Frontiers of Engineering Management DOI 10.15302/J-FEM-2014010
ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT EDUCATION
Gao-feng Zhu
China’s Engineering Education: Situation & Outlook
Abstract Since China’s drive in 1978 to implement national reforms and open it up to the outside world, its higher education sector has made rapid progress in the field of engineering and has been able to achieve rapid expansion of scale, Positive change in educational structure, more education investment, improved teaching quality, Educational reform and international cooperation. While praising the achievements, we need to acknowledge that there are also some problems in China’s engineering education, as imbalance between supply and demand, homogeneity of goals and patterns, Lack of practice, curriculum system not aligned with the characteristics of engineering, insufficient importance attached to innovation and entrepreneurial education, Poor competence mix. In light of China’s process of modernization and the Outline, we forecast that: competition between universities will intensify and the supply-demand imbalance will be alleviated, differentiation depends on the reform of engineer system and administrative university classification, quality of engineering education will be improved with a complete quality assurance system, industrial transformation will be conducive to joint talent development by universities and businesses, instructors will be the mainstay of educational reform, quality of students should be improved in many different ways. As China’s modernization accelerates, the quality of its engineering education is getting better and better. We expect to work closely with foreign colleagues to improve the quality to turn out engineering talents meeting the demand of national development. Keywords: engineering, education, situation, outlooks Engineering education has achieved the attention of countries across the world. In order to fulfill national human resource requirements, countries have implemented trial reforms in engineering education. From an index perspective, China already has quite a few scholars researching both national
and international adjustments to higher education and will put forward a series of proposed reforms and ways to develop elite human resources. However, few researchers have focused on long-term trends in engineering education. Additionally, according to researcher, most researchers that study engineering education are based in universities, or research centers, and few come from the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE). In August of 2004, the ASEE organized Third Annual Joint Conference on International Engineering Education at Tsinghua University in Beijing. Participants in the conference discussed experience gained from attempted reforms in engineering education in countries across the world. The conference also focused on passing on comprehensive information related to the three primary issues of international certification in engineering education reforms and quality (Wang & Li, 2004). In 2007, the CAE and Shanghai city government hosted a research discussion exploring international issues revolving around reforms in engineering education at the Shanghai (The Chinese Academy of Engineering Education Committee, 2007). This meeting’s topic of “the demand for talents in a new era in sustainable development” incited lively discussion and added to current understanding in this area. A similar meeting was held in 2009 to explore “incubation, interaction, and innovation”. This played an important role in fostering quality talent in China, promoting innovation in Chinese engineering education, and raising comprehensive national strength (Dong & Yin, 2009). According to the data, from the past until, the standing of China’s engineering education in the world has continued to rise, but it has not continued cultivated quality talent in line with global standards. In order to promote the development and reform of China’s engineering education, it is necessary to acknowledge the current situation, and hope for a promising future.
