In the new period, the development of science and technology demands higher requirements for the quality of talents cultivated by science and engineering universities, and the setting of humanistic course of science and engineering university is the most critical part to cultivate students' comprehensive quality. In the paper, tracing back to the history of the development of humanistic course at home and abroad, and analyzing the progress and existed problems of humanistic course reform in Chinese science and engineering universities. On this basis, making suggestions for the further development of science and engineering universities, implicit courses, school-based courses and activity courses are proposed.