The School of Finance (AUFE) is a teaching unit that focuses on undergraduate and postgraduate education and integrates teaching, scientific research and social services. For more than 60 years, aiming at cultivating applied, compound and innovative talents and based on the orientation of‘setting feet on Anhui, facing the whole country, and servicing the modern financial industry, the college strives to provide talents and intellectual support for local and industrial economic and financial development, and has cultivated more than 20,000 financial talents of various types for the society. Up to now, the School of Finance is the director unit of the China Finance Annual Conference, the executive director unit of the China Financial Engineering Annual Conference, the vice-chairman unit of the Anhui Finance Society, the Anhui Financial Statistics Society, and the Anhui Insurance Society, and a secretary-general Unit of the Finance Sub-Committee of the Universities Cooperation Committee for Economic Majors in Anhui Province.
The finance discipline of the college is the first finance majors set up in Anhui Province and the traditional dominant discipline of AUFE. It is ranked as B-level key discipline in Anhui and maintains a leading position in the province. There are two special discipline zones such as asset price and financial stability and rural finance, forming a distinctive discipline direction. The college has two academic postgraduate degree majors in finance and investment economics, as well as the right to confer master's degrees in two majors in finance and insurance. Now there are full-time undergraduate majors in finance, insurance, financial engineering, investment and internet finance. The major of finance is the first batch of national first-class major construction sites, national-level characteristic majors, national-level comprehensive reform pilot majors, and provincial-level characteristic (brand) majors; the major of investment is national first-class major construction sites, provincial-level comprehensive reform pilot majors and the provincial characteristic (brand) major; the financial engineering major is a provincial first-class major construction site and a provincial-level comprehensive reform pilot major; the insurance major is a provincial-level first-class major construction site, a university-level characteristic major and a comprehensive reform pilot major. The college innovates the talents training model, explores school-enterprise collaborative education, cooperates with relevant enterprises, and selects outstanding students to set up financial engineering (FRM) orientation classes, investment studies (CFA) orientation classes and financial technology experimental classes.
The college consists of five teaching departments, namely, the Department of Finance, the Department of Investment, the Department of Financial Engineering, the Department of Insurance, and the Department of Financial Technology. It also embodies two experimental teaching centers composed of a financial technology laboratory and a quantitative investment laboratory. In addition, the university's economics interdisciplinary comprehensive experiment center is operated and managed by the college. There are two virtual research institutions, i.e., Financial Research Institute and Insurance Research Institute. The college has a number of provincial quality engineering platforms: the provincial key laboratory of financial asset allocation and management, the provincial teaching team of finance, the provincial teaching team of financial technology, the innovative experimental area for the “full-process practice embedded” financial talents training mode, SME investment and financing innovative talent training practice and training demonstration center, financial virtual simulation experimental teaching center, bank skills comprehensive training school-enterprise cooperation practice education base, etc. The provincial B-level discipline and skill competition project created by the college, the Anhui University Student Financial Investment Innovation Competition, has accumulated more than 300,000 participants since it was first held in 2016, becoming a well-known brand in provincial discipline competitions.
The college currently has 95 faculty members. There are 70 full-time teachers, including 10 professors, 20 associate professors, and 48 doctors, accounting for 68.57% of the total. There are two experts enjoying special allowances from the State Council, one expert from the National Hundred Thousand Talents Project Support Program, one expert with the title of Wanjiang Scholar Distinguished Professor, one National Excellent Teacher, two Anhui Province Academic and Technical Leaders, three Anhui Province Young and Middle-aged Backbone Teachers, four provincial-level distinguished teachers and two provincial-level young excellent teachers. In recent years, teachers have undertaken more than 10 National Natural Science Foundation and Social Science Fund projects, more than 30 provincial and ministerial scientific research projects, and published more than 10 academic monographs. In addition, they have published more than 200 academic papers in such core journals as Journal of Economics, Management World, Journal of Management Science, Finance, Trade and Economics, etc. Nearly 20 textbooks have been published, including 3 national planning textbooks and 4 provincial planning textbooks. The curriculum construction has achieved fruitful results, including a number of provincial and school-level high-quality resource sharing courses, high-quality video open courses and large-scale online demonstration courses.
In terms of social services, the teachers of the college have trained more than 10,000 people for party and government departments, financial institutions, large enterprises, etc., undertaken more than 30 horizontal research projects of various types, and held more than 100 academic reports and special lectures. They have also published a series of research reports on Anhui's economic and social development, including such think tank achievements as Anhui SME Financing Research Report, Anhui SME Development and Financing Research Report and Anhui Rural Inclusive Finance Development Research Report.
The college has successively established inter-faculty cooperative relations with Taiwan Mingchuan University and Tamkang University, South Korea’s Pusan University, Ireland’s University of Cork, Poland’s Warsaw University and many other overseas universities. Cooperation has been carried out with good results in such areas as faculty training, academic communication, collaborate research and students cultivation.
In recent years, the rate of college undergraduates in passing the national postgraduate entrance examination (including going abroad for further study) has stabilized at around 20%, and the employment rate ranks the forefront of the university.