First of all, the two sides have different functional orientations of university education. As its name freedom education expresses, Americans believe that undergraduate education is the most basic education for a free person, which helps an individual to grow into a sound person with rational thinking ability and critical spirit. However, due to many reasons such as history and economic development level, China's university education is also positioned as a professional education to train professionals in a certain field. The biggest difference between the two sides is that the goal of the former is to cultivate sound individuals and make them become competent citizens of civilized society; The goal of the latter is to cultivate tool-oriented talents. Because there are essential differences in goals, there are fundamental differences in many other aspects between Chinese and American university education. You can also focus on the choice of majors and courses.

College students in China have already decided on a certain major before entering the school. Moreover, from the first semester of college, I began to study specialized courses. Moreover, professional courses (including core courses and related courses) account for at least 60% of the total number of university courses in China. American college students, however, do not have a major when entering universities, but study some public subjects according to certain requirements. These subjects generally cover several departments: literature, art, history, philosophy, humanities, society, mathematics, science and other fields. After extensive education, students can understand themselves, society and the connotation of various disciplines more clearly.

Therefore, only in the third year of college, students will have the opportunity to choose their own majors of interest, and generally there will be an academic consultant to guide them.

After determining the major, students begin to study specialized courses. However, the proportion of specialized courses generally does not exceed 1/3 of all courses. Therefore, it is conceivable that the students trained by American university education have obvious advantages in terms of knowledge width and balance. Basic education in history, humanities and philosophy can ensure that graduates have at least the basic qualities of modern citizens. Extensive but not in-depth dabbling in different fields can keep graduates interested in science, thus laying the foundation for further in-depth research at the graduate level. These are all things that our education in China needs to study hard.