China Revamps Undergraduate Studies, Tapping Controversial Talent Program

Dave Yin:

China’s wants the country’s top experts to remember its younger minds.

China’s Ministry of Education called for a three-year revamp of the higher education system, aiming to devote vast resources to undergraduate studies, including the expertise of those who are part of the controversial Thousand Talents Program.

By 2021, the ministry wants 10,000 national-level courses and 10,000 provincial-level courses of “top quality,” taught online, offline, via virtual reality and in practical settings, according to a Thursday directive (link in Chinese).

Those courses will be designed by “high level talent” such as scholars of the renowned Chinese academies of sciences and engineering, recipients of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and Chang Jiang Scholars Program fellows. They will also draw on experts from the Thousand Talents Program, a government-backed recruitment project to lure scientific talent from foreign countries to work in China, and a similarly named Ten Thousand Talents Program.