With less than two months to go before the college entrance examination, the results of the "Strong Foundation Plan" and the 2023 undergraduate major filing and approval of 39 colleges and universities have been announced one after another.
A total of 3,389 majors were added, abolished, and adjusted in ordinary institutions of higher learning, with 1,673 new majors added and 1,670 withdrawn, basically the same number; the number of majors in engineering, education, economics, and other disciplines ranked among the top three, while the number of majors in management, art, and other disciplines decreased comparatively. In addition, the "Strong Foundation Plan", which has been implemented since 2020, is about to usher in the first batch of undergraduate graduates this year.
Strong base increases ace disciplines
With the increasing emphasis on original innovation, the mainland has increased its discipline layout around basic research in recent years, and since 2020, it has launched a pilot program for the enrollment reform of basic disciplines in some universities (also known as the "Strong Foundation Plan"). As of April 16, 39 colleges and universities have announced the enrollment guidelines of this year's Strong Foundation Program.
The "Strong Foundation Program" mainly selects and cultivates students who are interested in serving the major strategic needs of the country and have excellent comprehensive quality or top-notch basic disciplines. The first batch of 36 pilot universities are all former "985" famous universities, focusing on mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, philosophy, paleography and other disciplines, focusing on key fields such as high-end chips and software, intelligent technology, new materials, advanced manufacturing and national security, as well as humanities and social sciences fields where national talents are in short supply. In 2022, on the basis of 36 universities, three universities will be added: Northeastern University, Hunan University, and Northwest A&F University to carry out the pilot of the Strong Foundation Program. There have also been adjustments to the enrollment scale, majors, and assessment methods.
According to the regulations, after the launch of the "Strong Foundation Plan", the pilot universities will no longer organize and carry out independent enrollment of colleges and universities. Different from independent enrollment, the "Strong Foundation Plan" is a long-term talent training plan. Therefore, most colleges and universities mention in the enrollment brochure that students of the "Strong Foundation Plan" cannot change majors, and some schools also implement stage assessment and dynamic entry and exit mechanisms to assess this group of students.
Starting from 2022, the strong foundation enrollment majors will begin to join the advantageous majors of the college entrance examination, and they are no longer just basic disciplines. Yicai found that in the "Strong Foundation Plan" in 2024, there will be a significant increase in the number of new advantageous majors.
According to the plan of Shanghai Jiaotong University, this year, on the basis of mathematics and applied mathematics, physics, chemistry, biological science, biomedical science, and engineering mechanics, new naval architecture and ocean engineering will be added.
According to the person in charge of Shanghai Jiaotong University, these seven disciplines are all Class A disciplines, among which the discipline of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering has ranked first in the world-class disciplines of Soft Science for six consecutive years. Combined with the development concept of "intelligent" and "unmanned" marine equipment and the needs of intelligent construction of coastal defense, it focuses on cutting-edge science and key technologies in the field of marine defense, and serves the national maritime power and military-civilian integration strategy.
Compared with last year, Fudan University has added one major and two new directions on the basis of maintaining the enrollment of eight majors, including mathematics and applied mathematics and physics. Among them, the newly added information and computing science major is a multidisciplinary and wide-caliber major, which will combine the knowledge and technology of multiple disciplines such as informatics, computer science, mathematics, physics and electronics; the physics nuclear physics direction focuses on cultivating students' professional core competencies in nuclear physics and its applications; and the chemistry polymer chemistry direction focuses on providing strong support for the advanced intelligent manufacturing of the new generation of chemical industry, new materials, new energy, information and communication industries.
In addition, Tongji University and Xiamen University have added marine science majors, Xi'an Jiaotong University has added materials science and engineering majors, and University of Science and Technology of China has added geophysics majors and engineering physics majors in nuclear engineering.
Another major change in this year's "Strong Foundation Plan" is that many colleges and universities have added the first category (excellent results in the college entrance examination) candidates, who have reached a certain score in mathematics or school-designated subjects, and can be directly shortlisted or relax the shortlisting multiple or meet the relevant policies such as the first choice shortlisted.
