Turning to the history of education development in China, the expansion of higher education enrollment is not something in recent years. According to the statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, since 1978 resumed the college entrance examination, the enrollment of higher education in China has been increasing except in a few years. 1In May 1999, the Ministry of Education announced that the enrollment scale of higher education will be greatly expanded this year, and it will continue to expand in the next few years. Since then, higher education in China has entered an unprecedented period of development. Among them, during the period of 1999-2002, the average annual growth rate of undergraduate enrollment was 42.4%, while during the 20 years of 1978- 1998, this indicator was 5. 1%. In recent years, the expansion of enrollment has intensified. Although enrollment expansion is not a new topic, it is also the general trend, but in view of the current situation of blind enrollment expansion, the author believes that discussing the advantages and disadvantages of enrollment expansion still has reference significance for the development of higher education in China.

First, the favorable factors of university enrollment expansion

For the expansion of university enrollment, there are mainly the following favorable factors:

1. Improve the enrollment rate of senior high schools and let more students realize their college dreams. In the era of planned economy, the state can allocate jobs, so being admitted to a university is equivalent to getting an "iron rice bowl" and becoming a national cadre. People think that the college entrance examination is the best way out; For children in rural areas, the college entrance examination is the only choice to "jump out of the farm". The idea of "learning to be an excellent official" has been circulated for thousands of years and has been well reflected in the era of planned economy. Now, with the rapid expansion of university enrollment, the threshold is getting lower and lower, and the enrollment rate of high school continues to rise, so it is no longer difficult to enter ordinary universities. According to relevant data, the admission rate in Beijing reached 70.8% in 2003, while that in Guangdong remained the same as that in 2002, reaching 56.47% in Shaanxi, 70% in Jiangsu, 62% in Jiangxi and 64% in Hubei. As can be seen from the above data, the admission rate of college entrance examination is relatively large. Now parents, students and high schools are no longer concerned about whether they can go to college, but what kind of university they go to.

2. Improve the quality of the people, upgrade their academic qualifications, and narrow the gap with foreign education. In 2002, the total scale of higher education in China reached160,000, and the number of undergraduate and higher vocational (junior college) students in ordinary colleges and adult colleges reached14,625,200, including 9,033,600 in ordinary colleges and 5,59/kloc-0,600 in adult colleges, an increase of1over the previous year. Postgraduates are developing rapidly. Institutions of higher learning and research institutions * * * enrolled 202,600 graduate students, an increase of 37,400 or 22.65% over the previous year. There are 5,065,438+million graduate students, an increase of 107800 over the previous year, with an increase of 2,745,438+0%. In terms of quantity, in the early 1980s, the gross enrollment rate of higher education in China was only 2%-3%, which was far from the scale index of mass higher education in western developed countries. After the expansion of enrollment in recent years, the gross enrollment rate of higher education in China has reached 15%, initially entering the stage of popular education.

3. Postpone the initial employment time and ease the employment pressure. At present, it is the growth period of babies born at the peak of birth rate, and the population of this age group is particularly large. Education can make more people stay in school, reduce the current number of employed people and reduce the employment pressure. According to statistics, 1995 has the largest number of kindergarten students, and these people enter primary schools at 1997, which maximizes the size of primary schools. From 1990 to the beginning of 2002, the number of students increased in turn, and the six-year primary education reached its peak in 2003. Judging from the high school stage and the second year of high school, the average number of students in the school is increasing year by year and has not yet reached its peak. On the one hand, it reflects the gradual upward movement of the baby boom with the growth of age, on the other hand, it reflects the effect of the expansion of higher education. Obviously, once such a huge group enters the employment team, it will inevitably cause great employment pressure. Developing higher education is an effective way to relieve employment pressure, and it is also a necessary measure to develop education according to the proportion of school-age students.

4. Develop economy and stimulate domestic demand. In recent years, China's national economic development has entered a trough, especially the impact of the Asian financial crisis, which has led to problems such as weak market and disappearance of consumption hotspots, while higher education has been in short supply. With the development of economy and the improvement of people's living standards, this contradiction has become increasingly acute. Therefore, the academic circles call for vigorously developing the scale of China's higher education in order to stimulate domestic demand, form new economic growth points and promote economic growth. The implementation of this policy has expanded and developed the education industry, making education a hot investment industry, increasing people's investment and consumption in education, increasing the number of education practitioners and promoting the development of education-related industries.

