20 18 the preliminary examination of the national postgraduate entrance examination has ended. According to the data released by the Ministry of Education, following the surge in the number of applicants for the 20 17 postgraduate entrance examination, the number of applicants for 20 18 continued to rise, reaching 2.38 million, an increase of 370,000 over 20 18.4%. Among them, the number of fresh candidates 13 1 10,000, an increase of10.8 million compared with last year, and the number of previous candidates10.7 million, an increase of10.9 million compared with last year. Among the candidates, the growth rate of previous students exceeded that of freshmen. According to the survey, more than 70% of candidates go to graduate school to change their school background and improve their employment competitiveness.
Choosing one's postgraduate entrance examination is an individual's right. However, when most people choose the postgraduate entrance examination to improve their academic level and change their school background, it reflects that there are problems in China's higher education and talent evaluation.
Higher education has been popularized, and the thinking of talents is still at the stage of only academic qualifications.
In recent years, with more and more college graduates, public opinion calls that year "the most difficult year for college graduates to find jobs" every year. Now this concept is no longer attractive, because we find that the employment of college graduates is not "the hardest", but only "more difficult": in 20 18, the number of college graduates in China will reach 8.2 million.
In 2002, the gross enrollment rate of higher education in China reached 15%, and it entered the era of popularization of higher education. According to the basic situation of China's higher education development, by 2020, the gross enrollment rate of China's higher education will reach 50%, entering the era of higher education popularization. In other words, in less than twenty years, China's higher education has entered the era of popularization from popularization. The popularization of higher education means that the overall academic qualifications of Chinese people have been greatly improved. If talents are still identified by academic qualifications, and academic qualifications and employment are one-to-one, it will affect the improvement of higher education quality and limit the choice of college graduates.
However, with the popularization of higher education, China has not changed from an "academic society" to a "capable society". The educational concept and talent concept of our society are still in the era of elite education. At that time, there were few college students and their status was "precious". Therefore, we should identify talents according to their academic qualifications, and pay special attention to the employment of college students. There is still a theory of academic qualifications in talent evaluation, which still emphasizes that college graduates are "college students"
This brings two problems.
On the one hand, the educated receive higher education in pursuit of obtaining diplomas, not improving their own abilities. As a result, the overall quality of college graduates is not high and it is difficult to meet the needs of social employers. It is difficult for college graduates to find jobs and employers to recruit people. Many high school graduates stop studying hard after entering the university through the college entrance examination, thinking that they can get a good development by virtue of their university status, and they will muddle along in the university until they find that they can't find a suitable job, so they want to further take the postgraduate entrance examination, pursue a higher position and "improve their employment competitiveness".
On the other hand, the society generally holds a strong stereotype about the employment of "college students", especially graduates from famous universities, and thinks that they should be "employed" in certain industries and posts, at least not in certain industries, otherwise they will be treated differently. Some graduates from famous universities also have a strong sense of elitism and are unwilling to put down their bodies and engage in certain industries. At present, there is a problem of "no job" among college graduates in China.
In fact, the purpose of the popularization of higher education is to improve the overall quality of the people, so that all walks of life have college students, thus promoting the improvement of the civilization of the whole society. If college graduates are unwilling to work in certain industries and posts in the era of popularization of higher education, how can these industries and posts improve their service level? Where do so many college graduates go to find jobs?
At present, higher education meets academic needs rather than social needs.
The General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Deepening the Integration of Industry and Education on 20 17 12 19, which promoted the integration of industry and education to the basic institutional arrangement of national education reform and human resources development. The "Opinions" pointed out that it is necessary to deepen the reform of "introducing enterprises into education"; Support and guide enterprises to deeply participate in the education and teaching reform of vocational schools and institutions of higher learning, and participate in school professional planning, textbook development, teaching design, curriculum setting and practical training in various ways; Promote the integration of enterprise needs into talent training; Carry out the task-based training mode oriented to the real production environment of enterprises. The Opinions also require that new majors in vocational schools should, in principle, involve enterprises in related industries. The Opinions encourage enterprises to establish industrial colleges, enterprise studios, laboratories, innovation bases and practice bases by relying on or combining with vocational schools and institutions of higher learning.
