In the popularization stage, the incentive mechanism of students' learning should not simply come from employment.
Now China's economic development has entered a new normal, from high-speed growth to steady growth. The popularization of higher education will bring about a continuous increase in scale, and there will be a certain "upward force" between economic development and higher education development.
How to solve this rising force requires the innovation of higher education, especially the innovation of talent training concept. We need to carefully examine the experience of China's higher education popularization, absorb the essence of the world's higher education development that human civilization can share, and deeply understand the road of higher education reform and development with China characteristics. On this basis, the blueprint for the popularization of higher education in China is of great significance to the future of China and even the global development. From the experience of East Asia, students' learning is "pragmatic". Under the background that basic education is oriented to further studies and higher education is oriented to employment, students' learning motivation is directly proportional to their economic development achievements.
In the economic take-off stage, rapid economic growth can provide more and better jobs, and college students are more motivated to learn because they can find good jobs after graduation. However, in the stage of steady economic growth or even stagnation, the number of jobs will decrease, and the number of "good" jobs will decrease even faster. With the expansion of the scale of higher education and the increase of college graduates, students' learning motivation will be reduced and their weariness will be aggravated.
Since the popularization of higher education, we have always emphasized the economic function of higher education. However, in the popularization stage of higher education, while continuing to emphasize economic functions, we should also fully understand the social and cultural functions of higher education.
From the perspective of social function, in the stage of popularization, more than half of young people have entered colleges and universities. Now we are fair in the basic education stage, and we should also emphasize fairness in colleges and universities in the future. Different types of college students should get suitable educational opportunities. The higher education system can provide learners with more adequate, diverse and suitable learning opportunities, thus promoting the development of social equity.
From the perspective of cultural function, it is mainly to establish a correct view of education and learning. The incentive mechanism of college students' learning should not simply come from employment, but from the desire for knowledge, the improvement of their own ability and the cultivation of comprehensive quality, especially the positive learning spirit and innovative consciousness. This is very important for higher education and economic development. Because in the context of the new economic normal, to achieve sustainable economic development across the middle-income trap and call for scientific and technological innovation and new development models requires people's creativity, especially the innovative ability of young people, and promote employment and entrepreneurship through innovation, not just waiting for employment.
This puts forward new requirements for the popularization of higher education, that is, to establish an educational concept centered on students' development, provide diversified learning opportunities and diverse learning spaces, and form a talent training system and system focusing on improving ability.
In the stage of popularization, higher education is no longer simply adapted to the industrial structure.
At present, undergraduate majors in China are set according to the professional catalogue, and majors have become a means for the government to control the scale and structure of talent training and achieve the balance between supply and demand of talent training to a certain extent.
However, the accumulation of talent resources, especially the current talent training, is not a simple causal relationship or corresponding relationship with future economic growth and industrial structure adjustment and upgrading. The fundamental way to prevent graduates from finding jobs is not to try to design a seamless connection between professional structure, industrial structure and economic structure, but to give priority to enhancing students' innovative spirit and comprehensive ability training.
There is a relationship among higher education, industrial structure and economic growth, and human resources are creative, innovative and cumulative. When human resources gather to a certain extent, it may lead to "endogenous" industrial structure upgrading, or it may be absorbed by "imported" industrial structure adjustment. The relationship between them is interactive, not a simple adaptation of higher education to industrial structure. It may be futile to calculate how to optimize the personnel training structure according to the future industrial development from the perspective of industrial structure and economic growth.
Education is a career facing the future. Facing the future industrial structure and labor market, what types and specifications of talents should be trained in higher education, and what kind of discipline structure, hierarchical structure and type structure can adapt to the future economic development and labor demand is a problem that needs attention. According to the traditional view, colleges and universities need to study the demand for talents in the future economy and technology in detail, and then study disciplines and courses accordingly, so as to establish a so-called reasonable education structure and talent training structure.
However, people can't accurately predict the economic and technological development and labor market demand in the next few decades, even in the next 10 year, and can't predict the requirements of industrial structure and economic growth for talent training types. Professor Henry M. Levin of Columbia University pointed out that the manpower planning method advocated by OECD, which is widely used in Europe, has also failed. "This method first multiplies the predicted value of the department's economic output by a fixed formula representing the industry demand of the unit output to get the industry demand, and then further converts the industry demand into the education demand of the future labor force through a strict formula. The establishment of these relationships requires the assumed ratio of departmental output to industrial structure.
The proportion of education demand in various industries is fixed, and the failure of this manpower forecast is mainly due to the rigid relationship between education demand and occupation, occupation demand and economic output. The changes of different forecasts in technology, organization, labor and capital market prices and the inaccuracy of departmental output forecast will weaken the accuracy of education demand forecast. "
The educational idea of taking students' development as the core in the popularization stage calls for the innovation of talent training system. In the era of popularization, it is necessary to reorient personnel training, that is, postpone professional education, change the training mode focusing on professional education, and establish a talent training mode focusing on general education and lifelong learning, and combining professional education with general education. At present, the talent training concept of combining professional education with general education in China has been included in the national "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan", and the comprehensive reform programs of universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University have also put forward the training mode of combining professional education with general education.