5. Realize the staged leap of educational development. Martin Trow, an American educational sociologist and professor at Berkeley University, takes the development of higher education in the United States and post-war western European countries as the research object, and discusses the relationship between quantity growth and nature change with the gross enrollment rate of higher education as the index, and divides the development history of higher education into three stages: elite, popularization and popularization. He believes: "Elite higher education in some countries will not change its nature until its scale is expanded to provide learning opportunities for about 15% of school-age youth. When it reaches 15%, the nature of the higher education system begins to change and turn to mass; If this transformation is successful, mass higher education can develop to a certain scale until its capacity reaches 50% of the school-age population, without changing its nature. When it exceeds 50%, that is, when higher education begins to become popular rapidly, it will inevitably innovate the higher education model. " Therefore, the large-scale enrollment expansion in China is also a measure to promote the development stage of education and let more school-age youth enjoy education.

Second, the unfavorable factors of college enrollment expansion

From the perspective of national and social development, the advantages of expanding enrollment obviously outweigh the disadvantages. However, this policy presents many disadvantages in practice, which brings many adverse effects to the management of higher education. Mainly includes:

1. Enrollment expansion. In fact, the average quality of college students is reduced at the expense of lowering scores, lowering requirements and standards. Research shows that people's intelligence develops into a normal distribution, and there are fewer people with particularly high and low IQ, and most of them are at a medium level. This quantitative structure is stable under a certain population size. Therefore, if people with high IQ go to college, to further expand the scale, they can only reduce the quality and develop to low-level people. Taking Liaoning Province as an example, the first batch of admission scores for 1998 undergraduate courses are 5 12 and 1999 is 465. Such a big score gap is enough to show that there is a significant gap in the learning quality of freshmen admitted in two years.

2. The reform of "elite education" and the implementation of "mass education" have led to a mixture of good and evil among college students and an increase in various undesirable phenomena. Such as "sulfuric acid throwing at bears", "Ma Jiajue phenomenon" and "Muzimei phenomenon". Of course, some people may think that this is not necessarily related to the expansion of enrollment. However, the author believes that on the one hand, this is the impact of low-quality students' enrollment, on the other hand, it is caused by the lack of management and moral education caused by the expansion of university scale. After the expansion of enrollment, the phenomenon of not worrying about learning and just wanting to mix diplomas has increased significantly; All kinds of unconventional and immoral behaviors exist in large numbers. After the expansion of enrollment, the shortage of education funds led to the continuous increase of tuition fees. Limited subsidies and poverty alleviation funds have forced students from poor families to go out to work and pursue various temptations. All these have a strong influence on the style of study, morality and cultural environment of the whole campus.

3. Education management is more difficult and things are easier to manage. The existence of the above situation brings great difficulties to the teaching and management of the school. In view of these situations, schools have to strengthen the daily management of students, from false thoughts to study guidance, from student status management to self-improvement and self-discipline. Ideological education has also become another educational focus in colleges and universities. This is actually a downward shift from educational content to educational methods, that is, the tasks that should have been completed by high schools are now completed by universities. After the expansion of enrollment, students' learning foundations are very different, the number of students with poor foundations has increased greatly, and the phenomenon of make-up exams has increased significantly. In order to change this phenomenon, some schools have to change their teaching plans, and on the basis of ensuring normal teaching, they have set up upgrading classes and intensive classes respectively. This invisibly increases the burden on teachers who are already nervous at school. Other aspects, such as educational administration operation planning, teaching quality monitoring system, examination system reform, teaching management means, and the quality of management personnel, are also not suitable for the rapid expansion of enrollment scale to varying degrees.

4. The expansion of enrollment brings great pressure to logistics services, and the teaching resources are increasingly tense. At present, the number of college students has increased dramatically, but the area of teaching and student activities such as classrooms, laboratories and even playgrounds has not increased significantly. According to many tutors and graduate students, in their research work, the utilization rate of school libraries is not high, either new books are difficult to be put on shelves in time or new books are missing. In some colleges and universities, there are three or four students, or even more, in the experimental posts operated by one or two people. Some experimental classes sometimes have to be changed into acting classes. Many graduate students are dissatisfied with the fact that many people (such as four people) live in the same dormitory outside the school. The main reason is that after the expansion of enrollment, the speed and perfection of hardware facilities necessary for life and study failed to meet the needs and expectations of graduate students quickly.

