No more rote learning, Chinese university ventures into broad-based education

On the outskirts of this sprawling megalopolis of 29 million in southwest China stand a pair of college campuses – one representing education’s past in the world’s most populous country, and the other, perhaps, its future.

In its mission and dreary name, the College of Mobile Telecommunications is typical of China’s hundreds of Soviet-era universities: rote learning, hyper-specialisation and a lock-step course of study for all.

On a hill above it, surrounding a secluded courtyard, stands Yuanjing Academy, a new experiment with a very different feel. Here, university students take a broad array of subjects their first year, in small classes, learning to do things like argue about literature and play the guitar.

“We are adults,” says Zhang Panyu, an 18-year-old student whose reading of helped him navigate his own first romance. “We need to know something about everything.”

The Great Recession began in late 2007 with the near-collapse of the global financial system, depressing economies and employment worldwide. It also drove millions more than ever before to seek higher education. Global enrolment is closing in on 200 million, after passing 100 million barely a decade ago.

Yuanjing shows how countries are drawing lessons from recent economic history about what to study and what kind of knowledge will drive future economic growth.

Elsewhere in the world, there is a growing emphasis on broader learning as an economic necessity.