Five Thousand SYSU Students Took the Lead in General Education Courses

Guangzhou, September 22, 2009 (Nanfang Daily): Yesterday Zhuhai Campus of SYSU launched a pilot scheme on general education. More than five thousand primary undergraduate students would be offered “The Common Core Curriculum of the General Education”, which included Chinese Civilization, Western Eyeshot, Technology, Humanities and so on.

The system of SYSU’s new common core curriculum of the general education is divided into four types: Chinese Civilization; Global Eyeshot; Technology, Economy and Society; and Humanistic and Classic Reading, among which the classic reading would be the highlight. Every new student entering the university in the school year of 2009 will be required to complete four credits from each course and get a total of sixteen credits.

The courses of the general education received a warm response from the students. In the first week of the semester, the quotas of the courses were all full. About three thousand and seven hundred freshmen and one thousand and three hundred sophomores had taken the course in general education. The east campus of SYSU will also have the general education system launched next year. By the year of 2011, the general education will have been generally implemented at SYSU.

The new curriculum system incorporates culture from both the east and the west, the past and the present. Chen Chunsheng, the Vice-President of SYSU, believed that the general education has made the best use of the original curriculum of each school, and offer specialized compulsory course for all the SYSU students. What’s more, major and non-major students will be treated equally. Chen Chunsheng emphasized that although the general education courses of SYSU were elective courses, the difficulties of the courses were not reduced.