5. The problems of educational environment and teachers are increasingly prominent. The expansion of higher education needs more teachers. If teachers can't keep up, the ratio of students to teachers will increase too fast, teachers will be overburdened and their energy input will be insufficient, which will affect the teaching quality. If the number of teachers increases at the same speed, it may lead to a decline in the overall level of teachers because of the rapid increase in the number of teachers, which will also affect the quality of teaching. Take Beijing Institute of Technology as an example. According to its current student size and the student-teacher ratio of 14: 1 approved by the Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, the college only needs 950 full-time teachers for teaching. At present, there are only about 600 teachers who have taught undergraduates in this school in one academic year, so many large classes have to be arranged uneasily, and even some foreign language classes have to be taught in separate classes. According to the survey, only about 50% of professors and teachers with doctorates give classes to undergraduates, and more than half of professors in quite a few departments never give classes to undergraduates.

6. The pressure of students' employment is increasing, the export is not smooth, the employment is developing to a low level, and the social demand for talents with academic qualifications is gradually rising. Due to the large-scale enrollment expansion of colleges and universities across the country, the employment situation of undergraduates is becoming increasingly severe, and more and more undergraduates choose to take the postgraduate entrance examination. 1999 The average initial employment rate of graduates from 44 universities directly under the Ministry of Education is 82%, that is, 18% of college graduates have not found a job at the end of the dispatch work. In 200 1 year, the relevant departments estimated that the average initial employment rate of graduates from 207 universities 10 was 74%. However, the employment difficulties of some professional graduates have also begun to appear, forcing graduates who have initially received higher education to face the problem of improving their academic qualifications as soon as they enter the market for employment. For a time, the upsurge of highly educated education swept across the land of China. At the same time, because of the limited employment opportunities, those graduates who have no talent have to bow their heads and look for lower-level jobs; On the other hand, employers tend to hire people with higher education to do jobs that people with lower education can do. As a result, what middle school graduates used to do is now done by undergraduates, and what undergraduates do is done by postgraduates, which eventually leads to the relative unemployment of knowledge. In this way, the phenomenon of high consumption of talents has intensified, and human resources have been wasted unnecessarily, resulting in the problem of "excessive" education.

7. The gold content of graduate students and doctoral students is gradually decreasing. The "excessive" education leads to the unemployment of knowledge, which in turn promotes the further expansion of education level. With the employment of undergraduate graduates becoming more and more passive, ordinary colleges and universities spare no effort to compete for master's and doctoral degrees, while famous schools try their best to expand the enrollment scale of master's and doctoral degrees. In fact, the improvement of knowledge level is not proportional to the improvement of academic level. There is a phenomenon of "fried rice" in graduate education, and some graduate majors have not increased much knowledge than undergraduate education. The knowledge gap between undergraduate and above is narrowing, and the ability level between them is not obvious. In addition, "uneven level of tutors" is also the main problem of postgraduate education in China. There are also a large number of graduate students who spend 1/4 time making money, 1/4 time falling in love, 1/4 time studying foreign languages and 1/4 time studying majors.

8. Elite educational institutions undertake the task of mass education. Theoretically, elite educational institutions train theoretical and academic talents; Popular educational institutions cultivate practical and professional technical talents. Their training objectives, teaching contents and educational methods are different. Elite educational institutions have no advantage in undertaking the task of mass education. From the experience of foreign countries, elite universities generally do not undertake the task of mass education. Some also run general education, and most of them set up other affiliated institutions and models. The cultivation of mass talents is undertaken by community colleges, multidisciplinary technical colleges, short-term universities and open universities. But this is not the case in China. Since the enrollment expansion from 65438 to 0999, a large number of enrollment expansion tasks have fallen on the original full-time universities, and key universities have also undertaken heavy enrollment expansion tasks. In addition to the original adult education colleges and higher education self-study examination classes, ordinary colleges and universities have added higher vocational colleges and network colleges and secondary colleges after the expansion of enrollment. Ordinary institutions of higher learning, including key universities, are under the impact of fierce popular education because of their heavy popularization tasks, scattered school-running forces and scattered educational resources. In recent years, the fact that the quality of undergraduate education and postgraduate education in key universities has declined is worrying. Therefore, in the process of popularization of higher education, elite education must be protected and the pressure of popularization on elite educational institutions should be alleviated.