Manuscript received December 2, 2013; accepted March 1, 2014
1 Achievements
Gao-feng Zhu ( ) Chinese Academy of engineering, Beijing 100088, China Email:
[email protected]
Since China’s drive in 1978 to implement national reforms and open it up to the outside world, its higher education sec-
© The Author(s) 2014. This article is published with open access at engineering.cae.cn
106
Gao-feng Zhu
tor has made rapid progress in the field of engineering and has been able to achieve the following: 1.1 Rapid expansion of scale China, as it continues its industrialization process, has an enormous demand for engineering talents. As required by the central government, institutions of higher learning throughout the country have expanded their enrollment since 1999. The number of newly-enrolled students and the number of students pursuing associate and bachelor’s degrees increased tremendously in the decade from 2000 to 2011. See Table 1 for details. Engineering program participants have always accounted for the largest part of total enrollment, 40 percent before the enrollment boom started in 1999 and between one-third and two-fifths from 2000 to 2011. China ranks No. 1 among all countries in terms of both absolute number and proportion of students attending engineering programs. In 2011, some 195,000 graduate students were enrolled in engineering programs, 34.8 percent of the total. The total number of people pursing an engineering master’s or doctorate degree was 588,000, or 35.7 percent of the total. The people completing their engineering master or doctor degree programs totaled 145,000, or 33.7 percent of the total (The
National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China, 2012). In 2011, China had 1,015 universities and 1,207 Short-cycle Higher Education Institutions offering engineering programs, 2,222 in total, accounting for 92.2 percent of China’s total number of higher learning institutions (2,409). 12,466 bachelor’s degree programs (30.76 percent of the total) and 17,379 graduates of Short-cycle Courses programs (47.9 percent of the total) were authorized to grant engineering degrees, 29,845 in total (38.9 percent of the total number of programs offered in China, which was 76,829). See Table 2 for details. The enrollment expansion initiative provides more Chinese youth with the opportunity to receive higher education. A considerable portion of young people choose to attend engineering programs. This helps build the HR pipeline to support the ongoing industrialization in China. The gross enrollment rate for higher education was 26.9 percent in 2011 (Ministry of Education of the People’ Republic of China, 2012). Since China has just left the low-to-medium-income country rank, and the country has been implementing the family planning policy effectively for years, the enrollment expansion rate is decreasing, with only 5 percent in recent years. Enrollment of engineering programs is forecasted to decrease year by year.
Table 1 Number of Students Pursuing Associate and Bachelor’s Degrees and New Enrollment in 2000 and 2011 Students pursuing associate and bachelor’s degrees Total number
Number of students attending engineering programs
Percentage
2000
5.561 million
2.148 million
2011
22.318 million
Average annual growth Average annual growth in the first five years
Students newly enrolled Total number
Number of students attending engineering programs
Percentage
38.6%
2.206 million
832,000
37.7%
8.689 million
38.9%
6.618 million
2.635 million
39.8%
13.5%
13.6%
-
10.5%
11%
-
23%
20%
-
18%
17%
-
Note. 2000, adapted from Ministry of Education of the People’ Republic of China website: http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/ moe_589/200506/7886.html. 2011, adapted from China Statistics Press website: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2012/indexch.htm.
Table 2 Scale of China’s Higher Engineering Education (2011) Total
Percentage
Number of universities (institutions) offering engineering programs
2,222
92.2%
Number of programs authorized to grant engineering degrees
29,845
38.9%
Number of bachelor degree programs authorized to grant engineering degrees
12,466
30.76%
Number of Short-cycle Higher Education Institutions programs authorized to grant engineering degrees
17,379
47.9%
8.689 million
37.6%
588,000
35.7%
Total number of students attending engineering programs Total number of students pursing master and doctor degrees in engineering
China’s Engineering Education: Situation & Outlook
1.2 Positive change in educational structure Since new China was founded, the central government has been attaching equal importance to higher education and vocational education to bring up a large group of professionals with specialized skills. But in the 1990s, vocational education was disregarded for many reasons, and parents expected their children, even those with strong hands-on skills, to attend programs offered by non-vocational institutions. Most of the existing vocational schools were upgraded, and the remaining schools merged, artificially cutting off the relationship between such schools, industry, and relevant businesses. But things have changed significantly recently. The central government is renewing its attention on vocational education in response to proposals from various stakeholders. For example, the State Council held two national conferences on vocational education in 2002 and 2005, and vocational education has been included in many educational programs. This has promoted the development of higher vocational education, including vocational engineering education, and has helped it recover. In 2011, China’s universities recruited 6.815 million students. Of these, 2.579 million, or 37.8 percent, went to higher vocational schools and 1.423 million, 55.2 percent of the total enrollment of higher vocational schools, chose to purse engineering degrees. There has been another positive development in the field of degree education. Application-oriented and practiceoriented master’s programs, especially those in engineering, have gained recognition and great momentum. There were 495,000 new graduate students admitted in 2011. Among them, 158,000, or 31.9 percent, were pursing professional master’s degrees. Of those pursuing master’s degrees, 130,000, or 82 percent, attended engineering programs. Trial doctoral programs in engineering have also been launched. 