But sometimes feelings do reflect part of the truth. On the one hand, the employment situation of undergraduate graduates is getting more and more severe, so they have to choose to continue studying for master's and doctoral degrees, and constantly postpone the time node of employment; On the other hand, employers urgently need all kinds of talents, but looking around, there are few useless people, and it is getting harder and harder to find suitable employees. The contradiction between supply and demand in the labor market, especially the structural contradiction, is intensifying.
This shows that the products of universities-undergraduate graduates-do not meet the social demand for talents, at least not completely. Why is this happening? In my opinion, in addition to the rapid expansion of enrollment, blind expansion of scale and the way universities evaluate teachers, there are at least three more fundamental drawbacks-I call them "carving a boat for a sword", "accompanying the prince to study" and "on paper"-which are seriously affecting the quality of education in China University. If we can't overcome these disadvantages and establish a brand-new educational model, it will be empty talk to greatly improve the quality of university education.
Disadvantage 1: Carving a boat for a sword
"Carving a boat for a sword" means that the current undergraduate education is seriously lagging behind the rapid development of the outside world. Internationally, developed countries, especially the United States, are leading a new wave of technological change, and emerging technologies such as the Internet are beginning to subvert the structure and operation of the whole traditional society. Domestically, after more than 30 years of rapid growth, China has entered the late stage of industrialization and is entering the post-industrial era. A remarkable feature of contemporary society is that the speed of technological change far exceeds any period in history. This makes the university education system, which aims at training specialized talents, encounter more and more severe challenges since the19th century-it can't keep up with the pace at all. As Rosemburg, senior vice president of Google, said, "Don't grow up to be a professional, because your job will change. Now the pace of science and technology is changing too fast, and experts will be at a loss. "
The bigger trouble is that in 20 years, the world may become a world that we can't understand with our knowledge and vision today. The problems people faced at that time may be completely different from today. This means that college graduates will no longer be able to find answers to questions from the existing "knowledge reserve box", but can only solve problems and even crises through cooperation and coordination according to the new and changed situation. This requires university education to abandon the specialized teaching mode centered on knowledge transfer and establish a new educational mode with the main goal of stimulating students' potential, cultivating cooperative spirit, understanding different cultures and values, and improving their ability to find, ask and solve problems.
However, since 1952 established a higher education system characterized by high specialization according to the Soviet planned economy model, the idea of specialization has been deeply rooted in China University. Not only universities, but also society. If students don't learn some practical skills that can be seen and touched, just like southerners don't eat rice, they have no ideas. Universities have abandoned the fine tradition of "attaching importance to teaching over skills" in ancient China, and are degenerating into vocational and technical training colleges-not that vocational and technical training colleges are unimportant, but that they undertake different missions from universities-which makes it very difficult for universities to implement general education. It seems that a dangerous signal has not been paid enough attention: in the face of the ever-changing external world, the higher the degree of professional training students receive in universities, the less room for adaptation, adjustment and transformation after graduation. Just like the Chu people who carved marks on the ship's side, how can they find their own swords?
Disadvantage 2: accompany the prince to study
"Studying with the Prince" refers to the unreasonable allocation of university education resources and serious waste. What is the training goal of undergraduate education? We haven't figured out this fundamental problem yet. According to the current organizational structure and management system, universities are composed of various professional departments. They are "princes" in universities, and they have their own special interests, which are not necessarily consistent with the overall interests of universities. Faculty administrators and teachers are most concerned about professional education. This is not only because it is their preference, but also their interest. Due to the influence of long-term professional training, in the teaching process, they often habitually set courses according to the ideas and modes of training professional researchers, and organize teaching-just as their teachers do-in an effort to make each student's professional foundation more solid and professional ability stronger. In fact, this is a postgraduate training mode, not an undergraduate training mode.
But the problem is that not every student who enters the university wants to engage in scientific research in the professional field in the future, and society does not need all college graduates to engage in scientific research. The more obvious fact is that most students are unwilling and will not engage in scientific research, and the scientific research jobs that society can provide are also very limited. According to statistics, the proportion of undergraduate graduates from various majors who finally engage in scientific research in their major does not exceed 10%. Even in the field of scientific research, according to a study on the majors of Nobel Prize winners in recent years, about 85% of physiology and medicine prize winners did not graduate from biology. Since more than 90% people will not engage in professional scientific research after graduation, why should we organize undergraduate teaching according to the mode of training less than 10% researchers? Why should universities and departments put all their resources and energy on people who are less than 10%? Why do more than 90% of students become "accompanying students" of less than 10% of students? Isn't this a huge waste? It seems that a more reasonable resource allocation model should be, "You go your way, I will cross my single-plank bridge". Most of the undergraduate education resources of the school are invested in more than 90% of the students without training professional researchers, while a small amount of resources are invested in less than 10% of the students by training professional researchers, each with its own strengths and actions.