Third, suggestions on the management of higher education

Obviously, the expansion of university enrollment has had a great impact on the management of university education. How to reduce the influence of unfavorable factors and increase favorable factors is a huge subject. This requires us to further clarify the goal and development direction of running a school and implement moderate scale expansion; On the other hand, colleges and universities are required to constantly improve conditions, expand teachers, improve management, optimize and upgrade resources, strengthen education for students, and make every effort to ensure teaching quality. Mainly do the following:

1. The scale of higher education should adapt to the needs of national economic construction and development, and moderately develop ahead, but it should not arbitrarily exceed the needs of national economic, political and scientific and technological development. Higher education has its own law of development, and its scale should be balanced and moderate, not a "Great Leap Forward". In terms of growth mode, higher education should take the road of extension development, focusing on increasing private colleges with light national financial burden and higher vocational and technical colleges with large demand for talents. At the same time, reform the higher education system, dredge various channels for social investment in higher education, and mobilize all social forces to support higher education. It is necessary to introduce foreign funds to run higher education, encourage social forces to run schools and individuals to donate money to run schools, and implement measures such as paying for running schools to ensure that the investment in higher education is commensurate with its scale and development speed.

2. According to different forms of higher education, establish different quality standards of higher education, establish evaluation mechanisms and institutions for the quality of higher education by society, government and schools, and strengthen supervision over the quality of higher education. Further improve the understanding of teaching quality work, establish and improve the teaching quality monitoring and guarantee system, and establish the quality responsibility system for all kinds of personnel at all levels.

3. Clarify the development status and school-running objectives, and run characteristic schools. Any university should have its own characteristics, rather than copying other people's models and experiences. Because each school has different teacher conditions, educational resources and cultural environment, each school should fully tap its own characteristics, instead of running a large, comprehensive, small and comprehensive universal university. The quality of a school is not the size of its scale, but the quality of the talents it delivers. Some famous foreign schools, such as the Ivy League schools in the United States, have strict restrictions on the scale of enrollment, and they would rather lack than abuse. It is this concept that has made it a world-class institution for hundreds of years and maintained a good reputation. Therefore, famous universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua should take elite educational institutions as the development direction, limit the enrollment scale, lighten the task of popular education, spend limited energy and resources on the training of limited elite talents, concentrate on ensuring and improving the quality of education and scientific research, and strive to become a world-class university. Large-scale enrollment expansion will weaken its strength, disperse limited resources and reduce the training level.

4. Strengthen the construction of teachers and infrastructure. Further improve the social status and economic income of higher education workers and stabilize the teaching staff. Formulate and implement teacher qualification system, teacher promotion system, teacher elimination system and teacher retirement pension system. Absorb outstanding talents from all walks of life to join the teaching team or part-time teaching, and let advanced ideas and advanced technology enter the classroom and integrate into school teaching. The number of teachers should keep the teacher-student ratio equivalent to the size of the school, and should not be blindly improved. Schools should take strong measures to attract teachers to devote their main energy to teaching. Schools should strengthen the education of teachers' morality and pay equal attention to cultivating young and middle-aged teaching backbones and academic leaders. It is necessary to ensure the investment in teaching and strengthen the construction of teaching infrastructure. With the expansion of enrollment, students' accommodation, classrooms, laboratories and extracurricular activities are increasingly tense. As the saying goes, "a clever woman can't cook without rice." Without the guarantee of basic teaching conditions, the quality of teaching is out of the question. Schools should ensure the proportion of teaching investment according to the scale of development.

5. Strengthen the construction of study style. Reform the examination system and the employment system, introduce the elimination mechanism of party struggle, and don't judge life by one exam, and don't judge success or failure by exam results. Establish students' ability files, professional files and conduct files to ensure the realization of higher education personnel training goals. Schools should take all feasible measures to fully mobilize and give full play to students' learning enthusiasm and initiative, guide students to establish a correct outlook on learning, success and employment, strictly abide by learning discipline, resolutely eliminate all interference from bad social atmosphere, and create a campus cultural atmosphere that promotes healthy atmosphere and advocates science.

6. Deepen the reform of teaching and management system. Guided by the concept of quality education, we should strengthen the specialty construction and adjust the specialty setting of higher education, so as to make the specialty of higher education closer to the society and ensure the development of basic disciplines. Adjust the structural proportion of specialties, specifications and levels of higher education and the structural layout of colleges and universities to maximize the efficiency of running higher education. Intensify the reform of teaching content, curriculum system and teaching methods, effectively change the backward teaching mode, learn, introduce and explore advanced teaching methods, teaching means and advanced teaching modes, improve teaching effect, vigorously advocate the use of advanced teaching materials, and make full use of modern educational technology to vigorously promote the modernization of teaching means. Continuously improve the overall quality of teaching management personnel and promote the modernization of teaching management means. Reform the management system and internal management system of colleges and universities, so that colleges and universities can go into battle lightly, independently determine development plans and formulate development measures around the national economic and social needs.