1.3 More education investment With expansion of the scale of education, more money has been invested into this sector. Investment in 2011 hit RMB 2,386.929 billion, increasing by a factor of 5.2 from 2000 and up 22 percent from 2010 (The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China). As a result, campuses were improved and expanded and teaching equipment increased and upgraded. Average annual growth of education investment over the examined 11-year period was 18 percent. The growth of investment in higher education, including higher engineering education, should not be lower than this rate. 1.4 Improved teaching quality With the evolution of technology and the Chinese economy, institutions of higher learning in China began to offer some new and interdisciplinary programs, such as molecular biology, function materials, resources recycling, Internet of Things, biomedical engineering. Many of these new programs are related engineering (e.g., environmental science
107
and engineering, information, new material, new energy and energy conservation, aerospace, oceaneering, nanotechnology engineering, energy chemistry, hydro acoustic engineering and smart grid). Some of these were previously only offered by a few universities, but are currently available in many universities. Some traditional programs have also included new courses into their curriculum, such as clean utilization of coal, extreme manufacturing, automatic process control, information technology, etc., bringing up a host of talents urgently needed. As needed by the market economy, engineering programs attach more importance to common-knowledge education. Traditional engineering programs were regarded as Class-I disciplines. Attention has been paid to basic knowledge impartation and improvement of students’ adaptability. In addition, social science and humanities disciplines such as economics, law, ethics and other courses have been added to engineering programs. Combinations of theory and practice are being discussed and enhanced. Many schools have made new progress in university-industry partnerships. 1.5 Educational reform Against the backdrop of massive construction, education authorities and some schools, especially those in regions with well-developed economies, have realized that traditional teaching models can no longer meet industry’s needs for development pattern transformation, so reform is imperative. The new teaching mode emphasizes student & demand orientation, comprehensive engineering training and holistic transformation of the curriculum system. The National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) outlines a set of national educational reform programs. One is the Outstanding Engineers Educating and Training Program (the Outstanding Program for short), which was initiated in June 2010(The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China). A major move for China’s higher engineering education to actively serve national development in the new era, the Outstanding Program, by following the principles of “industry guidance, university-industry partnership, classified implementation, diversity”, carries out the following five tasks: i) establishing a new mechanism where universities and businesses develop talents jointly; ii) innovating the engineering resource empowerment pattern; iii) building a first-class engineering instructor team; iv) making engineering education more open; and v) developing criteria for educated talents(The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China). In the three years since the program was initiated, 194 institutions of higher learning have established nearly a thousand university-level engineering practice centers with businesses in different sectors, involving 26,000 students. About 10,000 employees of over 6,000 enterprises were engaged in engineer development as part-time instructors. With the joint efforts and support of governments at all levels, institutions of higher learning,
108
Gao-feng Zhu
businesses and all other stakeholders, the Outstanding Program has made encouraging progress and is now playing a more and more important role in promoting reform of China’s higher education. An array of productive reform programs have been implemented in universities. The most noticeable are CDIO (Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate) and PBL (Problem Based Learning / Project Based Learning) concepts introduced from abroad but adapted during localization. CDIO is a new mode of engineering education created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT.CDIO). In 2006, the CDIO committee members began in China’s colleges and universities absorb CDIO, bear the brunt of Shantou University in Guangdong province (Shantou University). For example, Shantou University integrated professional ethics into CDIO as needed to make it more comprehensive. PBL is a professor (Barrows) of medicine at McMaster University in Canada to create a structured teaching or learning methods (McMaster University, 2011), which first appeared in medical sciences scholars published articles of Sun Yat-sen medical university (Chen, 1995). PBL has become a new effective teaching model. It should be noted that all the reform initiatives have gained attention, support and encouragement from all the line authorities at all levels. 1.6 International cooperation A lot of universities in China have established relationships with foreign counterparts and are now cooperating with them in various ways from irregular/regular visits, experience exchanges, student/visiting scholar exchanges to collaborative education, mutual recognition of degrees and joint degrees awarded. The form of collaborative education varies from school to school. Examples include the Jiaotong-Michigan College established by Shanghai Jiaotong University and University of Michigan, US; Ningbo-Nottingham University by Ningbo City and University of Nottingham, UK; and the Ph.D. program in business administration offered by Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and ESC Rennes School of Business, France. Some Chinese universities send students to foreign counterparts for study during summer vacations. Meanwhile, Chinese universities are taking in more and more foreign students. At present over 120,000 overseas students are studying in China. The 11th Five-year Plan period saw an increase of more than 50 percent in this figure. Most of the students from developed countries come here to study Chinese and humanities, while the foreign students attending engineering programs are largely from the developing countries. The China Society for Higher Engineering Education has also established contact channels with foreign counterparts to pay visits to each other and conduct workshops. On July 14-15, 2012, the theme of “engineering education in the 21st century: the cooperation between colleges and profession-
