Engineering Education in China - A summary of a focused visit in 2010

A group of ten delegates, all members of the American Society for Engineering Education, formed an Engineering Education Delegation for a trip to China organized by the People to People Ambassadors organization from October 26 through November 6, 2010. While visiting three Chinese cities, Beijing, Xi'an, and Shanghai, the delegates visited four Chinese universities with strong engineering and engineering technician programs. A separate meeting was held at the start of the trip with five representatives of the Chinese Society for Engineering Education who provided useful information on the status, plans, and larger issues facing engineering education in China. This paper provides a summary of that trip and offers observations that may be useful to engineering educators in the United States and other parts of North America. It was found that, in the last decade, the number of students in engineering and technician education programs in China has grown dramatically. Simultaneously, modern educational facilities have been added to the core infrastructure of Chinese higher education, often in the form of entirely new campuses on the outskirts of already crowded major cities.