Since the founding of New China, especially since the reform and opening up, China's higher education has experienced a historic milestone at the turn of the century: from elite education to mass education. This change has not only fulfilled the "college dream" of millions of families, but also made the scale and level of higher education in China leap to a new level. China has become a country with the largest number of college students in the world.

As a higher education, with the continuous acceleration of its development speed and level, the division of labor of higher education is bound to become more and more detailed and the stratification more and more clear, and different types of colleges and universities are proud of pursuing and developing their own characteristics. Especially in the United States, Harvard, Yale and other world-famous Ivy League schools or some less well-known state universities. Because they have made clear their position and role in the whole higher education stratification, they can show their own characteristics as much as possible according to their own situation. The unremitting pursuit of its own characteristics in colleges and universities precisely reflects the characteristics of American higher education, that is, the increasingly strong opposite sex tendency. In turn, this stratification has further promoted the development of higher education. Kerr, a famous higher educationist, pointed out quite pertinently that colleges and universities should develop according to their own conditions, and "imitation will be devastating". It can be said that with the development of higher education, the stratification will become more and more detailed. It is necessary for different universities to locate themselves at a certain level according to their own characteristics, show their own characteristics, and form a pattern of higher education with a hundred flowers blooming, which may be an important inspiration for us from American higher education. ?

Mr. Pan Maoyuan, the founder of contemporary higher education in China, has conducted in-depth research on how to give full play to the characteristics of different types and levels of universities in China. His basic view is to define the orientation of universities and give full play to their different roles and functions. In particular, he pointed out that how to guide the classified development of colleges and universities in China and solve the contradiction between diversified social needs and single development goals is an urgent problem to be solved in the development of higher education in China, and it is also a complex and arduous task. Classification is the premise of the orientation and development direction of colleges and universities. Judging from the development law of higher education, characteristics are the basic requirement for the continuous development and prosperity of any university. Characteristics are conducive to the formation of a unique talent market system in colleges and universities; Characteristics refers to the conscious pursuit of "characteristics" that meet the needs of social and economic development, conform to the laws of education and are conducive to their own survival and development in the process of running a school. The premise of specialization must be the stratification of higher education and the reasonable positioning of colleges and universities on the basis of stratification.

At the beginning of the founding of New China, due to the serious shortage of professional and technical personnel, China's higher education imitated the higher education model of the former Soviet Union, refined majors and vigorously strengthened the training of professional personnel, which met the needs of national economy and socialist construction at that time. After entering the 1990s, China designed China's higher education according to the western (mainly American) higher education model. Learning advanced ideas of higher education is a general trend to improve one's own level. Learning is the premise of deeply understanding its connotation and essence and developing higher education with China characteristics in combination with China's specific national conditions. However, at present, we often try our best to catch up with world-class universities regardless of national conditions and school conditions. Because the government dominates the orientation of colleges and universities and the allocation of resources is seriously unbalanced, there is a "Matthew effect" in the government's capital investment. Correspondingly, the allocation of social public resources is also seriously tilted. Only by "striving for the upper reaches" can colleges and universities obtain more resource allocation. ?

This "catch-up" phenomenon is also a reflection of the "catch-up complex" and "catch-up mindset" formed in China for a long time in the field of higher education. In the wave of domestic first-class universities catching up with world-class universities, many domestic second-rate and third-rate universities catch up with domestic first-class universities regardless of their own basic conditions and school-running level, forming a spectacular catch-up wave, which leads to the deviation of "path dependence" in the development of higher education, which can be summarized as the pursuit of "high, large and comprehensive" ?

The so-called "high" means that no matter what type of colleges and universities, they all look up and take Peking University and Tsinghua as their catch-up targets. In fact, China's higher education system has actually been stratified: first, the top "985 Project" universities, represented by Peking University and Tsinghua; Followed by "2 1 1 engineering" university; Third, key universities in all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions; Fourth, local colleges and universities jointly built by provinces and cities, mainly prefecture-level cities. This stratification is a concentrated reflection of the level of running a school, the direction of investment, the characteristics of running a school and the development trend. Different types of colleges and universities have their inherent requirements and characteristics, and they can all become famous schools and become first-class and irreplaceable on the basis of their own development. ?

However, under the influence of seeking "high", many colleges and universities have given up their strengths. For example, some newly upgraded schools clearly put forward that we should grasp the key points, increase investment, and strive to win a master's degree within a few years, and then win a doctorate after a few years of construction on this basis, resulting in a sharp decline in the quality of the most important undergraduate and junior college education. When these goals cannot be achieved in a short time, many colleges and universities expect to enhance their popularity and school-running level by carrying out large-scale postgraduate entrance examination activities and become a veritable "postgraduate entrance examination base". ?

The so-called "big" is also the goal pursued unilaterally by many colleges and universities in recent years. This "big" is reflected in the large campus area. Many colleges and universities try their best to acquire more land and Gai Lou, build international conference centers and super-large squares, and build luxury campuses. To this end, they do not hesitate to borrow on a large scale, which is called "extraordinary development". The second is to unrealistically expand the enrollment scale. Due to the sharp increase in the number of students and the lack of teachers, many public and professional basic courses are taught in several classes, even professional courses. This "extension" rather than "connotation" development idea covers up not only the increase in quantity, but also the decline in internal quality. The greater the quantity, the faster the quality will decline.

