15 universities are selected for the Ministry of Education's major plan! What is the Artificial Intelligence "101 Plan"?
2024-08-07
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As artificial intelligence penetrates into all aspects of the economy and society, the front-end training of AI talents is becoming increasingly important.
Recently, the Ministry of Education's Higher Education Department held a work promotion meeting for the "101 Plan" in the field of artificial intelligence and the second working meeting of the Steering Committee. The meeting established the "101 Plan" Construction Committee in the field of artificial intelligence, which comes from 15 universities, 2 research institutions, 3 companies and 2 publishing houses.
In which fields is the “101 Plan” implemented? What specific training plans do the 15 universities have?
“101What is the "Plan"
Strengthening basic research is a key element in building a strong country in science and technology and education. The name of the "101 Project" comes from the fact that the basis of computer language is binary numbers composed of 0 and 1.
In December 2021, the "101 Plan" was first launched in the computer field. The plan starts from the basics, focuses on the basic laws of education and teaching, focuses on basic elements, and strives to cultivate top innovative talents. From the pilot computer field, it will be rolled out to basic disciplines and key fields such as new engineering, new agriculture, new medicine, and new liberal arts.
Taking the computer field as an example, the plan is to develop 12 core courses around four aspects: courses, textbooks, teaching team and practical projects, and form a core course knowledge map covering more than 110 modules and more than 650 key knowledge points.
"We will promote excellent construction experience and models to more basic disciplines and urgently needed fields, gradually increase the coverage of various professional categories, and provide strong support for building a high-quality talent training system." The person in charge of the Ministry of Education's Higher Education Department previously stated.
In April 2023, based on the exploration of the "101 Plan" in computer science, the Ministry of Education launched a series of "101 Plans" for basic disciplines in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biological sciences, basic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, economics, and philosophy.
The construction of core courses is the top priority in deepening the reform of talent cultivation in basic disciplines. The person in charge of the Higher Education Department of the Ministry of Education introduced that the "101 Plan" of basic disciplines will focus on building about 10 core courses in each field, and strive to build a group of first-class core courses that are advanced, innovative and challenging, so as to improve the quality of training top innovative talents in basic disciplines.
The first batch of the "101 Plan" in the field of artificial intelligence has identified 15 core courses (main core courses on the basis of AI), 10 core course extensions (cutting-edge courses for scenario and system applications), and 2 comprehensive experimental courses (cultivation of practical hands-on skills).
Rao Yanting, associate researcher at the Institute of Higher Education of the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences, said in an interview with the media that the "101 Project" is a deepening of the connotation construction of top-notch talent training, and a dual promotion of university construction and talent training. Among them, curriculum construction is actually the core of talent training. If the curriculum is well built, the level of education and teaching will be significantly improved. "When the '101 Project' was implemented, the most interesting thing was that it brought together the top experts, scholars and teachers in this subject field in China to jointly develop courses, thus ensuring the leading and advanced nature of the courses."
What are the characteristics of the selected universities?
In recent years, the accelerated innovation of new-generation information technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and 5G has promoted a wave of change with the digital economy as the development trend. Since the Ministry of Education has promoted the construction of new engineering disciplines, the establishment of majors represented by artificial intelligence has been vigorously promoted. Since the establishment of the artificial intelligence major in 2018, a total of 535 general colleges and universities in my country (including 2 universities with duplicate registration) have successfully registered undergraduate majors in artificial intelligence.
According to the "2024 China University Major Rankings" released by the higher education professional evaluation agency Shanghai Ranking in June this year, there are 10 universities rated as A+ disciplines in the artificial intelligence major ranking, namely Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiaotong University tied for first place, Nanjing University ranked third, Xidian University ranked fourth, Zhejiang University and University of Science and Technology of China tied for fifth place, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China ranked seventh, Huazhong University of Science and Technology ranked eighth, Southeast University ranked ninth, and Harbin Institute of Technology ranked tenth.
In addition, 43 universities were assessed as Class A majors, including Xi'an Jiaotong University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Peking University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Central South University, Sun Yat-sen University, Sichuan University, Fudan University, Beijing Institute of Technology, Tongji University, etc.
