I Am the President of the University

Chapter 495 Response of the International Material Federation

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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 envisaged at the beginning of its establishment and has not been realized so far, thus affecting the effect of this experiment. The purpose of this experiment was to establish a general education system similar to that of the top 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 commentary articles on the general education of Yuanpei at Peking University on the Internet, with mixed reviews. But in a word, this experiment was not successful.

2. The Yuanpei College of Peking University focuses on general education, but its current training model is not to set up general education courses by itself, but to adopt a platter-type general education method. Whether this method is good remains to be discussed. It is difficult to set up independent general education courses in the educational environment in which the above mentioned "experimental failure".

The so-called platter-type general education means that students of Yuanpei College can elect all professional courses in Peking University. Therefore, Yuanpei does not offer general education courses, but students can freely combine professional courses from different departments to achieve general education. the result of education. Students will be divided into majors in their sophomore year. Students can freely choose any major in Peking University as their major (of course, they reserve the right to change their direction and study other professional courses), or they can choose Yuanpei’s characteristic 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 related courses from various departments as your required courses.

A banner that started the reform of undergraduate education and teaching in this century, Yuanpei College has been exploring a broad-based and broad-caliber talent training model for 13 years. It is one of the earliest institutions in China to test general education. The accidents, setbacks, embarrassment and even controversy that "Yuanpei" encountered in this talent experiment fully reflected the difficulty and pain of general knowledge.

Peking University Yuanpei is the earliest and relatively mature model in the reform of general education in China. Now general education is rolled out in various colleges and universities, but the current results are not particularly good - but at least a step has been taken.

3. According to the talent training plan of Yuanpei College, after admission, freshmen can theoretically choose any course offered by the whole school, and listen to whatever they want. The course study plan is all made by themselves; You can freely choose your study direction based on your own interests, and there is no theoretical limit to it.

"Spiritual freedom, academic freedom, and study freedom." After entering Yuanpei, almost all students feel "freedom" at first, but then most of them start to be "confused".

A student admitted in 2004 once published an article online complaining about Yuanpei's "free system". For example, the "tutorial system" that should be responsible for guiding students to choose courses and majors has a limited effect. In fact, the freshmen of Yuanpei 04 can't even get a course plan of a department, and they have to go to the academic affairs department of each department. "Look at it".

Compared with these trivial matters, the freedom of course selection has become a bigger obstacle - you can listen to the whole school's courses,

But what to listen to.

At Peking University, the undergraduate course plan is mainly divided into two parts: specialized courses and general elective courses. Generally speaking, professional courses are more difficult than general elective courses. It is envisaged that after any Yuanpei student is a sophomore and chooses his/her major, the courses taken by other colleges and departments before can replace the general elective courses, and they can graduate after completing the credits.

For students, such regulations are tantamount to the shackles of "free treatment": choosing courses according to interest, once the test scores are not satisfactory, they will lose a certain degree of freedom when choosing a major.

Many Yuanpei "people who have come here" have experienced the process of compromising with "unfreedom". Zhang Wanting, a 03-level Yuanpei law student at Peking University, told reporters that in the first few years of Yuanpei's implementation, GPA was not a thing that was valued. Difficult classes were a trend at the time." But since then, the grade point orientation has become more and more important.

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

Zhou Wenjie, admitted to Yuanpei College in 2008, is currently the head teacher of Yuanpei College, Peking University's 13th grade. What he observes is that fewer and fewer students are taking a wide range of courses based on their interests, and many new students are very planned as soon as they enter the school. For example, in the first semester of freshman year, freshmen of grade 13 choose courses in economics, management, mathematics, politics, economics, philosophy and other fields, and there is no course selection with a particularly wide range of disciplines.

Xu Chongren explained that the biggest difference between Yuanpei and various faculties is that traditional professional faculties can develop themselves without any external force, while Yuanpei often needs the school to push behind and constantly formulate various special programs applicable to 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 alone."

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

Not long ago, a post on BBS of Peking University went viral. The poster said that his application for an extension of the schooling system was rejected by the school’s academic affairs office, delaying his postgraduate study plan.

Not long ago, a post on BBS of Peking University went viral. The poster said that his application for an extension of the schooling system was rejected by the school’s academic affairs office, delaying his postgraduate study plan.

This student is Lv Weicong from Yuanpei's 10th grade. After completing the mathematics major, he hopes to carry out cross-study of mathematics and computer science, 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. The reason why the school’s academic affairs will not be extended is that the student’s graduation credits have been completed.

After coordination, Lu Weicong's application was finally approved. However, this matter still caused follow-up discussions within Yuanpei: Yuanpei has not gotten rid of the trouble of the "dual-track system", and some teaching systems of the college cannot be effectively administratively guaranteed at the school level.

Although the "dual-track system" has not completely disappeared over time, Xu Chongren said that Yuanpei College is a model that is beneficial to the improvement of undergraduate education based on the diversification of student sources. Yuanpei's reforms are aimed at two prominent problems in higher education: students enter majors too early, resulting in narrow knowledge; most students blindly choose majors, and there is a gap after study.