Optimizing the Undergraduate Social Work Curriculum in Applied Universities for the New Era

Abstract

With the establishment of China's four-tier social work departments, their functions—integrating petition coordination, leading grassroots governance, and advancing party-building integration—have imposed new demands on undergraduate social work education. However, traditional applied universities face challenges such as misalignment between curriculum content and governance needs, rigid course structures, delayed capacity development, and insufficient collaboration between institutions and local authorities. Oriented toward serving China-specific social governance, this paper establishes four optimization principles, including the unity of political guidance and professional integrity, and proposes four strategic pathways: modular restructuring, content updating, practice-oriented transformation, and capability enhancement. These include introducing core modules such as petition practice to fill knowledge gaps, updating teaching content through stronger integration of local practices and policy contexts, expanding frontline governance internship opportunities via university-local collaboration, and building a competency-based training framework centered on four key dimensions. This study aims to shift social work education from reliance on Western models toward a Chinese-characteristic paradigm, offering a systematic solution for cultivating interdisciplinary professionals suited to the operational realities of Party committee-led social work departments.