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Ed Ministry to Import IT Textbooks for Colleges
College students will be able to access the world's latest information technology (IT) soon as the Ministry of Education has decided to import advanced IT textbooks from the United States and other developed countries.
These textbooks will be recommended to, not imposed upon, universities across the nation that offer better teaching conditions for computer courses, said Zhang Raoxue, director of the ministry's Department of Higher Education, at a press conference Wednesday in Beijing.
The universities will be encouraged to teach IT courses in English, or a combination of English and Chinese.
The move is to help college students grasp IT skills earlier on in their studies, said Zhang.
The first textbook, 20 copies of which have been imported, and which covers such subjects as computer networking and electronic commerce, has already been circulated by the Higher Education Publishing House.
Some 700 college IT teachers from Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province; Harbin, capital of Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province and Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, received professional training this summer. These teachers are keen to use the imported textbooks in their universities, said Zhang.
Zhang said China has a huge IT market. According to a skills development plan for the 10th Five-Year Plan period (2001-05) from the Ministry of Personnel, IT software specialists will increase to 3 million by 2005. Currently, 738,000 college students are studying IT courses.
He added that the country will also import textbooks on bio-technology, economics and finance for use in universities.
The ministry's spokesperson said the introduction of textbooks is to satisfy students' demand that outdated textbooks be replaced.
"Using foreign textbooks is not to squeeze out home-made counterparts, but to stimulate domestic publishers to come out with high-quality IT educational products,'' said the spokesperson.
She added that popularizing IT education has been highlighted in the country's long-term education development plan.
The ministry also revealed that Internet-based higher education is bearing fruit. In 1999, the State authorized 45 universities, such as Peking and Tsinghua, to open such educational programmes in 1999.
With the students registering this fall, the number of students taking Internet-based higher education will reach more than 400,000. These students, who failed the university entrance exams, can fulfill their college dreams through the Internet-based teaching programmes, sources from the ministry said.
Source: China Daily
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