Structural system design courses are important while difficult for both the lecturers and students in the major of civil engineering due to the complexity, wide scope and profound connection with engineering practice of those courses. Unfortunately, the educational objectives of these courses can be hardly fulfilled due to the poor configuration in terms of effectiveness and completion of these courses. Contents of some courses overlap. Emphases of teaching are partially put on structural elements instead of system, theories instead of application and skills instead on professionalism. This paper takes the University of Southern California as the example and introduces several characteristics and merits in the course configuration, teaching philosophy and methods and application practice of structural design courses in American universities. Based on a comparative study, suggestions are make for the improvement of the teaching of the structural system design courses in China.