The 15 universities selected for the "101 Plan" construction committee in the field of artificial intelligence are: Xi'an Jiaotong University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Fudan University, Tongji University, Zhejiang University, Nanjing University, Harbin Institute of Technology, University of Science and Technology of China, and Hunan University.
It can be found that 15 universities are on the A+ and A lists mentioned above by Soft Science.
Tsinghua University, which ranked first, officially established the Tsinghua University School of Artificial Intelligence on April 27. Yao Qizhi, winner of the highest award in computer science, the Turing Award, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, serves as the dean of the school. Yao Qizhi introduced that the Tsinghua School of Artificial Intelligence focuses on the two key directions of "core basic theory and architecture of artificial intelligence" and "artificial intelligence + X". Li Luming, president of Tsinghua University, said that the school will build 100 pilot courses for artificial intelligence-enabled teaching and equip each freshman of the 2024 class with an "AI growth assistant."
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which tied for first place, unveiled the School of Artificial Intelligence in April and announced in June that it would recruit undergraduate students for the first time in 2024 with artificial intelligence (pilot class for top talents) as the major. All eligible undergraduates will be included in the Zhiyuan Engineering Honors Program and the National Intelligence Program to implement undergraduate and postgraduate training. Ding Kuiling, president of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said at a forum in July that talent cultivation is the only irreplaceable function of a university. In other words, the central position of university talent cultivation will not change fundamentally due to the addition of new technologies.
He said that everyone now has a consensus that artificial intelligence will promote changes in university talent training, and in turn, excellent talents will promote the higher-quality development of artificial intelligence. Therefore, he believes that whoever can combine AI and HI (Human intelligence) well, and have a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence, use artificial intelligence, and develop artificial intelligence in running schools, will be more likely to become the next center of higher education and talent in the world.
The University of Science and Technology of China, which is known for its strengths in science and engineering, also established the School of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in June this year, and directly recruited students majoring in artificial intelligence for the general college entrance examination. Students with excellent grades can also choose to enter the artificial intelligence technology talent class. The school will serve the cultivation of high-end talents in frontier interdisciplinary theories and applied research in artificial intelligence and data science, and will train talents for undergraduates and postgraduates. It has two undergraduate majors, "Artificial Intelligence" and "Data Science and Big Data Technology", as well as a first-level discipline, "Intelligent Science and Technology", and will conduct scientific research on scientific intelligence, industrial intelligence, embodied intelligence and other aspects.
Fudan University announced that it will launch "AI courses" starting from this fall semester, and will launch at least 100 AI courses in the 2024-2025 academic year, covering all undergraduate and graduate students. As a plan to cover all undergraduate and graduate students, the AI-BEST course system of the AI course is designed from four dimensions, including AI general basic courses, AI professional core courses, AI subject advanced courses and AI vertical application courses.
"Since the application for new AI courses was opened in early May, not many of the more than 300 AI-related courses originally offered spontaneously on campus have been included in the new curriculum system. In fact, more than 70% of the more than 100 'AI big classes' courses this time are newly built courses," Professor Chen Yan, Executive Vice Dean of the Graduate School of Fudan University, told Caixin.
Tongji University released the "Action Plan for Artificial Intelligence Empowered Discipline Innovation and Development (2024-2027)" in May this year, stating that it will establish the School of Future Technology, add a Future Technology Class based on the Guohao Elite Class, and recruit the first batch of undergraduates in 2024.
Wu Zhijun, Dean of the Undergraduate School and the Freshman School of Tongji University, introduced that in the future, students in the technical class will deeply study in the four cross-fields of "AI+", realizing the cross-departmental and cross-disciplinary "AI+" field undergraduate and postgraduate training of "graduation in the major of graduation topic selection". At the same time, for the 2024 undergraduate freshmen, each major will add a core general quality course of artificial intelligence "Artificial Intelligence Science and Technology", and each major will open AI application courses, so as to achieve the full coverage of artificial intelligence deep integration into professional talent training.
(This article comes from China Business Network)
