Free online Tsinghua education for budding entrepreneurs

Since Tuesday, anyone with access to the Internet who is interested in start-up businesses can get entrepreneurship education from Tsinghua University, for free.

Tsinghua University launched an entrepreneurship channel at its free online course platform on Tuesday in support of the central government's strategic plan to stimulate entrepreneurship among university students and in the rest of society.

The channel plans to first provide more than 20 entrepreneurship courses from Tsinghua's current curricula and overseas universities.

After Premier Li Keqiang said that the central government will encourage entrepreneurship and innovation at a news conference on March 15, aiming to boost market vitality, universities began to take action in providing an entrepreneurship-friendly environment.

Tsinghua University is a pioneer in this field.

"The online entrepreneurship courses are based on Tsinghua's traditional entrepreneurship education...considering diverse needs in China and abroad, including Tsinghua's current curricula from various departments and also high quality international courses," said Nie Fenghua, director of the Online Education Office of Tsinghua, adding that it would fulfill domestic needs and also benefit foreigners who are willing to do business in China.

Nie also said that some courses would include English subtitles.

Our faculty members would use Chinese cases in the lectures, said Professor Gao Jian, vice dean of China entrepreneurship center of the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, adding that the entrepreneurship courses would prioritize domestic needs and gradually address international needs.

The first series of courses includes design ideas, business model innovation and starting up new enterprises, as well as adaptations of a course from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Entrepreneurship 101: Who are your clients.

"Entrepreneurship cannot really be taught in lessons, but it needs a nurturing environment. The online entrepreneurship courses will attract more people's interest and give them the courage to start up their own business," said Xu Jinghong, president of Tsinghua Holdings Co Ltd, believing that the online entrepreneurship courses, as well as other social influence, will encourage more youth to put their ideas into practice and contribute to the country's plan to stimulate entrepreneurship.

In 2013, as the first group of Asian university members, Tsinghua joined edX, an online course platform jointly established by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and started to provide a series of online courses in October, 2013. So far, Tsinghua has provided nearly 100 online courses to the platform.

In 2014, the Ministry of Education set up its xuetangX.com online education center in Tsinghua.

The platform has more than 1.17 million registered users.