In the popularization stage, it is necessary to make up for the diversified courses in colleges and universities.
The educational concept centered on students' development in the popularization stage requires the formation of a diversified and fair higher education system. Judging from the development of higher education in developed countries, the classification and diversification of higher education are consistent with the popularization of higher education, and the diversification of higher education types is an inevitable requirement for the popularization of higher education.
When higher education is in the elite stage, colleges and universities show the characteristics of "homogeneity", and when it is in the popular stage, it will form the diversification of colleges and universities. The popularization of higher education in China has led to a sharp increase in the number of college students and colleges, and the scale of colleges and universities has expanded rapidly, but a reasonable hierarchical classification has not yet been formed, let alone the diversified development of colleges and universities, which is also an important reason why higher education is out of touch with economic growth, industrial structure and social needs.
The educational concept centered on student development requires diversification of higher education. Only the diversity of higher education can adapt to the diversity of students' sources, needs, types and specifications of personnel training and personnel training modes in the era of popularization. This inevitably requires changing the development mode of higher education, from "homogenization" to "diversification" and "heterogeneity", and implementing classified development, classified management and classified evaluation of higher education.
It is not a few first-class universities that truly represent higher education in the era of popularization, but a first-class and diversified higher education system. The diversified higher education system should be the balanced development of all kinds of universities, including world-class research universities, world-class applied universities and higher vocational and technical colleges.
What a world power really needs is not a few first-class universities but a first-class higher education system. In 2002, the World Bank report "Building a Knowledge Society" held that the whole higher education system, not only research universities, but also polytechnics, liberal arts colleges, vocational and technical colleges, community colleges and open universities, should respond to the changes in the global environment and make contributions to economic and social development.
The construction of first-class universities cannot be separated from the whole education system. Salmi, director of the Higher Education Department of the World Bank, said: "The reform of the university system cannot be carried out in isolation. The long-term planning and implementation of establishing a world-class university should be closely related to the country's economic and social development strategy, the ongoing and upcoming primary and secondary education reforms, and the plans to develop other types of universities, thus forming a complete higher education system including teaching universities, research universities and technical universities. "
In the next few years, with the construction of world-class universities and disciplines, the transformation of ordinary undergraduate colleges to Universities of Applied Sciences and the construction of modern vocational education system, China will gradually form research universities represented by world-class universities and disciplines, application-oriented undergraduate colleges represented by Universities of Applied Sciences and higher vocational and technical colleges represented by demonstration vocational colleges, and on this basis, establish a higher education classification system with China characteristics.
In the popularization stage, students of different types of colleges and universities should realize mutual recognition of credits.
The educational idea that students' development is the core in the popularization stage requires the establishment of an open educational system and the formation of an overpass for talent training. Students of different types of colleges and universities can realize mutual recognition of credits, and build an open, diverse, convenient and smooth "overpass" and lifelong learning platform for higher education with flexible learning system and teaching management system, so as to provide every learner with as many learning opportunities as possible.
Since the popularization of higher education, the integration of colleges and universities in China is superficial, not substantive. The so-called superficial integration refers to the integration of disciplines, such as liberal arts, science, forensic medicine and agricultural management. From the external form, it is a comprehensive university, but the real integration in the real sense can promote the cross-integration of disciplines and majors in the school. The comprehensive reform of colleges and universities in China has basically completed the first step, but it has not entered the second step.
As for the "overpass", we have always advocated opening to the outside world, jointly training graduate students with foreign universities, and promoting the integration of production and education, school-enterprise cooperation and the combination of politics and Industry-University-Research. These are the new trends of talent training and scientific research in various departments and disciplines in colleges and universities, but on the other hand, the barriers between departments and disciplines in colleges and universities are strict, and the sharing of students' courses and teachers' resources between departments and departments has not been realized. What about the goal of promoting the integration of disciplines in essence?
China's universities have close cooperation with foreign countries, and there are various joint talent training programs. However, it is precisely because there are not many links between domestic universities and there is no cooperative training mechanism. Since it can be jointly cultivated with foreign universities, why can't it be jointly cultivated between domestic universities?
The goal of reform should be the open cooperation among universities and the openness, integration and integration among departments and disciplines within universities. An open system is also an inclusive development, and diversified higher education needs to be promoted in an inclusive development.
It can be predicted that in the future, in addition to government-run schools, there will also be social diversified forms of running schools, and a higher education system with inclusive development of government-run public higher education, private higher education, Chinese-foreign cooperative education and enterprise universities will gradually be formed. At the same time, with the progress of information technology, we should attach importance to and standardize the development of informal higher education, and provide more sufficient and diverse educational opportunities for students and all walks of life.
The pace of popularization of higher education is approaching quietly, and higher education needs to take the initiative to change and explore the development path of popularization of higher education with China characteristics. This is not only a change in concept, but also a change in system design and function, which is reflected in the innovation of talent training.