Undergraduate Chemistry Education in Chinese Universities: Addressing the Challenges of Rapid Growth

Abstract

In the past 30 years, university-level chemistry education in China has been experiencing significant changes because of the rapid expansion of its university education system. These changes are reflected in improvements to the existing education goals, classroom teaching methods, textbooks, teaching facilities, teacher profiles, lab activities, and international communications. While China is striving to maintain its own unique characteristics, the result of these changes is that university-level chemistry education in China is becoming more and more similar to the education experiences found in the United States. Although great efforts have been put into chemistry education reform, China’s university-level chemistry departments still are facing many challenging and new issues, such as how to enhance teaching quality, attract students to the field of chemistry, cultivate students with creative thinking who can meet the needs of the global chemical industry, and so on. All of these growth-related problems suggest that China has a long way to go before reaching its goals in chemistry education at the university level.