Senior higher education administrators and industrial partners gathered in December 2010 to review the progress of China’s “Outstanding Engineering Education and Training Scheme”. The Scheme, launched in June 2010, aims to improve the quality of engineering education in the country by 2020.

In the first phase of the Scheme, 61 higher education institutions were selected as pilot institutions and some EUR 7 million has been spent on reforming the learning conditions for students, as well as staff recruitment strategies and training provisions. According to the progress reported by the selected institutions, there has been remarkable improvement in knowledge transfer and cross-sector personnel exchange between the pilot institutions and leading engineering companies in China.           

Currently in China there are 3 710 000 undergraduate engineering students and 470 000 post-graduate engineering students enrolled in over 1 000 institutions. While the sheer number of engineering students in China is higher than any other nation in the world, the quality of engineering education has not been sufficient to meet the country’s needs in terms of urbanisation and industrialisation. The Scheme was therefore launched to introduce comprehensive reforms in engineering education as part of China’s National Plan for Medium and Long-term Education Reform and Development (2010-2020).