al certification” of international engineering education academic workshops held in Tsinghua University. The Center for Engineering Education, Tsinghua University launched the IIDEA Tsinghua Workshops annually with IFEES in recent years, which have produced much impact locally and internationally (Tsinghua University Engineering education research center, 2012). On July 13-14, 2013, a meeting was held in Tsinghua University engineering education research center. “Teachers’ Teaching Development Center and Engineering Education Certification” are as the theme of the third international engineering education workshop (Institute of education of Tsinghua University, 2013).
2 Weak points While praising the achievements above, we need to acknowledge the following problems in China’s engineering education: 2.1 Imbalance between supply and demand There is a strange phenomenon in China’s labor market these years, i.e., on one hand, many college graduates find it difficult to get a job and the employment rate of fresh graduates is decreasing; on the other hand, many businesses cannot recruit people with the skills they need. The direct cause of this phenomenon is that schools are not educating what enterprises (the market) need. If you dive deeper, you may find many other factors, including totality and structure, also contributing to this issue. First, let’s explain the phenomenon in terms of totality. Annual growth of China’s GDP has been about 10 percent in recent years, but the employment figure is far lower—only 1 percent (that of the secondary and tertiary industries except agriculture is 4.5 percent). This gap implies improvement of labor productivity. In addition, as the students recruited under the enrollment expansion program graduate, the number of fresh graduates increases by dozens of percent each year. This growth is obviously not equal to that of demand, even if technical progress and rapid development of the industries involving many emerging technologies makes the demand for higher-class talents far larger than that for general laborers. Given the fact that the majority of enterprises in China are still at the low end of the international value chain and that it takes time to change the pattern of economic development, such imbalance is inevitable. When it comes to structure, improvement still needs to be made in both dimensions – hierarchy and discipline mix. As to hierarchy, although vocational education has made great progress, the public still discriminates against it, and the level of such schools determines the administrative rankings of them and their presidents. Regarding program provision, emerging and interdisciplinary programs are still not enough. The talents graduating from traditional programs have shrunk in the last few years, but relevant traditional in-
China’s Engineering Education: Situation & Outlook
dustries have been brought to life by economic development and introduction of new technologies, such as mining and traditional manufacturing. Another major cause for such imbalance is the intrinsic problems in teaching (to be described below), making the quality of graduates not meet the requirements of employers. In the era of rapid S&T progress, it will be impossible for the institutions of higher learning to fulfill their mission to provide society with qualified ‘products’ if they cannot learn businesses’ demand for talents and receive information on S&T progress and talent flow from every corner of the world. We must take the teaching quality of universities seriously, especially now that the enrollment expansion program has been initiated. 2.2 Homogeneity of goals and patterns In addition to being divided into research-oriented, teaching and research-oriented, and teaching-oriented universities, institutions of higher learning are classified in many ways. Such classifications include vocational colleges, general universities, 211 universities, 985 universities, and first-tier and non-first tier universities (internationally, nationally and provincially). Such classifications are closely related to the administrative ranks of those institutions and their presidents as well as the funding and support they can get. So the universities at the bottom of the list always want to become top or research universities to get more resources and develop more rapidly. During the course of competition, the goal to bring up versatile talents needed by society and the task of talent development have become vague. In addition, some universities of technology are in hot pursuit of theoretical scientization and ignore their own characteristics and philosophies. Many universities put most of their efforts on R&D and publication of academic papers to get high scores in school evaluation to help in their fight for more research projects and funds. Thus, developing systematized and updated engineering education is a neglected goal. Teaching is no longer the center of such universities. The leaders in charge of teaching feel worried. Lack of passion to reform teaching among instructors has become a universal phenomenon. 2.3 Lack of practice Feedback from employers indicates engineering graduates from both 211 and general universities have poor hands-on ability and are highly specialized. The problems may be attributed to several factors. Internally, the experimental conditions on campus are obviously insufficient, and experiment groups contain more and more members, decreasing the opportunities for students to do experiments personally. In some labs, students may only watch their instructors’ demonstration. Externally, the weak connection between schools and businesses disables students to go outside to contact manufacturing facilities and equipment. In addition, universities do not have enough funds to support such work.
