On April 7th, the C60 edition of Beijing News discussed whether undergraduate graduation thesis should be cancelled. As a university teacher, I also join in the fun. My point of view is that college graduation only shows the level of academic qualifications, and has nothing to do with the papers that reflect one's academic ability. You don't have to write a paper when you graduate from college.

Because universities make a living from this, they have read many students' papers, both undergraduate and graduate. To tell the truth, many students' papers are not creative at all, especially from school to school. Most of their papers are from this book to that book, from one person's point of view to that person's point of view, and they can't see where their contributions are. The only difference between undergraduate and graduate papers is that graduate papers are more stereotyped (so-called norms) and copied from others. But these papers are basically not failing. The undergraduate thesis 100% was passed, and the graduate thesis was also passed after the second defense at most. The author was entrusted to review the thesis of journalism graduate students in a key university in Beijing, and found that there were dozens of problems in this thesis, many of which were hard injuries. I pointed out the problems one by one and suggested not to pass them. The professor who commissioned me to review said that these questions should be told to the author in private so that she could study hard. There is no need to write questions in the comments. The student's paper was passed in this way.

So, I have been thinking, why do these students write their papers like this? As a result of thinking, undergraduate students majoring in journalism and law are not suitable for writing papers: first, because undergraduate students have many courses and heavy academic burdens, they cannot have enough time to study a certain aspect in depth; Secondly, the pressure of job hunting is great, and there is not enough energy to finish the thesis writing; Thirdly, and most importantly, students lack the experience of social reality, so they can only fabricate or copy and paste their papers out of thin air.

Based on the above considerations, in the communication with the head of law school of a key university in 2003, the author suggested redefining the evaluation objects of diplomas and degree certificates, and clarifying the different evaluation functions of diplomas and degree certificates; Education level and academic ability will be assessed respectively, and graduation certificates and degree certificates will be issued respectively. As an evaluation of students' education level, graduation certificate should not be linked to academic ability; As an evaluation of students' academic ability, degree certificate should not be linked to education level. As long as students receive education at school, complete relevant courses and achieve qualified results, it means that they have reached a certain level of education and should be allowed to graduate and issue graduation certificates; A degree certificate can be awarded after a student has completed a thesis that reaches a certain academic level and passed the defense after a certain period of graduation. With work experience and experience of social reality, it is possible to write a paper with clear objectives and substantive contents, rather than returning empty-handed. Of course, if students have the ability to submit their dissertations at the corresponding academic level and pass the defense, they can also be awarded a degree certificate at graduation. As an evaluation of academic ability, a degree can also be obtained and enjoyed by people with corresponding academic ability without formal school education.

Strictly define the evaluation function of diploma and degree certificate, and separate the evaluation of academic ability from the evaluation of educational level. Its advantage is that people who only want to engage in practice but don't want to do academic research can concentrate on professional study and get the evaluation of corresponding education without wasting time writing (or editing) papers. At the same time, talents who are interested in academic research and have research ability can get a different evaluation from practical talents, making academic evaluation more pure. ;