Yunnan University was founded in December 1922, and it started to enroll its students on April 20th 1923. The name of Yunnan University has for six times been changed in the past 80 years. It started as the privately run University of the Eastern Land and has thus far been developed into the only key national general university in the province of Yunnan, having trained for the society over seventeen thousand specialized professionals in various fields. Currently, Yunnan University is among sixty-one “211 Project” universities in China authorized by the Chinese central government to be specially developed. Yunnan University has also been put into the list of the key national universities for the special construction in the national program of the Western China Development.

Yunnan University is situated in the city of Kunming - the provincial capital of Yunnan. It faces the Green Lake --- a winter haunt for Siberian seagulls and next to the Yuantong Hill --- a zoological park known for the animals and birds of rare species, occupying an area of 426,669 square meters in which 350,000 square meters are of the classrooms and other teaching-related buildings. The campus of Yunnan University is covered with the green shades of exuberant ginkgoes and cherries under which are the patches of fragrant orchids and narcissuses, and blocks of teaching buildings, library buildings, laboratory buildings, etc. stand out among a riot of colors of the blooming flowers. Such picturesque surroundings in a salubrious climate of the lasting spring are really ideal for study and other academic pursuits.

Yunnan University has now developed into a key national institute of higher education with a large group of academic professionals offering all the courses covered by the complete curricula in the fields of liberal arts, law, science, technology, economy, and management. The students currently studying on the campus of Yunnan University have reached 19,872 persons, of whom 9,919 are the full-time undergraduate students, 2,853 are postgraduate students (94 persons are studying for their doctorate degrees, 684 persons are studying for their master’s degrees, 1,842 persons are studying the advanced courses in the postgraduate classes, 170 persons are studying for their degrees in the specialized law classes, and 63 persons are studying for their degrees in the advanced class organized for teachers), and 7,100 are students under the programs for the night university and correspondence university students.
 
 
Yunnan University currently has the following fifteen schools, college and institute under its administration: School of Economy, School of Adult Education, School of Humanity and Liberal Arts, School of Life Science and Chemistry, School of Information, School of Science, Institute for Development Research, School of Occupational Technology, School of Law, School of Public Management, School of Business Administration and Tourism Management, School of Foreign Languages, International College of Modern Design Arts, School of Medicine, School of International Relations, School of International Cultures, School of the Dianchi Lake, School of Tourism Culture at Lijiang, School of Software Engineering, etc. In these schools, college and institute there are more than thirty teaching departments and divisions that offer sixty-five major fields of study for the four-year programs for the undergraduates to obtain the baccalaureates.

Additionally, Yunnan University also holds sixteen centers for development and research, twenty-five research institutes, ten research offices, and four teaching-oriented service centers. In the above-described major fields of study, History, Biology, Mathematical Science are established for the purpose of training teaching and research professionals at the national level (and Yunnan University is applying to the Ministry of Education for its approval to set up a state-level experimental base for the comprehensive quality training in liberal arts.) Yunnan University also has established a state-level base for training professional teachers. Among its disciplinary branches, Yunnan University has two key state-level disciplinary groups under the current construction, sixteen key provincial-level disciplines, four doctorate degree conferring points, one post-doctorate-degree-related mobile station, forty-eight master’s degree conferring points, three specialized degree (law, occupational education and MBA) conferring points, one state-level center for new product research and development, and one key laboratory of the Ministry of Education.
 
The library in Yunnan University has been equipped with modern facilities of full functionalities including the modern, multi-functional and open information resource base. The operations of books’ access, cataloging, circulation, and public retrieval in this library have already been put under the computerized network management. This library houses a collection of over1.2 millions books, some of which are the rare copies or valuable historical literatures in China.
 
Yunnan University has from the very beginning formed a tradition of attaching a great importance to its pursuits of scientific research, closely following the international frontier disciplines and activating the lively academic atmosphere on campus. Through the exploration efforts by all the generations of scholars in Yunnan University, the research in the basic disciplinary branches and the advantageous fields has been strengthened, the scope of research in the new fields and applied fields has been broadened, and the efforts in the critical and influential research projects have achieved the optimized integrations. Meanwhile, Yunnan University has also actively provided its services for the local economic construction and promoted the incubation, promotion and application of the scientific research achievements.

In the recent five years, Yunnan University has completed over 500 researches of various categories, 170 of which have been reworded respectively for their achievements in the relevant fields. There are more than 250 monographic works come off the press and 3,100 research papers published, and Yunnan University has come out to be around the 60th among the Chinese institutions of higher education on the SCI. In the applied fields, Yunnan University has also achieved a great number of results of high and new technology, and the BR-120 of Yunnan University has been put into the category of the special items to be publicized during the 9th Five-Year Plan period in China.
 
Yunnan University Fund is an acting council member of the Fund of Universities and Colleges of China. Through its development Yunnan University Fund has now held nearly seventy Chinese and overseas directors, who have provided their financial and material contributions and constructive ideas. They have also brought many academic celebrities at home and abroad into contact with Yunnan University thus having positively promoted the reform, construction and development of Yunnan University. In the recent five years, Yunnan University has established different levels of exchange relations with more than 50 institutes of higher learning and research organizations in more than twenty countries and regions such as United States, Great Britain, Russia, Japan, Australia, etc, and it has sent out more than 200 persons to carry out the academic exchanges and cooperative research abroad and has successfully sponsored more than ten international academic conferences. Yunnan University is becoming one of the academically active universities in the Asian and Pacific region.