Education in China is showing a remarkable paradox: on the one hand, under the anxiety of "not losing at the starting line", students start to learn knowledge and master skills in advance again and again, and primary schools become secondary schools and kindergartens become primary schools, so they are brave enough to "go forward". They can't wait to get to the stage of pregnancy in advance, leaving less and less time for their children to play; On the other hand, the evaluation of the enrolled students is getting lower and lower, so universities have to make great efforts to make up the "homework" left by basic education, correct the deviation of basic education, re-cultivate students' interest and curiosity, and improve their cognitive ability and scientific literacy. Education is a continuous relay race. If the task of the previous one is not completed, the latter one will have to pay the "old account" of the previous one before he can start his own game. However, the reality is often that "the old account is not settled, and the new account comes again". The difficulties and challenges faced by higher education itself also require universities to provide stronger solutions.

Under the attack of two forces, the quality of personnel training in China University is gradually drifting away from the expectation of social demand, which leads to another obvious paradox in China society: on the one hand, enterprises and various institutions urgently need all kinds of talents who can develop their careers and take responsibility, but there are few useless people when they look around; On the other hand, millions of college graduates are eager to implement their work units every year, but it is difficult to find institutions willing to hire them. The increasing employment pressure has forced the government to repeatedly introduce various incentives to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. The market is the most sensitive. If employers are willing to pay college graduates lower wages than migrant workers, it can only show that their evaluation of college graduates or the value provided by college graduates is lower than that provided by migrant workers. The fundamental reason for the imbalance between supply and demand in the labor market lies in the decline in the quality of university personnel training.

This phenomenon is not unique to China. Even in the United States, where education is the most developed today, the situation is not optimistic. The cost of higher education has soared, but the social evaluation of the quality of university personnel training has not improved accordingly. The formula of "education = ability", which has lasted for hundreds of years, seems to be more and more strongly challenged by the real society, and it also forces top American universities to rethink and locate the form and content of undergraduate education and teaching in order to better meet the needs of society. What seems to be happening is that the world we live in has undergone some fundamental changes.

Indeed, we are in a rapidly changing world, and the speed of change is beyond the limits of human imagination. The fundamental task of universities is to cultivate talents, but universities are not entirely for the present real world. More importantly, people trained by universities will face the future world-a world that may be completely different from the present. Can people 20 years ago imagine the world we live in today? No, just like today, we can't imagine what the world will be like in 20 years. Therefore, the essence of undergraduate teaching is not to teach students specific knowledge and skills in the past-these knowledge and skills are difficult to cope with the changes in the future world even if they are not outdated-but to stimulate students' potential, improve their ability to deal with complex information, stimulate their courage and curiosity to explore the unknown world, enable students to face a completely different world in the future and help them solve the problems faced by the unknown world.

To achieve these goals, a series of conditions are needed. However, undergraduate teaching in China is facing severe challenges and cannot adapt to the profound changes that are taking place.

First of all, students are increasingly unable to ask questions, questions and valuable questions. Students have little desire to ask questions, and they don't know where the problem lies. Even if they hardly ask questions, it's hard to call them questions. If in the traditional lecture class, students can muddle through without asking questions-they just need to listen with their ears, even if they don't listen, it doesn't matter, because teachers can't monitor them effectively-in the new seminar class, not asking questions will have very serious consequences: First, teaching can't be organized. "seminar-style" teaching must require students to discuss in class, and the discussion must ask questions, and no discussion can be held without asking questions; Second, the quality of teaching has declined. Class time is extremely precious. If students don't ask questions, time will pass quickly in silence, students won't get the necessary training in class, and the result will be worse than the original "lecture-style" teaching-at least he (she) got some information there; Third, it can't produce actual teaching effect. Because of the inability to organize effective classroom teaching, students can't receive critical thinking training that is very important to them in class. In fact, if teachers and students are not well prepared and well trained, "seminar-style" teaching will only become a noticeable educational reform measure, but will not achieve any practical educational effect.

Secondly, students are losing their valuable thinking ability. They are used to skipping the process and going straight to the result. The crux of the matter is that as long as it is a result, it must be certain, and it is nothing more than a good result and a bad result. But the most important challenge brought by globalization is that the world we face now and in the future will become more and more uncertain. In the most extreme case, we don't even know what will happen tomorrow. If students can't think, analyze and study problems from the process, but only pursue results, once faced with great uncertainty, they will be at a loss and fall into confusion and fear; On the other hand, if students constantly develop the habit of thinking, especially critical thinking, then when they face an uncertain world, they are at least uneasy and know where to start solving problems.

Finally, students spend a lot of time in class and surfing the Internet, but seldom read books. Due to the loss of thinking ability, students are deeply confused and afraid of the future. They have to study many courses, trying to enrich themselves by learning knowledge and filling their time with courses. In their minds, no matter how the outside world changes, as long as they have a skill in their hands, they will have a bottom in their hearts. However, when facing a completely different world in the future, the technical knowledge you have now may not help you effectively solve the problems you will face in the future. Then, a strange phenomenon appeared: at the beginning of the semester, students desperately took classes to enrich themselves; At the end of the semester, I found myself in a deeper confusion and emptiness-what was left besides getting a score? Coupled with the popularity of the internet and smart phones, students basically have no time to study, so they have no time to think, which leads to further deterioration of their thinking ability.

(This article is taken from china university teaching,No. 12, No.20 15: Students' Evaluation of Undergraduate Teaching and Challenges, and the title is added. )