109
Inadequate education about internship disciplines makes schools afraid that students would serve as disruptions to businesses, which are not willing to receive interns because they think doing this is troublesome. On the other side, there are only a limited number of large corporations, so they can not admit many interns. With technical progress, many operations have been automated, so significant investment needs to be made to create an environment for interns. Small-andmedium-sized enterprises, still at the low end of industrial chains, can only provide simple opportunities such as component assembly. Therefore, quite a few universities ask their graduates to find some places for internship, those who could not do so often obtain an internship certificate from somewhere without an internship. Design, mandatory for engineering graduates in the past, has been canceled. Course design has gone, and graduation design has been replaced with thesis requirements that are not based on practice and allow for piecemeal thesis assembly, sometimes even through plagiarism. Moreover, most instructors have not worked in businesses and have no hands-on experience, and there are not enough part-time instructors from enterprises. As a result, students’ practice is not well-guided. 2.4 Curriculum system not aligned with the characteristics of engineering Current engineering curriculums, including basic courses, specialized elementary courses and specialized courses for a very long period of time, are not adapted to the characteristics of modern engineering. Basic courses, and a significant part of specialized elementary courses, are organized based on the philosophy of scientific education to ensure completeness of the subject, rather than customized as needed by engineering practice. The specialized courses, focusing on technologies and analysis, are based on reductionism and do not reflect a systematic and holistic approach of engineering. Current engineering curriculum has many shortcomings, including narrow subject classification, improper course provision, outmoded teaching content, stiff teaching methods, lack of orderly and inter-disciplinary organization, design philosophy, combination of theory and practice, proposal demonstration and selection, unsatisfactory educational reform, all of which prevent universities from developing rapidly and effectively along a benign track. Some new concepts introduced from abroad have not been fully popularized yet and applied creatively in most schools. The reform on curriculum system and content is still in the infancy. 2.5 Insufficient importance attached to innovation and entrepreneurial education In such emerging industries as IT, internet, telecommunications, biology and nanotech, where technical progress in five years might change the proverbial rules of the game established on the basis of the results achieved over the past decades or centuries, businesses hope universities can contin-
110
Gao-feng Zhu
ue to advance. Universities should be open, keep pace with industry, and lead technical progress through R&D. China is becoming the “manufacturing center of the world” with injection of foreign investment after WTO entry. But this is not enough. Universities should become bases for innovative and entrepreneurial education. Employment rate of engineering graduates in recent years is higher than that of other graduates. As it shows in the “The southern education times” that from 2009 to 2011, in 3 years engineering graduate employment rate to those of the school of arts living (Ou, 2013). The national college students employment guidance center indicates that engineering graduates also known as the most “hot” 2009 (Anonymous, 2010). But such an advantage cannot mask the deep crisis in China’s higher engineering education – quality of education. Insufficient importance attached to innovation and entrepreneurial education has become a major obstacle restricting further development of engineering students. Statistics show that, in recent years, only about 1 percent of college graduates (more among engineering graduates) started their own businesses, implying weak entrepreneurial education in universities and lack of innovative spirit in students. To transform the economic development pattern and industrial structure in China and build the country into a center of innovation rapidly, higher engineering education institutions must further improve their teaching methods, exploring new ways to bring up innovative engineering talents as well as new innovation and entrepreneurial education models to effectively strengthen students’ entrepreneurship and capacity for innovation. 2.6 Poor competence mix Because there are no logic and communication courses in middle schools and universities and exam-oriented education is still prevailing, students’ comprehensive thinking ability, interpersonal skills, the ability to raise questions independently and hands-on capability are poor. Academic misconducts have negative impact on students, depriving some of them of independent personality and the spirit to seek the truth. They learned to behave against the code of conduct, cheating in exams and in the writing of their theses. This is worrisome.
