Du Yubo, president of the China Association of Higher Education, addresses the opening ceremony of the Second National Summit for Higher Engineering Education in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, Nov 2. [Photo/gmw.cn]

The second National Summit for Higher Engineering Education opened in Nanjing, Jiangsu province on Nov 2. 

The meeting was built on a consensus reached at Fudan University in Shanghai this February, China’s top colleges agreed to make concerted efforts to create new engineering concepts, promote new specialty mechanisms, implement new training methods, and take engineering education to a new level. 

Themed on the opportunities and challenges facing China’s higher engineering education, the summit was also organized in response to calls from the Chinese government to shift the priority in engineering education from quantity to quality, providing the learning required by students – technical expertise, social awareness, and a bias toward innovation – to become successful engineers. 

Du Yubo, president of the China Association of Higher Education, who has been working in the education sector for decades, said the reform and development of China’s engineering education was bright and vigorous.