Historically, top universities in the United States have had similar disputes: should undergraduate education adopt the same model as graduate education? Should universities recruit students and train students with the goal of becoming scholars, scientists, university teachers or research doctors, or should they become successful leaders in all walks of life in the future? If it is the former, students with the best academic performance should be chosen as much as possible when enrolling students; If it is the latter, in addition to academic performance, we should also refer to those qualities that are more critical to success: motivation, enthusiasm, perseverance, moral responsibility and the ability to participate in social activities. In 1960s, the United States was challenged by Soviet space science and technology, and the demand for scientific and technological personnel exceeded any period in history, and the controversy reached its climax. But even so, top private universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford have not chosen the former, but firmly regard cultivating leaders from all walks of life as the fundamental mission of the university. Later facts proved that their original choice was correct.
At the undergraduate stage, universities should not only teach students specific knowledge, but more importantly, how to stimulate their curiosity, enthusiasm, courage and perseverance through effective teaching activities, cultivate their habit of independent thinking and respect and understanding of different cultures, and improve their sensitivity, insight and sense of responsibility to themselves and others, and so on. For today's university education, this is a more basic challenge, and it is also the requirement of society for the quality of university graduates. What did the university give students when they left school? Is it a diploma, a report card or something? I once asked the bosses of several big companies to list the qualities that enterprises value most when recruiting employees, among which the highest degree of overlap is: good personality, good health, good popularity and many ideas. As for the test scores, English proficiency and artistic expertise that universities and students value most, they don't care at all. Faced with such a big difference, what efforts should universities make to meet these needs of employers?
Disadvantage 3: On paper
"On paper" means that there is too much theoretical knowledge in books-many of them are actually out of date-and lack of systematic connection with real life. Students recite a lot of theories, nouns and terms used to cope with exams, but they lack understanding, sympathy and even indifference to the real world. Take economics education as an example. Isn't it strange that many students are familiar with Pareto improvement, Cobb-Douglas production function, Lerner index and refined Bayesian equilibrium, but they can't understand a basic enterprise financial statement? In the teaching plan of one semester 18 weeks, at least 17 weeks are spent in class. How do students have the opportunity to know what is happening in the real world?
Teaching divorced from reality has seriously damaged students' creativity, so that they can only do peripheral auxiliary work according to ready-made theories, knowledge and data, and it is difficult to find a new way to carry out pioneering leadership work from scratch. Students have strong learning ability and imitation ability, but can't come up with original ideas, methods and models. Once faced with an unprecedented new field or crisis, they are at a loss. This is the root of the lack of independent innovation achievements in China society, and it is also an important reason for the inefficiency and huge losses in the face of major disasters. Indeed, in the global Internet era, we can quickly introduce new things from Europe and the United States into China, and even gain greater success and commercial benefits than Europe and the United States because of the vast market in China. But why can't we come up with something completely new-such as Google, Uber, Twitter, etc.-for developed countries in Europe and America to imitate China?
An important feature of undergraduate education in top universities in the United States is to do everything possible to provide opportunities to increase students' contact with society. Take MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) as an example, its core concept is "caring about real technology and the world". The professor encourages students to put forward all kinds of strange ideas and solve them. Sometimes, professors will throw students into the backcountry of India and let them study real events and problems without internet, data, information and any previous research results. Interestingly, the classrooms of top American universities are particularly interested in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and students are often asked to imagine how to solve various problems if they are in the Robinson Crusoe environment. Many theories of economics, sociology, law and politics begin with Robinson's exposition.
So, compared with "Is the quality of education in China University declining?" A more valuable problem may be that universities should reflect on how to improve their undergraduate education according to their own characteristics in order to better meet the needs of students and society. This is the foundation for the survival and development of universities. After all, in an era of global competition, if you can't meet the needs of students, they can "vote with their feet" and choose their own satisfactory education. The same is true of social institutions.