3 Outlooks The National Outline for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020) issued by the Chinese government provides a roadmap for China’s education through 2020. Although it does not have much content directly touching upon engineering education, each part of it still has an impact on engineering education. According to the Outline, “Improving quality is the core task of higher education” (The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China, 2012), meaning that the times of massive enrollment expansion has ended and the focus will be shifted
to quality. This will be also the path for engineering education. The paragraphs in the Outline on vocational education, elementary education, establishment of modern school system, reform of examination and enrollment system as well as reform of school operating and management systems are directly related to engineering education. In light of China’s process of modernization and the Outline, we forecast that: 3.1 Competition between universities will intensify and the supply-demand imbalance will be alleviated Given the changes in demographic structure, the number of students attending the national college entrance examination began to decrease several years ago, meaning that competition between universities will intensify. A survey report in 2013 shows that enrollment in colleges and universities in China unified exam registration number reach historic to 10.5 million in 2008, a few years after the college entrance examination enrollment fell sharply (Anonymous, 2013). Many colleges and universities faces difficulties in recruiting students, the college entrance examination in Beijing as an example, the undergraduate course acceptance rate, especially 2, the three colleges and universities face years of decline situation (Ding, 2012). Some universities without unique expertise and with lower educational quality will be weeded out, pushing universities to improving quality and seek differentiation. With the economy growing and enrollment increase rates decreasing, the supply-demand imbalance will be alleviated gradually – although it will take time. 3.2 Differentiation depends on the reform of engineer system and administrative university classification Competition will spur universities to study society’s demand for talents, helping them realize diversity of such demand, position themselves properly based on their strengths and characteristics, and adapt programs in a timely manner to meet such demands. The two keys to facilitate the process are i) a complete engineer vocational qualification system, which does not currently exist in China but is expected to be established in the near future; and ii) the fact that the administrative level of and resource investment into a university depends on its classification must be changed to eliminate the impetus for assimilation. The Outline requires that “administration trend shall be avoided and existing administrative level and management of universities eliminated”, but the effect will be determined by how well the requirements are implemented. 3.3 Quality of engineering education will be improved with a complete quality assurance system China’s higher engineering education has developed rapidly in recent years, and society has imposed stricter requirements on its quality. Higher engineering education has
China’s Engineering Education: Situation & Outlook
become increasingly internationalized with continued economic globalization. Education and engineering communities have realized that it is urgent to establish internationally equivalent engineering education quality monitoring and assurance systems. China has been establishing and improving such systems and applying for entrance to relevant international mutual recognition agreements since 2006. China’s engineering education certification systems, focusing on Outcomes (i.e., what could students learn?) and development of students’ communication capability, teamwork spirit, professional knowledge/skill, lifelong learning skills, good world outlooks and sense of responsibility, adopt internationally universal outcome-oriented philosophies and standards, having a profound impact on development of education plans and even the reform of the whole engineering education system. By the end of 2012, China has successively carried out 13 pilots, which identified 171 professional points and set up professional engineering education equivalent to international essence engineering professional certification system (Anonymous). Engineering education certification is an important way to improve quality of engineering talents, and an essential basis for China’s higher engineering education to compete with other countries and for future integration of engineer system. Over 350 programs have obtained such certificates by the end of 2011. 