Ministry calls for high-quality university coursework

Universities in China should increase the academic workload and course difficulty to add more pressure for college students, the Ministry of Education said on Monday.

Wu Yan, director of the ministry’s Department of Higher Education, said the ministry will push universities to build more high-quality majors and courses in the next three years, especially in engineering, medical, agricultural and liberal arts subjects.

The ministry plans to build 10,000 national high-quality majors, 10,000 provincial high-quality majors, 10,000 national high-quality courses and 10,000 provincial high-quality courses by 2021, Wu said at a news conference in Tianjin.

Some students only sleep, play games and even drink alcohol all day in college. They are letting themselves and their families down, he said.

The ministry will ask universities to cut down on the number of courses but greatly increase their difficulty so that students not only need to pay close attention during class, but also conduct extra learning after school, Wu said.

“Easy courses will be eliminated and schools should strengthen student management. There should be no easy courses and easy majors by 2021,” he added.