Recently, the Ministry of Education announced the “Results of Filing and Approval of Undergraduate Major in General Colleges and Universities” (Official Letters from the Ministry of Education [2020] No. 2), the German language (050203), intelligent science and technology (080907T), data science and Big Data Technology (080910T) have all been successfully approved for establishment. This is an important measure for NENU to implement “Notice on Implementing the ‘Double Ten Thousand Plan’ for the Construction of First-Class Undergraduate Majors” by the Ministry of Education, to actively promote the research and practice of the establishment of “New Engineering” and “New Liberal Arts” major, to actively adapt to a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, to strive to deepen the comprehensive reform of majors and to continuously optimize the layout of majors.
In recent years, NENU has adhere to the basic principles of “upgradation of stock, optimization of incremental amount, and reduction of allowance” in the construction of undergraduate majors, and transformed and upgraded traditional dominant majors, actively developed strategic emerging majors, and resolutely eliminated obsolete and backward majors. At present, our school has a total of 81 undergraduate majors (currently 61 enrollment majors), including 18 national-level first-class undergraduate majors construction sites and 10 provincial-level undergraduate major construction sites. In the next step, the school will continue to improve the construction planning and the dynamic adjustment mechanism of majors, and continuously strengthen the connotation construction of majors.
In this approval and filing work about majors, the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education made some improvements and adjustments than before, focusing on strengthening “three orientations”, that is, insisting on demand orientation, taking social needs as a prerequisite for majors settings; adhering to standard orientation, taking the national standard key indicators as the bottom line requirement of majors setting; adhering to the characteristic orientation, regarding the characteristic positioning as the quality connotation of majors setting. On this basis, the Department of Higher Education has strengthened the guidance for new majors in colleges and universities. For the majors that do not meet the requirements of the national standard or have low approval rate for the online evaluation by the Education Guidance Committee, the Department of Higher Education will feed back the relevant opinions to the universities around the country, and require the universities to submit majors setting improvement reports. Relevant colleges and universities put forward specific improvement measures for the newly established major in teaching staff, teaching conditions, core curriculum settings, training programs, and social needs research, etc., and submit them to the majors setting committee for further consideration. Through this work, the Department of Higher Education strengthens the guidance and assistance for the newly established majors in colleges and universities, improves the level of majors settings, examines the source of majors, and guides colleges and universities to rationally set up majors through a series of majors setting promotion work.
(From News Center, translated by Zhang Wanying, revised by Chen Yanxu)
