Key industry-education integration is developed at YNU

The tourism management major at Yunnan University, or YNU – located in Kunming, capital city of Southwest China's Yunnan province – has developed industry and education integration, in an initiative expected to boost the local economy going forwards.

It is seen as integrating applied academic majors with local key industries and resolving a previous mismatch between the advances in industrial practices and the lagging education sector.

Established in 1993, the major is one of the first batch of China's tourism management doctorates and the first batch of tourism management master's degrees.

A total of 1,500 graduates have so far taken the tourism management major, with 20 percent of them admitted to master's degrees and 4 percent to doctorate courses. At the same time, the major has trained more than 60 international students from Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN, South and Central Asia and other countries.

The academic major has presided over and participated in the compilation of a series of tourism textbooks produced by six major publishing houses and it developed three national courses, five international courses in the Lancang-Mekong Subregion and five provincial courses. It has also launched 10 new liberal arts courses with the concept of interdisciplinarity – involving two or more different subjects or areas of knowledge – as well as helped advance the integration of science and technology and industry services.

In addition, the major has established cooperative relations with 10 large enterprise groups – including the State-owned Yunnan Construction and Investment Holding Group Co and China Eastern Yunnan Airlines. It has also helped set up internship bases in 20 enterprises – among them, Kunming World Horticultural Expo Garden Co and Lijiang Yulong Snow Mountain Tourism Development Co.