Yao Kai, director of the Global Science and Technology Talent Development Research Center of Fudan University, believes that the mainland's emphasis on basic research and strengthening the foundation of the examination is a good atmosphere, so that a group of students who are interested in basic discipline research can dive into research. However, some students think that the "Strong Foundation Plan" is an additional way to enter the school examination, and only when they enter the school examination do they really consider the influence of their majors, and such candidates may not really love basic subjects. The basic disciplines should endure loneliness, and the strong foundation has fixed the major for a long time, and it is also hoped that the students who apply for the examination can put aside some utilitarian factors and consider it in combination with their own reality and interests, including the scope of employment in the future.
So what is the current trend of the first batch of students in the "Strong Foundation Program" in 2020?
In the "Strong Foundation Plan", the transfer section is a way for college graduates to study for graduate school without examination. According to the announcements of the universities, those who do not participate in the transfer academic assessment or fail to pass the transfer assessment will be deemed to have withdrawn from the "Strong Foundation Plan" and will no longer be eligible to apply for exemption from the examination for graduate studies.
According to the transfer data of students in the "Strong Foundation Plan" released by many colleges and universities last year, at this stage, some students choose to go straight to the doctorate, go abroad or quit and so on. For example, a total of 115 students from Nanjing University have successfully transferred to the stage this year, including 30 direct doctoral students and 85 master's students; Shanghai Jiao Tong University's 2024 strong foundation plan student transfer list shows that a total of 130 students have successfully transferred to the direct doctoral or master's level; Sichuan University strong foundation program admitted the first batch of 119 students, after three years of dynamic assessment and supplementary diversion, by the end of 2023, a total of 109 students from the school's 2020 strong foundation plan have been successfully transferred, including 28 direct doctoral students, There are 81 master's students.
There are four major directions for the adjustment of undergraduate majors
At the same time as the "Strong Foundation Plan" added majors, some undergraduate majors also ushered in adjustments.
Recently, the Ministry of Education issued a notice announcing the results of the filing and approval of undergraduate majors in ordinary colleges and universities in 2023: 1,673 new locations were added, 1,670 locations were withdrawn, and 24 new majors, including electronic information materials, soft matter science and engineering, high-power semiconductor science and engineering, biological breeding technology, ecological restoration, and health science and technology, were officially included in the undergraduate major catalog, with 816 majors in the catalog.
The person in charge of the Department of Higher Education of the Ministry of Education answered reporters' questions on the "Notice on Announcing the Filing and Approval Results of Undergraduate Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities in 2023", saying that this year's major setting and adjustment work mainly has four characteristics: serving the national strategy, aiming at regional needs, strengthening cross-integration, and highlighting employment orientation.
For example, we should further strengthen the linkage between employment and professional settings, and promote all provinces to sort out and submit 223 majors with relatively low employment rates in combination with the actual industrial development of the region, so as to provide an important reference for colleges and universities to adjust the structure of majors. Consolidate the main responsibilities of colleges and universities, and clearly require colleges and universities to prudently add and reduce majors that have too low employment rates and do not meet social needs.
From the perspective of disciplines, engineering has the largest number of majors, with 1,322, accounting for 39%, which echoes the basic situation of engineering as the first university discipline and is also consistent with the current employment orientation.
With the rapid development of China's manufacturing industry, there is more and more demand for high-end manufacturing-related fields, with 56.9% of engineering graduates receiving offers in 2023, 6.5 percentage points higher than the overall rate, while 41.3% of humanities graduates receive offers , 9.1 percentage points lower than the overall.
Yao Kai told Yicai that with the advent of the post-industrial era and the era of digital intelligence, strategic emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, big data, large-scale integrated circuits, and high-end equipment manufacturing are emerging, and the supply of compound new talents in the era of digital intelligence is in short supply.
(This article is from Yicai)