(COURTESY OF SUSTC)

Zhu Qingshi (center), President of the South University of Science and Technology of China (SUSTC) in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, poses with the first two graduates Wang Jiale (left) and He Minghao after they received diplomas issued by the university.

The two students passed their dissertation defense and graduated from the school one year earlier than 43 other students who enrolled together during the school's opening year in 2011.

In China, diplomas are issued by the Ministry of Education. The SUSTC, which has been designed by its founders as China's first professor-led and bureaucracy-free university, is the first to break with the practice.

It is typical for the world's top universities to issue their own diplomas, Zhu said.