Professor David Daokui Li's “General Survey of Economics” selected for inclusion in third batch of first-class national-level undergraduate courses
The Ministry of Education recently announced the results for the third batch of first-class national-level undergraduate courses, with the “General Survey of Economics” course having been among those successfully selected, marking yet another major breakthrough made by the course after winning recognition as a Tsinghua University Excellent Course in 2024. This signifies that the development of such a curriculum has garnered a high degree of offical approval at the national level, fully demonstrating its leading role in the ongoing reform and innovation of undergraduate education in the area of economics.
The “General Survey of Economics” course was designed by Professor David Daokui Li together with his educational programming team and was formulated based on the accumulation of research, analysis and long-term teaching practice at Tsinghua University over the course of the past ten years. Since the first installment of the course in the fall semester of 2020, the number of elective students joining the course has exceeded 1,000, while parallel sets of lectures have been inaugurated at the Central University of Finance and Economics along with other institutions of higher learning. As a general course for students of all majors, “General Survey of Economics” adopts “introducing everyday examples of economics first, before discussing disciplinary economics” as its core approach, striving to integrate economics into the observation of concrete economic activities. The course combines tangible economic phenomena with economic theory, economic history with the history of economic thought, traditional political economy with the modern field of economics, and disciplinary economics with real-world economic practice, systematically introducing a diverse range of basic knowledge systems and theories of economics from the perspective of human economic experience and economic history. In this way, its aim is to help young students comprehensively attain knowledge on the economy and the field of economics, including increasing their understanding of the economic theory and economic practice of China and the world.
Professor Li and his educational programming team continue to explore a variety of teaching methodologies, making use of a rich combination of different formats, such as classroom lectures, case study seminars, group presentations and essay assignments, in order to guide students of various majors to learn through mutual engagement and grow through objective evaluation. Through content design that combines depth and breadth, the course not only allows students to master the elementary knowledge frameworks that underpin the discipline of economics, but also lays stress on cultivating their abilities to employ methods in economics to analyze real-world problems, which improves their interdisciplinary reasoning and critical thinking skills.
The selection of the “General Survey of Economics” course as a first-class national-level undergraduate course represents an outstanding affirmation of Professor Li and his educational programming team’s persistent efforts to open up new horizons within the area of general education for undergraduate economics. Moving forward into the future, the team will remain steadfast in its mission to spur on the all-round development of its students, and on the basis of undertaking general studies in economics from the perspective of internationally influential Chinese research, strive to establish a new paradigm for education in economics around the world, launching a benchmark for basic education worldwide in the field of economics, and make further contributions to cultivating high-quality talents in the new era that possess both a global vision as well as practical capabilities.
