully rename itself as "Wenzhou University of Technology" and become a doctoral degree-granting institution under project construction.

As the third city in Zhejiang with a GDP exceeding one trillion yuan, Wenzhou has long faced a major pain point in its urban development — a shortage of universities, especially high-quality ones.

At present, Wenzhou has a total of 11 regular higher education institutions with 158,300 enrolled students, both figures are only about one-fourth of those in Hangzhou. Compared with Ningbo, which has 16 higher education institutions and 257,000 enrolled students, the gap is also quite obvious. When compared with cities of similar GDP such as Xuzhou and Dalian, Wenzhou is also at a distinct disadvantage in terms of the number and academic level of its higher education institutions.

In recent years, Zhejiang has been committed to promoting the construction of high-level local universities and accelerating the resolution of the unbalanced distribution of high-quality higher education resources. Wenzhou has also quickened its pace to make up for its shortcomings in this field.

At the beginning of 2021, with the approval of the Ministry of Education, Oujiang College of Wenzhou University was restructured into Wenzhou University of Technology, becoming the only public undergraduate institution of science and engineering in Wenzhou. In April of the same year, Wenzhou University of Technology was officially inaugurated, with the expectation that it would accelerate the construction of a high-level applied university of science and engineering with distinct characteristics, and "become the power source for Wenzhou's urban development, the incubator for innovative talents, and the golden business card of higher education".

In October 2023, Wenzhou held its municipal conference on the high-quality development of higher education, proposing to take the construction of the "Double First-Class 196 Project" and the "High-level Vocational College and Major Construction Plan" as important starting points, and make every effort to promote the connotative development and overall improvement of higher education.

The 2024 Wenzhou Municipal Government Work Report further proposed to support Wenzhou Medical University and Wenzhou University in striving to be selected into the provincial "Double First-Class 196 Project" universities, and accelerate the construction of Wenzhou-Kean University as an international high-level university and Wenzhou University of Technology as an applied university of science and engineering.

In fact, to support the industrial development of Wenzhou, both campuses of Wenzhou University of Technology are directly "embedded" in industrial heartlands: the Binhai Campus is located in Wenzhou Bay New Area, which has more than 1,000 industrial enterprises above designated size, while the Yueqing Campus is rooted in Yueqing City, a strong county-level economy in China, achieving zero-distance connection with the hundred-billion-yuan electrical industry cluster. This also facilitates talent gathering, as the retention rate of the university's undergraduate graduates in Wenzhou ranks first among all undergraduate universities in Wenzhou for five consecutive years.

From an external perspective, as an important pillar of Zhejiang's "Iron Triangle", Wenzhou must make up for its shortcomings in higher education as an inevitable choice to promote industrial upgrading and enhance the city's overall strength.

In May this year, the leading official of the Wenzhou Municipal Party Committee once again "highlighted key priorities" for the construction of Wenzhou University of Technology, emphasizing that the university should root itself in Wenzhou to thoroughly advance the "two major undertakings": the integrated reform and development of education, science and technology, and talents, as well as the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation and industrial innovation. It should adhere to the school-running orientation of "local, science and engineering-focused, and application-oriented", and accelerate the construction of a first-class applied science and engineering powerhouse in southern Zhejiang, northern Fujian and eastern Jiangxi.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Urban Evolution Theory", authored by Liu Yanmei, and published with authorization from 36Kr.