3.4 Industrial transformation will be conducive to joint talent development by universities and businesses University-industry partnership is the fundamental solution to resolve insufficiency of practice. On the one hand, legislation shall be facilitated to define businesses’ social responsibilities in talent development. On the other hand, universities should send their students to enterprises to benefit both the students and affiliated enterprises, realizing a winwin result. In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises will be transformed during the progression of the nations’ development pattern, and the pressure from the market will stimulate demand for engineering talents and innovation. Meanwhile, lack of experience among instructors will also be resolved. At present, some universities, especially those with good conditions, want to build on-campus practice bases to completely replace internships in enterprises, but complete replacement is not possible. 3.5 Instructors will be the mainstay of educational reform The reform of curriculum system takes time. The driving force, as well as potential opposition of such reform is instructors. Thomas analyzed the issue, from the perspective of psychology; mostly teachers’ attitude towards the reform was that the reform they usually rejected all the underlying threatens. From a practical view, they tend to be asked to provide education theory which has not yet provided any evidence; From the professional view, they tend to the outside world all change as to their function and in the field
111
of infringement (Thomas, 1999) The justifications should be clarified to instructors to motivate them to change their ideas, learn from local and international best practices and carry out reform based on the realities of the school and program. CDIO and PBL concepts should be digested in depth and comprehensively, absorbed as needed, and innovated. Performance evaluation on and promotion of instructors shall fully reflect their contribution to the reform above. 3.6 Quality of students should be improved in many different ways School education purpose is to improve the students and improve students’ comprehensive quality. To be specific, the purpose of school education is to improve the students’ “behavior, information, knowledge, understanding, attitudes, values or skills” (UNESCO-UIS.ISCED, 2006). This improvement is various and incremental which is situated in the quality of the ladder, distinguished in a link chain (Zhang, 2010). Students’ quality involves three aspects: knowledge, moral character and ability (Zhu, 2007). To improve students’ quality in colleges and universities, we should at least focus on the three aspects. Universities should offer more courses to impart necessary knowledge to students and develop their abilities. Ethic education should be integrated into all activities of students to help them build correct outlooks on life, value and the world and develop independent personality and good quality. Courses unavailable for a long period of time, such engineering ethics, logical thinking and interpersonal communication, should be offered by all universities. Extracurricular learning, science and engineering competitions and other extra-curricular activities as well as helpful social activities should be carried out to enable students to come into contact with the outside world. Of course instructors need to play a demonstrative role. The fundamental solution to resolve poor quality of students is changing the long-existing exam-oriented education system in elementary and secondary schools, which requires all the stakeholders, including government, schools, parents and students, to change their ideas and realize that “everyone could become a talent” and “every sector is needed”, and requires the existing interest chain to be broken off. Universities must create as many conditions as possible to provide students with more comprehensive, quality-oriented education. How to properly add basic engineering knowledge in addition to scientific knowledge to the curriculum in elementary and secondary schools needs to be researched. As China’s modernization accelerates, the quality of its engineering education is getting better and better. The foregoing contains both short and long-term tasks, as well as the problems exclusive for China and common in all countries. We expect to work closely with foreign colleagues to improve the quality to turn out engineering talents meeting the demand of national development.
