China has recognized the importance and necessity of liberal education for years, achieving important results in theoretical research and practice, but efforts should be made to bring the universally accepted liberal education model and curriculum into shape.

Reform of higher education should be geared towards liberal education, scholars said at a seminar on the teaching of philosophy at Nanjing University in Jiangsu Province on June 8.

China has recognized the importance and necessity of liberal education for years, achieving important results in theoretical research and practice. Nonetheless, the universally accepted liberal education model and curriculum have yet to take shape.
 

Wu Xiaoming, dean of the Fudan College (undergraduate division) at Fudan University, pinpointed serious utilitarianism as a common problem in China’s higher education system. The overly sophisticated and highly quantified cultivation system and assessment mechanism have reduced college students to mere “products,” Wu said, blurring the line between higher education and vocational education.
 

Defining comprehensiveness as a salient feature of college education, Wu said liberal education in universities should break disciplinary barriers and enable students to integrate knowledge from different fields, nurture students’ personalities and interests, and realize healthy, comprehensive development of people.
 

Against the backdrop of increasingly detailed division of labor, in-depth study of one area and broad exposure to multiple disciplines should be the fundamental talent orientation of the higher education sector, said He Huaiyuan, a professor from People's Liberation Army Nanjing Political College. 
 

In terms of building a liberal education model with Chinese characteristics, Zhang Liang, a professor from the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University, said it is necessary to localize guiding principles based on the Chinese context and integrate advanced Western ideas into actual conditions of China’s higher education to construct liberal education philosophy, goals, curriculum and institutional norms suited to domestic colleges and universities.

Wang Guanglu is a reporter at the Chinese Social Sciences Today.