The reason why the country puts forward the integration of production and education is to solve the problem of "two skins" of talent supply and demand. China's vocational education and higher education are essentially faced with two needs, one is the needs of the educated to receive higher education and obtain higher education (enrollment end), and the other is the needs of social development and employers to train talents in schools (training end and output end). These two needs should have been unified, that is, the educated choose their own education according to the social demand for talents, and the school runs schools according to the social demand for talents.
However, in China, the needs of these two aspects are not uniform. When the educated choose education, the primary consideration is often not the social demand for talent ability, but how to obtain a higher diploma. Therefore, schools do not pay attention to the actual needs of society, but rather "supply" more degrees to meet the needs of society for academic qualifications. In other words, from the perspective of academic qualifications, the supply and demand of running a school can be said to be the same: supplying degrees and meeting the demand for degrees. From the perspective of talents, supply and demand become "two skins": only paying attention to the supply of degrees, ignoring the quality and structure, leading to the inability of talents trained by universities to meet the social needs.
In order to combine the supply of talents with the social demand for talents, we must carry out supply-side reform. The most important thing in supply-side reform is that schools should change from supplying degrees (education orientation) to supplying talents (social demand orientation for talents). In the popularization stage of higher education, colleges and universities can be divided into elite education (general education) and vocational education. Only about 10% colleges and universities carry out general education, mainly to cultivate academic talents; The remaining 80%~90% colleges and universities should carry out vocational education and train professional and technical talents and applied talents. Colleges and universities that implement these two types of education need to have a clear orientation, which is an important aspect to ensure that the talent training structure meets the needs of society.
At present, a large number of local undergraduate colleges in China hope to become academic universities, but they are uneasy about the positioning of vocational education, which is an important reason for the imbalance of talent structure. At the same time, due to the emphasis on scale and volume and the orientation of academic qualifications, the quality of personnel training can not be guaranteed. Some local undergraduate colleges even aim at organizing students to take the postgraduate entrance examination, and there is no solid undergraduate education.
According to the statistics and survey data of official and non-governmental organizations in recent years, the most difficult group for college graduates to find jobs in China comes from local undergraduate colleges. The reason why graduates of these institutions find it most difficult to find jobs is because the positioning of these institutions is very vague, and most of them want to be academic universities and pursue higher education. However, no matter the conditions for running a school or the social demand for these institutions, it is only to carry out vocational education and cultivate applied technical talents (in the era of popularization of higher education, at most 10% of colleges and universities cultivate academic talents, and the rest of colleges and universities should cultivate applied talents, which can be done by domestic universities that want to cultivate academic talents). Due to the deviation of school orientation, the students trained by these institutions are seriously out of touch with social needs, showing a so-called "high-level, low-level" situation, and it is conceivable that students will find it difficult to find jobs after graduation.
In addition, in order to pursue rapid progress, these local undergraduate colleges regard postgraduate entrance examination as an important pursuit of running a school, and some schools also regard it as a way out for running a school and graduating students, so as to solve the "employment rate" of graduates and the academic development of students through postgraduate entrance examination. The specific way is to mobilize freshmen to start their "senior four" life as soon as they enter school, and regard the postgraduate entrance examination as another college entrance examination. Like high school education, these colleges and universities also adopt high school management methods. At the same time, they only pay attention to the education of postgraduate entrance examination related subjects, and the non-postgraduate entrance examination subjects are "released" to students, including experiments required by science and engineering courses. This "postgraduate entrance examination mode" of university education forces students to take postgraduate entrance examinations, and extends the inspirational education before the college entrance examination to the university stage. If students choose employment instead of postgraduate entrance examination after graduation, they will not be competitive in employment because they have not received a complete undergraduate education.
However, due to the limited number of places for admission to the postgraduate entrance examination, some people have to continue to review for the exam, and some people have to face employment. This is an important reason for the coexistence of "postgraduate entrance examination fever" and "employment difficulty". Moreover, according to some media reports, of course, some graduate students admitted to famous universities can't even do the most basic experiments, and it is extremely difficult to complete their studies, which further affects the quality of postgraduate training and the gold content of master's degrees.
