(1) General education is an educational thought and practice that has a great influence on the development of modern higher education, and is regarded as an effective way to cultivate college students' comprehensive pragmatic competence. This idea can be traced back to Aristotle's thought of "free education", and people's thoughts can be cultivated by correct reasoning. General education in colleges and universities was first put forward by Professor A.S. Packard of Bode College in the early19th century. It refers to the education of public subjects and courses for students in colleges and universities. It belongs to non-professional and non-vocational education, non-utilitarian, adhering to the educational concept of "perfect person" In Harvard Red Book, 1 defines "general education" as "the kind of education that first educates students to be responsible people and citizens in a democratic society", and holds that the purpose of general education is to cultivate citizens with social responsibility and all-round development. Such people have the following four abilities: the ability to think effectively, the ability to communicate clearly, the ability to make appropriate judgments, and the cognitive ability to identify with universal values. Broadly speaking, general education runs through the whole process of university education reform, which is embodied in the comprehensive education and training of students. The real purpose of general education is to cultivate students' broad vision, lay a solid foundation for their professional knowledge learning and endow them with personality charm. General education in a narrow sense is an education that cannot directly provide students with jobs and jobs. The purpose of general education is to make students better adapt to society, lay a foundation for the healthy development of students' body and mind, and promote the all-round development of students from the perspective of non-vocational education.

(2) Professional education is to train professionals who are engaged in specialized occupations or positions in specialized fields. This idea includes the following aspects: first, the purpose of education is to cultivate specialized talents who need specialized jobs or posts in specialized fields; Second, ordinary members of society (in the ideal state of universal education, all members of society) are the objects of education, because practitioners in any specialized field need to master specialized knowledge; Third, the content of education is relatively narrow, limited to the knowledge of specialized fields that specialized talents need. Some colleges and universities in China have tried the following reforms in undergraduate teaching: the first grade focuses on general education, and from the second grade, under the guidance of tutors, students reconsider choosing their own majors and focus on extensive professional education. Advocating general education is not to deny the important role of professional knowledge and skills in students' comprehensive quality, but to think that students should try their best to broaden their academic horizons and avoid single-minded learners in school. In terms of teaching, colleges and universities should reduce the teaching mode of teaching in large classes. Teachers and students can communicate more directly in the classroom, guide students to express their opinions in the classroom, collide with ideological sparks, let students understand the frontier of discipline development, and highlight students' expressive ability, writing ability and practical ability, which is also a form widely used abroad.

(3) Although there are great differences between general education and professional education, they are interrelated; General education is the foundation and extension of professional education, and professional education is the deepening of general education. In university education, we should link general education with professional education, so that general education can run through the whole higher education system. Only through the development and application of implicit education, such as environmental edification, can we construct the training mode of general education talents. To some extent, the academic achievements of various colleges and universities are the same in principle, but there should be differences in training objectives. For research universities, the main training goal is not to train technicians with special skills, but to train innovative scientists, thinkers, artists and leaders in all fields.