Kicking the Right Mindset: Why Football Majors Need More Than Just a Ticket to College
China’s Football Education Revolution: 535 New Majors Added in 2024
On September 13, the Ministry of Education website released the “2024 Undergraduate Major Application Materials Notice for Regular Colleges and Universities”. According to the public statistics, 535 new majors are planned to be added in 2024, involving 353 colleges and universities. Among them, 39 colleges and universities have added the ”Football Sports” major.
In March this year, the Ministry of Education announced the results of the registration and approval of undergraduate majors in ordinary colleges and universities in 2023, and released the catalog of undergraduate majors in ordinary colleges and universities in 2024. Among the 24 newly added undergraduate majors, football major is included. It has become the most newly added undergraduate major for two consecutive years soon after its establishment, which shows that colleges and universities attach great importance to football majors.
Colleges and universities setting up football majors should focus on accelerating the cultivation of football talents and improving the level of football in China. Public opinion should not regard enrolling in football majors as a new path for further education, which will stimulate some students and parents to have a utilitarian attitude of “relying on football to go to college”.
The “Overall Plan for the Reform and Development of Chinese Football” released in 2015 proposed that in order to meet the needs of football talent training, football academies should be established based on qualified undergraduate colleges, and active exploration should be made to establish a new type of football school that closely integrates cultural education with football.
In 2024, the General Administration of Sports and 12 other departments issued the “Implementation Opinions on the Reform and Development of Chinese Youth Football”, which further proposed: “Accelerate the construction of college football academies. Set up football majors and include them in the undergraduate (junior college) major catalog of colleges and universities, support and encourage schools with conditions to build football academies. Based on the needs of social development, steadily expand enrollment indicators, and vigorously cultivate professional football talents.”
Therefore, adding and accelerating the development of football majors is a concrete measure to implement the national football reform and development opinions. The establishment of football academies and football majors provides a feasible path for the integration of sports and education to cultivate football talents, and also largely eliminates the worries of parents for their children to participate in football training.
Let the children who participate in football have no worries about further education, which is conducive to promoting the integration of sports and education and providing students with diverse choices for success. The “Opinions on the Implementation of the Reform and Development of Chinese Youth Football” also requires strengthening the regional coordination of football-themed schools, optimizing the layout of counterparts for further education, and promoting the balanced development of regional and urban and rural football-themed schools.
However, we also need to avoid the tendency to treat the undergraduate major of football as a utilitarian one. Regarding the establishment of football majors in colleges and universities, some public opinions have interpreted that students can “go to college by relying on football” or “go to a better university by relying on football”. This is to use football training as a path to go to college, which caters to the demand of “going to college”.
To evaluate the quality of football majors, one of the indicators is how many professional football players are trained and sent. To this end, when setting up this major, colleges and universities should combine their own school positioning and school conditions to fully demonstrate whether to open a football major and how to train professional football talents.
The development of football majors should meet the needs of the development of the football industry for football talents, rather than meeting the needs of students for further studies and academic qualifications.