In order to adapt to the new situation of higher education popularization, we must break the theory of academic qualifications only.
In order to solve the problem that the quality and structure of higher education talents are out of line with the social needs, China is trying to promote the transformation of 600 local undergraduate colleges to carry out vocational education. However, few local undergraduate colleges are willing to take the initiative to transform, and public opinion also regards the transformation of vocational education and the cultivation of vocational and technical talents as "degradation". In order to change this situation, we must establish a new evaluation system for colleges and universities and promote the reform of postgraduate enrollment system.
Why are local undergraduate colleges unwilling to carry out vocational education and run schools with employment as the orientation? Because China's evaluation of higher education attaches importance to the level of the school, he thinks that a university with master's and doctoral degrees is higher than other universities without master's and doctoral degrees; It is considered that how many students can be admitted to graduate schools and promoted to a higher-level prestigious school is the "level". This makes it difficult for local undergraduate colleges to be satisfied with their own positioning, but to cater to this utilitarian evaluation. Many years ago, some local universities in China were questioned as postgraduate entrance examination bases, but in recent years, more and more local universities have joined this camp.
The alienation of university education into exam-oriented education for preparing for postgraduate entrance examination has attracted the attention of many postgraduate enrollment units in China. Therefore, China is also promoting the reform of postgraduate enrollment. The main reform measures are to increase the proportion of graduate students' exemption from exams and implement the exemption-audit system. However, this reform was also questioned. The main opinions focus on the high proportion of exemption from examination in prestigious schools, the reduction of admission places for unified examinations, and the exemption system makes the competition among graduates of local undergraduate colleges more intense.
In my opinion, the postgraduate enrollment in China should be further reformed, the unified initial examination should be completely abolished, the application-examination system should be implemented, and more attention should be paid to the academic performance and academic potential of applicants. This is the only way to curb the alienation of university education into postgraduate entrance examination-oriented education and make every university pay attention to undergraduate teaching. As for the public's concern about the fairness of the application-review system, it can be completely solved by further promoting the reform of running colleges and universities and making the enrollment information fully public. In order to build a world-class university, China University must attach importance to the quality of postgraduate enrollment and training. Peking University, Tsinghua and other universities have fully implemented the application-review system in doctoral enrollment, but the enrollment threshold has not been lowered due to the high demands of tutors on students.
In the final analysis, it is very difficult to solve the problem of college graduates. The key to control the "postgraduate entrance examination fever" is that higher education must attach importance to the quality of personnel training and have a reasonable structure. Blindly pursuing the higher education level of colleges and universities and improving students' academic qualifications will mislead the academic planning of colleges and students, creating educational problems as well as social problems. The key to guiding colleges and universities to have a clear orientation and correct orientation is to implement and expand their autonomy in running schools, promote the implementation of education-based and academic-based management in colleges and universities, and establish a scientific education evaluation system. When running a school returns to its own orientation, colleges and universities will choose a suitable way to train high-quality talents on the basis of orientation; For vocational education and higher education to cultivate applied talents, the integration of production and learning and the introduction of enterprises for teaching will become the most basic school-running strategy, which does not require the requirements of government departments, and schools must also choose this way.
In order to adapt to the new situation of higher education popularization, the society must break the myth of academic qualifications and turn to emphasize the practical ability of job seekers. With the popularization of higher education, the employment of college students with prominent identity will inevitably be included in the overall employment of the people, and their identity will inevitably be diluted. This is not to ignore the employment of college students, but to require the whole society to completely change the concept of education and talent.
For colleges and universities, in a society that attaches importance to academic qualifications, their focus in running a school is to return a paper diploma to the educated, which ignores quality and characteristics. In a society that values ability, their focus in running a school must be how to cultivate workers with competitive personality, and colleges and universities will strictly control the quality of talent training. For the educated, receiving higher education will no longer be the pursuit of obtaining a diploma, but choosing the education that suits them, paying attention to the improvement of their own abilities, and planning their future career choices and career development with their abilities. For employers, it is to select capable workers and enhance the work connotation, so as to realize the improvement of the overall service level and industry level.