Source: www.people.cn 2014-06-19
Written by: Yang Jieli
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On the morning of June 19, Xu Ningsheng, President of Sun Yat-sen University, told the media in an interview on “undergraduate admission and education” that a good university should keep in mind the expectations of parents and students, and undergraduate education at SYSU is positioned to “give students a future”.

Give students a future, the suitable is the best

Xu Ningsheng thought that according to the current development of higher education in China, students have many choices when they apply for universities. Wise parents and students will choose a suitable university, taking into consideration the university’s ideals, campus culture and values of university education.

With regard to talent cultivation, Xu Ningsheng said that a university must turn the expectations of parents, teachers and students into actions in talent cultivation. Undergraduate education should consider the students’ development and give students a future.

Meanwhile, Xu Ningsheng said in the interview that SYSU is gradually guiding the students’ choosing of majors from benefit-oriented toward interest-oriented. The freshmen who are enrolled in general discipline categories will first receive general education and then choose their interested majors. With regard to campus culture, in addition to practical, harmonious and daring to be the first, SYSU also puts forward the idea of “giving a helping hand” to foster the students’ sense of social responsibilities.

As for this year’s plan to enroll 460 rural students from poor areas, Xu Ningsheng said that this represents nearly a five-fold increase compared with last year. SYSU promises not to lower current standard and will allocate university resources to ensure all students to have equal opportunities of development.

Innovate and develop, foster high-quality innovative talents

Xu Ningsheng introduced that SYSU focuses on fostering students’ innovation capabilities, provides all students with opportunities to develop into innovative top-notch talents within the framework of current educational system, and encourages students to participate in innovation training projects and contests. SYSU spends nearly 10 million yuan each year to fund student innovation training through multilevel platforms including contests and science and technology incubator park.

Xu Ningsheng pointed out that in recent years, as a modern comprehensive research university with humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering and medical sciences, SYSU has started from the perspective of regional industrial chain and national strategic emerging industries, put emphasis on developing engineering and applied disciplines, innovated talent cultivation model, and integrated the discipline, research and talent strengths within the university and the collaborative educational resources outside the university in order to foster high-quality, interdisciplinary, and top-notch innovative talents with international vision, sense of social responsibility and innovative spirit to meet the needs of national and regional development.