The Graduate School of Xi’an Jiaotong University is one of the first group of graduate schools established at the approval of the State Council in 1984. Since its establishment, the Graduate School has benefited from making postgraduate education at the reliance of specialists and scholars. In December 1982, the university published the unsurpassed “Postgraduate Work Monograph” . In 1992 we took the lead again among all the institutions of higher education to set up an “Academic Degree and Graduate Education Research Institute”, where several specialists inside and outside the university were invited to carry out researches in common in order to explore the development of the postgraduate education. This was in accordance with the extensive of research achievements of postgraduate teaching reforms occurring China.

In 1984, Xi’an Jiaotong University, together with other universities, proposed and launched a pilot project to cultivate M.S. of the engineering category. Based on the pilot project, the “Program for Professional Degree of Engineering Master” was approved by Academic Degree Committee of the State Council. The initial work of engineering masters expanded throughout the country and directly serves the main objectives of national economy, which is well received by medium and large enterprises. In 1985, an obligator course system for postgraduate academic degrees was put forth and into implementation for the first time. Then, the achievement spread throughout the country, with the first class prize of state excellent teaching achievement awarded in 1993. In 1994, the Graduate School of Xi’an Jiaotong University implemented a program to enroll and cultivate doctoral student in a more divese area, and worked out a series of reform measures to extend the specialty sphere of postgraduate students at the PhD level. This enhance their creative ability and raise the cultivating quality in a comprehensive fashionan .

In order to steadily enhance the postgraduate teaching level steadily and to strengthen the construction of postgraduate courses and the relevant text books , the school published 64 postgraduate text books , which is well-know throughout the country. Some of the text books were given awards of the state-, ministry- and provincial level. In the 1995 assessment of 33 graduate schools in the whole country, the Graduate School of Xi’an Jiaotong University was listed at the fifth place and the school was given commendation and awards by the former State Education Commission for its “substantial achievement and outstanding contribution” to postgraduate education. In 1999, it was given the title of the “Advanced Collective for Nation-wide Academic Degree and Postgraduate Education Management”.

In recent years, the Graduate School deepened the postgraduate teaching reform and initiated new reform measures, including flexible educational system, doctoral dissertation fund system, selective course system for postgraduate students and so on. The focus is to foster the innovative capacity and practical ability in order to cultivate high-quality, innovative and talented people meeting the requirements of the 21st century.