The President of ChinaAssociation of Higher Education Qu Zhenyuan was invited to give the lecture on Orientation and Trend: Understanding of thereforms of Chinese Higher Education, which is Lesson 10 and Lesson 11 ofthe thematic lectures on Reforms andDevelopment of Chinese Higher Education,on Class 502, Institute ofEducation, Xiamen University.Professor Bie Dunrong, vice director of the Instituteof Education,presided at the lecture. Professor PanMaoyuan, Director of the Institute of Education, Professor Liu Haifeng, Partychief Zheng Bingbing, Professor Wang Hongcai, Associate Professor Chen Xingde,ect. attended the lecture. Firstyear Ed.D., 2nd year Ed.D., some academicgraduate students and some faculty alumni also went to the lecture.

Accordingto the tendency of the development of higher education in the world, from ahistorical perspective, President Qu analyzed the historic position and futuredirections of Chinese higher education. He pointed out that economictransformation and upgrading and technological change required that highereducation in our country must develop rapidly. If we wanted to come across themiddle-income trap, we were ought to increase investments in education and givepriority to education. What’s more, President Qu pointed out that five aspectsof Chinese higher education were going through changes: supply and demandrelation, economic society, international competition and resources, ect. Inorder to deal with these changes, we must take the improvement of quality asthe core and stimulate the modernization of higher education. He added that ifwe wanted to change education idea, education model, take the classifiedcultivation of academic talents and applied talents and make a potentcombination of general education and professional education, we were ought tohave student-centered idea and take the student learning as the center ofeducation mode. When talking about this topic, President Qu used an image or asymbol which made the topic more understandable. When it came to universityfunction, he thought besides traditional talent cultivation, scientific research,social services, international communication may come to be the fourthfunction. Furthermore, about Double First-rate, he suggested that highereducation institutions should deal with it appropriately and deal with therelationship between key construction and overall lift.

PresidentQu talked about something others in the lecture which was held in theafternoon. Firstly, he expressed his own opinions on the construction of highereducation governance system. He thought that if we wanted to develop highereducation, we should manage country by law and manage education by law. Then,he thought the weakness of the development of Chinese higher education was thecultivation of talents. To improve the quality of talents cultivation, weshould raise the level of class quality, which means that it is necessary to makethe systematic design of the reform of training program, curriculum system,curriculum, teaching method, examination, dissertation, ect. and we shouldmobilize and reform all elements. Concerning the education of creation andinnovation of college students, President Qu stressed that we must make fulluse of the education of creation and innovation and the innovation competition.Finally, President Qu made an analysis of the key words, which were study, stability, reform, quality, employment and partyconstruction, of the higher education in 2017.

Inquestion-and-answer session, President Qu communicated with teachers andstudents present. He answered the questions which were raised by those teachersand students and these questions included the over-education after enlargingenrolment policy, how to establish the new relationship between teachers andstudents, the conflict between utilitarian value judgement and the developmentof higher education, the talent cultivation in research university during theperiod of universal higher education, the non-government funded education inthe new period, ect. President Qu answered these questions one by one.

Atthe end of the lecture, Professor Bie concluded that from the lecture given byPresident Qu, it was clear that President Qu had rich knowledge about thehistory. At the same time, he had the broad international vision andforward-looking strategic thinking. As an educator, he had people-orientedawareness and took student cultivation first. Everyone present learnedsomething about the profound understanding and valuable opinions about the developmentof Chinese higher education from an educator with rich practical experience.