112
Gao-feng Zhu
References Anonymous. (2009). The ministry of education announced in 2009 college students graduate employment list. Retrieved from the national college students employment guidance center for university students education three-dimensional platform of public service website: http://www.ncss.org.cn/zx/jydt/jyxsfx/10008806.s. html Anonymous. (s.d.). About engineering education accreditation. Retrieved from Chinese Society of Environmental Sciences website: http://www.chinacses.org/cn/gchjyrz/gy_gcjyrzh.html Anonymous. (s.d.). College entrance examination enrollment and acc eptance rate in 2013. Retrieved from China Education Online website: http://www.eol.cn/html/g/report/2013/report1.shtml#baogao1-1 Chen,Y., et al.(1995). Traditional teaching method and PBL in teaching of clinical practice. Medicine Aducation,11, 26 Ding, Z. (2012, July 31). Undergraduate acceptance rate of college entrance examination this year is 54.9%. Beijing Evening News, 15 Dong, Y. & Yin, L. (2009). The 2009 international conference on en gineering education Held in Beijing.Retrieved from China Association for Science and Technology website: http://www.cast.org.cn/ n35081/n35473/n35518/11560009.html Institute of Education of Tsinghua University. (2013). Tsinghua uni versity engineering education research center for the third time “international engineering education workshop”. Retrieved from Institute of education of Tsinghua University website: http://www. ioe.tsinghua.edu.cn/publish/ioe/5332/2013/20130719140154359326 932/20130719140154359326932_.html McMaster University.(2011). “Accidental educator” remembered for contributions to teaching and scholarship. Retrieved from McMaster University website: http://fhs.mcmaster.ca/main/news/ news_2011/barrows_howard.html Ministry of Education of the People’ Republic of China.(2012). Na tional education career statistical bulletin in 2011. Retrieved from Ministry of Education of the People’ Republic of China website: http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/ moe_633/201208/141305.html MIT.CDIO. (s.d.). Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate. Retrieved from Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate website: http://web. mit.edu/edtech/casestudies/cdio.html Ou, W. (2013). Employment rate engineering students win arts stu dents. Retrieved from The southern education times website: http://szjy.sznews.com/html/2013-05/17/content_2484758.htm Shantou University. (s.d.). Shantou university to become China’s first CDIO members. Retrieved from Shantou University website: http://www.eng.stu.edu.cn/chinese/viewInfo.aspx?flowNo=746 The Chinese Academy of Engineering Education Committee. (2007). Explore the Chinese academy of engineering educational reform - “Under the new situation of reform and development of engineering education” high-level forum minutes. Higher Engineering Education Research, 6, 43-47
The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. (2012). China statistical yearbook: education, science and tech nology branch (ordinary undergraduate course number (2011) ordinary specialized branch of student number (2011). Retrieved from China Statistics Press website: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ ndsj/2012/indexch.htm The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. (2012). China statistical yearbook: education, science and tech nology(sub-disciplines of graduate situation (2011)). Retrieved from China Statistics Press website: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ ndsj/2012/indexch.htm The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. (s.d.). Educational fund. Retrieved from The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China website: http://data. stats.gov.cn/workspace/index?m=hgnd The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. (s.d.). Excellence engineers education program. Retrieved from Ministry of Education of the People’ Republic of China website: http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/ s3860/201109/124884.html The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. (s.d.).National Program for Medium and Long-Term Educa tional Reform and Development (2010-2020). Retrieved from Ministry of Education of the People’ Republic of China website: http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/ moe_177/201008/93785.html The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. (s.d.). The ministry of education launched education “outstanding engineers training plan”. Retrieved from Ministry of Education of the People’ Republic of China website: http://www.moe.gov.cn/ publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s4560/201006/94139.html Thomas, J. (1999). Shanghai Normal University Education, Foreign Education Research.(Eds.). The Major Education Issues in the world. Beijing: Education and Science Press Tsinghua University Engineering Education Research Center. (2012). Engineering education research center for international engi neering education academic workshops. Retrieved from Tsinghua University news network website:http://news.tsinghua.edu.cn/ publish/news/4205/2012/20120727171958209541486/20120727171 958209541486_.html Wang, S. & Li, G. (2004). The results of the world of engineering education reform and development of meta in the beginning of new century—review of the third international conference on education engineering conference. China Higher Education Research, 10, 16-17 Zhang, S. (2010). Oppression and blockade cannot achieve innovation quality. Journal of Educational Science of Hunan Normal Univer sity, 9(3), 36 Zhu, G. (2007). Innovative talents and engineering education reform. Researches In Higher Education of Engineering, 6, 6
