I Am the President of the University

Don’t read the anti-theft chapter yet. The replacement content will be uploaded after 2 o’clock.

I'm so sorry!

…

Peking University Yuanpei general education curriculum system

1. It has not been established since its inception. This is also an important reason why it was not envisioned when it was first launched and has not yet been realized, thus affecting the effectiveness of this experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to establish a general education system similar to the first-class liberal arts colleges in the United States, but after more than ten years of operation, this purpose has not been achieved. You can find many commentaries on Yuanpei General Education at Peking University online, with mixed reviews. But in a word, this experiment was not successful.

2. Peking University Yuanpei College focuses on general education, but its current training model does not set up its own general education courses, but adopts a platter-style general education method. Whether this method is good or not remains to be discussed, but currently domestic The educational environment makes it difficult to set up independent general education courses. This may be the "experimental failure" mentioned above.

The so-called platter-style general education means that students at Yuanpei College can take all professional courses at Peking University. Therefore, Yuanpei itself does not offer general education courses, but students can achieve general education by freely combining professional courses from different departments. The result of education. Majors will be divided into sophomore years. Students are free to choose any major within Peking University as their major (of course, they retain the right to change directions and take other professional courses). They can also choose Yuanpei's specialty majors: such as PPE (Politics). , Economics and Philosophy), Foreign Languages ​​and Foreign History, Paleontology, Integrated Science, etc. As the name suggests, these majors are a combination of relevant courses from various departments as your required courses.

A banner that launched undergraduate education and teaching reform in this century, Yuanpei College has been exploring a talent training model with a solid foundation and a wide range of talents for 13 years. It is one of the first colleges in China to test the waters of general education. The accidents, frustrations, embarrassments and even controversies that "Yuanpei" encountered in this talent experiment fully reflect the difficulty and pain of general knowledge.

Peking University Yuanpei is the earliest and relatively mature model in domestic general education reform. General education is now being rolled out in various universities, but the current results are not particularly good - but at least it has taken a step forward.

3. According to the talent training plan of Yuanpei College, after freshmen enroll, they can theoretically choose any course offered by the school and listen to whatever they want. The course study plan is all made by themselves; starting from the sophomore year, students can according to You are free to choose the direction of study according to your own interests, and there are no restrictions in theory.

"Spiritual freedom, academic freedom, and learning freedom." The first feeling almost all students feel after entering Yuanpei is "freedom", but then most people will start to feel "confused."

A student who enrolled in 2004 once published an article online complaining about Yuanpei's "free system." For example, the "tutoring system" that is supposed to be responsible for guiding students to choose courses and majors has limited effect. In fact, freshmen in Yuanpei Grade 04 can't even get a departmental course plan and have to go to the academic affairs department of each department. "Take a look."

Compared with these trivial matters, the freedom to choose courses becomes a bigger obstacle - you can listen to all the classes in the school, but what exactly do you listen to.

At Peking University, undergraduate course plans are mainly divided into two parts: professional courses and general elective courses. Generally speaking, professional courses are more difficult than general elective courses. According to the idea, after any Yuanpei student is in his sophomore year and chooses his own major, the courses he has taken in other departments can replace the general elective courses, and he can graduate with full credits.

For students, such regulations are tantamount to shackles in addition to "free treatment": they choose courses based on their interests. Once their test scores are not satisfactory, they will lose a certain degree of freedom when choosing a major.

Many people who have come to Yuanpei have personally experienced the process of compromising with "unfreedom." Zhang Wanting, a 2003 Yuanpei law student at Peking University, told reporters that in the first few years of Yuanpei’s implementation, performance points were not a thing that was valued. “Most students in 2002 and 03 classes chose courses based on their own interests. Difficult courses were a trend at the time. "But since then, the focus has become more and more grade-oriented.

The existence of the "grade point" standard still makes it difficult for students to choose courses.

Zhou Wenjie was admitted to Yuanpei College in 2008 and is currently the class teacher of Yuanpei College in Grade 13 at Peking University. What he observed is that there are fewer and fewer students in the college who choose courses based on their broad interests, and many freshmen have strong plans as soon as they enter the school. For example, in the first semester of their freshman year, the course selections for Grade 13 freshmen are concentrated in the fields of economics, management, mathematics, political economics and philosophy, and there are no courses with a particularly wide span of subjects.

Xu Chongren explained that the biggest difference between Yuanpei and various departments is that traditional professional departments can develop themselves without external force, while Yuanpei often needs the support of the school to continuously formulate various special programs suitable for Yuanpei. policy. "Professors need to do research and need their own graduate students, so they must rely on professional departments. Yuanpei alone cannot do it."

Zhou Wenjie said frankly that the "freedom" provided by Yuanpei College for students is still a "negative freedom" in a sense. "Students have to take risks to choose courses without fully understanding what this major is about, and they have to judge whether these courses touch on the core issues of the major." Especially for freshmen, the psychological pressure is suddenly Just came up.

Not long ago, a post on Peking University’s BBS went viral. The poster said that he applied to extend his schooling, but was rejected by the school's Academic Affairs Office, which delayed his plan to secure a postgraduate degree.

Not long ago, a post on Peking University’s BBS went viral. The poster said that he applied to extend his schooling, but was rejected by the school's Academic Affairs Office, which delayed his plan to secure a postgraduate degree.

This student is Lu Weicong, who is in Grade 10 in Yuanpei. After completing the mathematics professional course, he hopes to conduct cross-learning between mathematics and computer subjects, so he applied for an extension. According to Yuanpei’s teaching plan, students enjoy a flexible academic system and can complete undergraduate education in 3 to 6 years. However, the reason why the school's academic affairs department did not grant the extension was that the student's graduation credits had been completed.

After coordination, Lu Weicong’s application was finally approved. However, this matter still caused subsequent discussions within Yuanpei: Yuanpei has not escaped the trouble of the "dual-track system", and some of the college's teaching systems do not receive effective administrative protection at the school level.

Although the "dual-track system" has not completely disappeared over time, Xu Chongren said that Yuanpei College is a model based on the diversification of student sources that is beneficial to the improvement of undergraduate education. Yuanpei's reform targets two prominent problems in higher education: students enter professional studies too early, resulting in a narrow range of knowledge; most students blindly choose majors, resulting in gaps after learning.

“Peking University is about cultivating the same students into different people.”