The so-called "all-rounder" means that colleges and universities at any level are proud of their complete disciplines. First-and second-tier universities, with their unique influence and state administrative intervention, have formed a "powerful alliance" of "prestigious schools+prestigious schools" and quickly integrated disciplines, while third-and fourth-tier universities have also adopted this method with the support of local governments and become comprehensive universities in a short time. Anyway, the more disciplines, the better, the more magnificent. Some colleges and universities with professional and disciplinary characteristics in the past have become unrecognizable because of the pursuit of comprehensive disciplines. The result of "all" is comprehensive, but everything is not refined.

Because all kinds of colleges and universities at all levels are driving on the one-way street of "first-class colleges and universities", each has its own way and its own place, which has caused the serious "congestion", chaos and homogenization trend of higher education in China, the imbalance of input and output of higher education and the decline of talent training quality.

At present, this phenomenon of unclear level and serious homogenization has cultivated more and more "similar" "products". Since 1999, China's colleges and universities have begun to expand enrollment, and higher education has gradually changed from elite to popular, gradually forming a popular higher education pattern. Data show that by 2004, China's gross enrollment rate was 19%, ranking 60th in the world. The result of enrollment expansion has also led to the problem of difficult employment. There are many reasons for the difficult employment of college students, one of which is that the talent training modes of different levels of colleges and universities are highly convergent and have no obvious characteristics.

With the current low level of economic and social development in China, the market has a great demand for low-end technical and practical talents. However, the "products" cultivated by high-level and convergent education can't find matching jobs in the face of diversified market demand, so they have to occupy lower-level jobs, which reduces the satisfaction of job seekers, and then leads to widespread abnormal flow and frequent job-hopping, which leads to the dissatisfaction of employers, and then leads to the increasingly obvious contradiction between "oversupply" and "insufficient demand" in the whole market. At the same time, their salary expectation also triggered the rise of the whole social wage level, which gradually lost the advantage of low labor cost in China and affected the healthy development of social economy to some extent. At this point, many setbacks and failures in the development of higher education in China in 1960s are proof. ?

What society needs is talents at all levels. It is talented people who develop "Shenzhou V" and "Shenzhou VI", and it is also talented people who produce pots and pans; It is talents who design cars, and it is also talents who operate in the front line of automobile factories. The two are irreplaceable and indispensable. Only the former without the latter, the "chain" of talents will break. When the talents trained by colleges and universities can't meet the diversified and multi-level needs of social development, the society will "wait and see with money", and the role and influence of colleges and universities will gradually decline, unable to show its sufficient tension. ? Colleges and universities should link up with social development, otherwise the talent cultivation of higher education can not meet the needs of social development, and the increase in quantity will not help development. The teaching management mode and management system of colleges and universities directly restrict the talent training mode. To change the mode of talent training, we must first reform the teaching management mode and management system of the school. For example, the implementation of the credit system is a teaching management model that adapts to the modern market economy. It is committed to cultivating high-quality "adaptive" innovative talents and compound talents with conscious subject consciousness. The implementation of the credit system can enable students to obtain the required credits on the basis of taking compulsory courses and enter a higher learning stage. Excellent students who have completed credits can graduate ahead of time, which is conducive to the rapid production of talents and improve the learning efficiency of students during their school days. In order to give students more time and energy to choose courses freely, expand their free development space and give full play to their subjective initiative, the proportion of elective courses should be increased and the compulsory courses should be compressed in the teaching and training plan. At the same time, we can implement the infiltration of arts and sciences, the combination of science and engineering, and the intersection of majors, break down the professional barriers, cultivate students' comprehensive thinking ability, and solve the comprehensive problem of social and natural's close integration. To strengthen the cultivation of students' practical ability, the assessment of students should combine assessment knowledge with assessment ability to comprehensively measure students' ability. Guide students to participate in teaching reform extensively, pay attention to the improvement of methods and abilities of learning knowledge, participate in various scientific research activities, learn to apply what they have learned, participate in social practice, and consciously cultivate the ability of integrating theory with practice, self-study scientific research, independent work and social practice. Only those who can closely integrate scientific knowledge with the life of the whole society are successful people. Combine professional courses with market demand, establish a new higher education system according to the existing majors, increase the courses needed by industries and trades established with the market economy system and developed with the rise of the tertiary industry, and increase the comprehensive courses adapted to the development trend of scientific and technological integration, so as to make the courses of higher education comprehensive. At the same time, higher education should face the world, train the required talents according to international standards, adopt an internationalization strategy to strengthen higher education cooperation, actively advocate countries to jointly establish high-tech universities and graduate schools, exchange university management experience, exchange information and materials, participate in international academic activities and cooperation projects, and send visiting scholars and international students to each other, so as to lay the foundation for an international school-running model. Only by establishing an open school-running system can we cultivate qualified talents with international standards that meet the needs of society with the help of social and international forces. In the new era, people with higher education should be comprehensive talents with both ability and political integrity, knowledge and learning, talents with ideals, scientific culture, realistic attitude, innovative spirit and international vision, and talents needed to promote social development to a higher level.

Therefore, in today's diversified social needs, higher education should also be diversified. As colleges and universities at different levels, we must try our best to play our role and give full play to our own characteristics at their respective levels. Only when the characteristics of colleges and universities at different levels are fully reflected can their school-running benefits be truly reflected and their own development be sustainable. Only when colleges and universities are positioned accurately can different levels and types of talents training in colleges and universities have their own distinctive characteristics, that is, they have the professional expertise of "no one has me"; College graduates can accurately locate themselves according to their own situation and the needs of social development, form a diversified knowledge structure and a diversified and multi-level employment orientation, and carry out misplaced employment. Finally, the situation of giving full play to human talents can really become a reality.