The Exploration Of General Educationin Chinese Research-Oriented Universities

In the present era of knowledge economy, the ever-changing of science and technology has provided severe challenge for Chinese higher education, and the demand for the standard of talents is correspondingly higher. How to put forward the development of general education in research-oriented universities is becoming more and more emergent.Research-oriented universities enjoy the unique concept of education, highly qualified teaching staff, good tradition in producing, innovating and transferring knowledge, and they have fostered a large number of innovative talents of high quality. General education is a concept of cultivating citizens as well as a mode of education, which takes all candidates into nonprofessional education aims itself at transfering these people into citizens who have relatively strong ability of analyzing and reasoning, comprehensively sound personality and can actively take part in social acitivities.The research-oriented universities in our country are striving for world's leading ones, therefore, there is a long way in the reform of undergraduate educatio. By 2010, the general education system has been set up in thirty six research-oriented universities in China. Representatively, some of these universities is to adopt the mode of compulsory courses plus optional general courses, followed by the mode of general cores and general institute mode. This trend has promoted the development of general education. Nowadays the concept of general education has gradually been accepted by most research-oriented universities and it has been an effective approach to strengthen the students' comprehensive quality and their innovative spirit.The gereral education in research-oriented universities is nonprofessional, nonprofit-seeking education which aims at cultivating comprehensive high qualified talents with strong ability of analyzing and reasoning, focusing on the promotion of the candidates' creative and innovative spirit through stimulating their enthusiasm of exploring knowledge and new fields. The graduates from research-oriented universities should be creative and innovative instead of just being the ordinary practioners.The general education will be one of the main goals of Chinese higher education. In this essay, the author provides some specific measures to promote the general education in China, roughly including the definition of general education, the popularization of the concept about general education, the analysis of the relationship between general education and professional education, the construction of the system of curricula, improving the teaching staff, and so on, in the hope of putting forward the development of Chinese higher education.