Abstract: With the acceleration of urbanization, the continuous expansion of industrial scale, and the increasing living standards of the people in our country, the emphasis and requirements for fire safety have grown, prompting the gradual rise and significant development and change of higher education in fire engineering. This paper systematically reviews the origin and evolution of higher education in fire engineering in China, categorizing its development into five stages: the early exploration and foundation-laying stage, the initialization and pioneering stage, the preliminary development stage, the rapid development stage, and the stage of deepening reform and comprehensive advancement. This paper analyzes the current state of fire engineering major construction in various universities. The number of new universities establishing fire protection engineering majors is increasing annually. The paper also discusses the development of related disciplines, which primarily rely on the fundamental discipline of safety science and engineering and feature a comprehensive talent cultivation system. Academic papers in the field of fire safety published by universities and research institutions were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection and Peking University Chinese Core Citation Database (2003 to 2024). An analysis was conducted on the overall output characteristics of scholarly publications, patterns of research collaboration, and research topics explored in these papers. This analysis aims to provide comprehensive and systematic reference materials for educators, researchers, and practitioners in the field of fire engineering, promoting the sustained progress and improvement of higher education in fire engineering in China.

Key words: fire engineering, higher education, development history, major construction, discipline construction, safety science