As a research-oriented, interdisciplinary liberal arts and sciences university located in China, our primary mission is to provide the highest quality undergraduate and graduate education and enable our students to lead purposeful and productive lives. The core of our educational offering is a four-year undergraduate degree program featuring an integrated and multi-disciplinary curriculum, with a strong Chinese, American, and global focus. In a culture of academic excellence and freedom, we prepare students for professional and academic leadership roles across the globe.

As a highly selective Sino-U.S. joint-venture university, we promote innovative scholarship in service to society. We embrace the integration of global, national, and local traditions of thought, promoting cross-cultural understanding and cross-border collaborations. 

Duke Kunshan offers students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a highly diverse, internationally oriented learning environment. The advantage of this environment is that our students have ample opportunities to learn from one another and to share and exchange ideas based on their unique backgrounds and cultures. Duke Kunshan students become more deeply grounded in their own history and culture as well as more globally aware – an important prerequisite for career success in the globalized world of the 21st century.

The city of Kunshan lies in the heart of the Yangtze River Delta region, one of the most developed areas in China. Bordering Shanghai, a large international metropolis, to the east and Suzhou, one of the country’s most renowned cultural and historical cities, to the west, Kunshan is an emerging industrial and commercial city with a history dating back more than 2,000 years. As an important county-level city in the southeastern part of Jiangsu province, Kunshan occupies an area of 359 square miles (931 square kilometers), one-quarter of which is covered by lakes and rivers. Kunshan’s superior natural and urban living environment has attracted people from all over the world to live and work. Widely considered a successful model for China’s social and economic development, Kunshan has won many titles, including the top ranking in Forbes China’s list of best county-level cities in the Chinese mainland for six consecutive years, and the 2010 UN-Habitat Scroll of Honor Award. A number of Fortune 500 companies and other leading enterprises have established operations in Kunshan’s three national-level development zones, two provincial-level development zones, and within its eight townships. Kunshan is located about 60 kilometers west of Shanghai, a 90-minute drive from Shanghai’s downtown and about 50 minutes from Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport. There are more than 100 high-speed trains running between Kunshan and Shanghai every day, with each trip lasting under 20 minutes. A new subway system will be completed in 2021, adding another convenient option for transportation between Kunshan, Shanghai and Suzhou. 

Yes, you are very welcome to visit the campus. For individual visits, our admissions counselors are available for consultation as well as trained student campus guide volunteers, who can provide campus tours upon reservation. Please send your visit request to intl-admissions@dukekunshan.edu.cn at least 48 hours before arrival. For group visits, please send the request seven days in advance. 

Duke Kunshan is different in several ways. First, we offer an innovative liberal arts curriculum that is at the cutting-edge of knowledge and practice. The curriculum was developed after careful consideration of the key strengths and weaknesses of higher education in China and the U.S. The curriculum is derived from the academic excellence associated with Duke University, which is consistently ranked among the top 10 universities in the U.S., according to U.S. News & World Report.

Second, Duke Kunshan is a research-oriented university. We take great pride in the fact that our faculty are known for excellence in teaching and research, with special relevance to China, including global health, environment, innovation, and research and development management.

Third, our state-of-the-art campus offers a total student experience second to none. We go the extra mile to ensure that each student has exciting extracurricular “outside the classroom” experiences that complement the innovative learning environment inside the classroom.

Furthermore, we are a tight-knit community of students and faculty who have come from all over the globe to live, study and research together. Close student-faculty relationships are a hallmark of the Duke Kunshan experience.