Tianmu College of Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University（ZAFU）, sponsored jointly by ZAFU and Wuyue Educational Development co. LTD., was established in 2000 under the permission of Zhejiang provincial government. It was an independent college offering full-time undergraduate education confirmed by Ministry of Education.
Located in Lin’an City (west of the popular tourist destination Hangzhou), the college has a campus covering nearly 468 mus with 140,000 square meters of building space. With its teaching building, experimental building, library, students’ centre and playground, the modern buildings and facilities in a setting of great natural beauty, surrounded by mountains and waters, making it a most suitable place for learning, teaching, and conducting research. It is regarded as an ideal academic place and elected as provincial “Campus of Civilization”, “Campus of Safety” and “national model of green campus”.
Carrying out the policy of “Relying on ZAFU, pursuing a relatively independent and standardized administration” by the Ministry of Education, the college implements a running responsibility system of college president led by the Board and includes 4 functional departments（the college office, department of students’ affairs, teaching affairs, finance） and 7 teaching departments（the department of biology and environment, engineering, humanities, economic management and landscape gardening and architecture，basic courses, respectively）.
In accordance with the requirement of social and economic development of Zhejiang Province, the college offers 29 undergraduate majors and 6 training directions. Based itself on Zhejiang, the college also enrolls students from 7 other provinces. At present, it has more than 6500 full-time students.
The college, inheriting and carrying forward ZAFU's fine traditions, follows the theory of “being students-oriented and building a harmonious college with truth-seeking attitudes” so as to foster the knowledgeable, competent, versatile and applicable talents. It adopts the talents training model of “Categorizing Enrollment, Categorizing Training” and“Platform  plus Module” and practices credit system and elastic term of learning in which the basic college system is 4 years while the elastic one ranges from 3 to 6 years. The college issues diplomas to students who obtain required credits and conditions for graduation and the Bachelor’s Degree Certificate of Tianmu College of ZAFU to students who meet the requirements from 2012.
The college has established a well structured teaching staff who combines professional competence and political integrity, works both part-time or full-time and has sound academic backgrounds and titles. Among its 400 staff, 180 are full time teachers, masters add up to 82% and 32% have their advanced academic titles; one was honored as the outstanding college teacher of Zhejiang Colleges and Universities;2 has been elected into the provincial talent pool.
Focusing on improving educational quality, the college lays great emphasis on students’ practical abilities and creativities. Thus, to achieve its training target, it spares no effort to perfects its teaching plan and enhances its educational reforms and sets up “practical and creative” credit system. Up to now, there are 10 provincial projects directed by teachers in the college involving educational quality and reforms; the major of business management was elected as a provincial key constructive major; the environmental law was elected as a provincial excellent course; two course books, the Biology Chemistry and the Law of World Trade Organization were elected to be the provincial key constructive items; the experimental center was evaluated to be a “provincial model experimental construction center”; etc. In recent years, there are 264 person times of students won the various subject contests, including 1 international gold, 2 silvers, and 9 national awards. Therefore, the students’ graduation, degree grants and employment rates have kept at 97%, 95% and 90% and the students also enjoy a high reputation in the job market.
The college also advocates the establishing of academic atmosphere to train students with integrity quality. It sets up a series of regulations and principles to help them form good learning habits; meanwhile, it organizes colorful campus cultural activities to improve their integrity qualities. To help the students grow up soundly, the college contacts the students’ families closely and pursues an educational policy of involvement by “all staff, in the whole process and from multi-dimension”.
So far, the college, based on the requirement “scientific development and standardized administration” by the ministry of education, is striding forward to forge a well-known independent college of high learning in Zhejiang province. It covers various disciplines including economics, law, literature, science, technology, agriculture and management of distinctive characteristics. It aims to enroll 8000 to 10000 in the future.