The School of Social Reasearch (SSR) was established in 2003, as the leading institute for developing sociological disciplines at Renmin University of China (RUC). SSR has three departments—the Department of Sociology, the Department of Demography, and the Department of Social Work and Social Policy, and two affiliated research institutes—the Institute of Anthropology and the Institute of Gerontology. SSR has a diverse array of degree programs, including two undergraduate programs, ten master’s program, and seven doctoral programs (see Figure 1). The two undergraduate programs in Sociology and Social Work were among the national “First-Class Undergraduate Programs,” ranked by the Ministry of Education of China. SSR is authorized to grant doctoral degrees in Sociology (first-level discipline), and it also operates a post-doctoral research station in Sociology (first-level discipline). (China has 112 first-level disciplines in China, and Sociology, Demography, Anthropology, Ethnography, and Folklore all belong to the first-level Sociology discipline.) SSR also hosts three national key disciplinary programs in Sociology, Demography, and Population, Resource and Environmental Economics, along with two key research centers supported by the Ministry of Education, and one key research center supported by the Beijing Municipal Government (see Figure 2).

The program of sociological disciplines at Renmin University of China, as a whole,

◎ has been consistently ranked the first for five consecutive times in first-level discipline evaluations conducted by the Ministry of Education of China.

◎ was selected as a national “Double First-Class” program during the first round of evaluation in 2017, and was selected again in the second round with a top-tier evaluation result in 2022, making it one of the only two “double first-class” program. (“Double First-Class” is a Chinese national program to promote selected disciplines in Chinese universities.)

◎ won seven awards for Outstanding Achievements in Humanities and Social Sciences from the Ministry of Education, ranking first among its peers in China.

Besides,

◎ The course “Introduction to Sociology” of SSR has been awarded as national First-Class Undergraduate Course by the Ministry of Education.

The textbook 'Introduction to Sociology (New Edition),” written by SSR faculties, won the only first prize in Sociology in the national contest of Excellent Textbooks by the Ministry of Education