Sino-foreign cooperative education has played an important role in boosting scientific development of higher education in Jiangsu. The province has made great strides in education cooperation with foreign countries.

The province was the first in China to get involved in education cooperation with foreign countries. Its Nanjing University and Johns Hopkins University in the US set up a joint culture research center in the early 1980s. In 1993, the Jinling Institute of Technology opened joint higher vocational education programs with institutes of higher learning in Australia, which were the first of their kind in the country.

Jiangsu now ranks first nationwide with 333 Sino-foreign education facilities and programs, 16 percent of the country's total. There are 298 of them offering high-level degree education, including seven facilities at undergraduate education level or above. The province has cultivated 60,000 international scholars since 2010.

Jiangsu has strived to introduce top-notch universities abroad since 2011 through government invitation, education facility cooperation and proper funding, and has made headway. The Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou has offered undergraduate education since 2006 and launched Master's and PhD programs with foreign degrees in 2012. Wuhan University set up the Duke Kunshan University with Duke University in the US, and the new facility went into operation and greeted its first postgraduate candidates and undergraduate exchange students in the autumn of 2014. Duke University ranks 13th worldwide and 8th in the US and is now the top university that China has introduced. In addition, Southeast University and Monash University; Renmin University of China and Sorbonne University of Paris, Universite de Paul Valery-Montpellier III and Euromed Marseille Ecole de Management; Nanjing University of Science and Technology and Ecole nationale d'ingénieurs de Metz; Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology and the UK University of Reading have all formed joint education facilities in the province. In addition, the US Carnegie Mellon University, Canada's University of British Columbia and University of Waterloo, and The UK University of Sheffield, University of Manchester, and the Russia Petersburg State Transport University all have joint programs with Jiangsu.

Three institutes and 53 programs involving Sino-foreign cooperative undergraduate or higher education in Jiangsu were rated qualified by the Ministry of Education from 2009 to 2015. A total of 90 percent of recruited students were satisfied with the programs, the most favorable evaluation nationwide. In 2012, the Ministry of Education and the management committee of the Suzhou Industrial Park signed an agreement to build China's first international demonstration zone for higher education at Dushu Lake in the city.