Master students should go to good cities because there are many more opportunities there than in remote areas;
The most important things for doctoral students are professors and laboratories.
Every year, millions of college students go to the society, submit resumes and apply for jobs. Every year, they hear the saying that "employment equals unemployment". According to the employment report of 20 17 fresh graduates, the starting salary of 20 17 fresh graduates is 3,800 yuan, and only a quarter of fresh graduates' jobs are directly related to their majors, and the proportion of contracted units is less than 40% (this is official data, and you and I both know the discount).
On the other hand, not to mention the tens of millions of financing from time to time, it was also a news that was once raging on 20 17: Aunt Pancake said that she earned 30,000 a month, how could she lose you an egg? Compared with the starting salary of our undergraduate students, it is not surprising that the argument that "those who build atomic bombs are not as good as those who sell tea eggs" resurfaced at the beginning of reform and opening up.
Is that university really for nothing? Perhaps, there is a difference between you and your university.
This is a book of meeting each other after a brief encounter. The first half of the book introduces the differences and characteristics between the two typical educational concepts: university development and generalist. The second half introduces the characteristics of some famous universities in Britain and America. The author is a famous scholar Wu Jun. As a typical cross-border talent, he has not only served as a professor at the School of Engineering of John Hopkins University (the American professor is slightly different from Professor China introduced in the book), but also served as the vice presidents of Google and Tencent. As a venture capitalist, he also successfully invested in 120 high-tech enterprises in Silicon Valley and China, and also wrote The Top of the Wave, The Beauty of Mathematics, The Light of Civilization and The Mystery of Silicon Valley. Most importantly, his university trip is not only extremely long-18, but also serious cross-border: first computer, then electronic engineering, and finally back to computer, but most of his doctoral work is mathematics. Therefore, this book not only has a scholar's thinking about educational ideas, but also an entrepreneur's demand for education and training talents, and even more, an ordinary student's search for suitable educational methods.
0 1 Why do you want to go to college?
There is no university in history, and bartenders, gardeners, winemakers and other people with special skills in many countries in Europe and America will not have the idea of going to university, and their income and social status are not low. However, in today's Asia, college graduates are worthless. As long as they can afford it financially, they will always go to college after graduating from high school. However, the majors after graduation are basically not right, and the income is not necessarily rich, and even most of them are not as good as those who graduated from high school and did not go to college for direct employment.
So, why do we need to go to college? Because in college, besides courses, you must be able to receive education that you can't get outside the university. Whether a university has learned in vain and whether it has acquired knowledge and skills is only part of the judgment. Whether you have cultivated your interest and learning methods in college and spent a happy college life is also an important part of measuring your college career.
Two educational ideas
First, Newman's educational philosophy
John Newman, the Archbishop of Oxford, systematically summed up the successful experience of British higher education represented by Oxford University, and put his own educational theory into practice, creating the predecessor of Irish Catholic University-Dublin University. He believes that universities should not only impart knowledge, but also broaden students' horizons and cultivate students into "better people in society" and "people who are beneficial to all mankind".
Newman advocates generalist education and popularization, and thinks that universities should provide students with a variety of course choices, "to ensure that they have good quality and sufficient scientific and humanistic literacy", rather than just learning a skill in order to get a position in the enterprise after graduation. At present, the schools with this educational concept mainly include Dartmouth College and Brown University among the Ivy League schools.
B. Humboldt-style educational concept
William von humboldt was a German diplomat in Prussia. He established and improved the Prussian education system serving the industrial society, and he put forward the spirit of "integration of research and education". Under this educational concept, students must have a relatively deep understanding of a certain major when they graduate. Therefore, the undergraduate course under this educational concept is usually a five-year program, and the next two years are similar to the postgraduate stage, learning the very spiritual professional knowledge of this major. Before 2000, Tsinghua University, China and Zhejiang universities adopted similar modes of running schools.
So which is better or worse? Wu Jun made an objective evaluation in The Road to University, saying that we can't judge whether it is correct or not simply and rudely, and we can't use such vague words as "each has his own merits". These two educational models need to be considered according to a specific stage of national development. In a rapidly industrialized country, it is imperative to receive skills education and go out of campus to serve the society. Newman's general education is obviously more suitable when a country is already developing steadily and needs leaders and industrialists with broad vision.
However, any educational model can serve the society, and the most terrible thing is that if none of them is used well, they will become four elephants.
03 "returnees" become "kelp"
There was a wave of going abroad in the 1980s. Nowadays, with the continuous improvement of economic level, it is getting hotter and hotter to go abroad, but with more and more returnees returning to China, there are more and more "kelp". We have all read many reports about students and parents who have been admitted to Harvard, but there are few reports about the achievements of those who have returned from Harvard. The reason may lie in the two educational models mentioned above.
Wu Jun introduced the school-running characteristics of famous British and American universities in detail with the chapter 10 in The Road to University. Like all universities in China, these schools have better teaching hardware, better students and knowledgeable professors. They have their own school-running ideas and cultural identity, forming an independent social circle. If a student can't fit in, then this university will really be in vain. Moreover, many universities that adopt the Newman-style education concept need to improve their humanistic quality at the undergraduate stage, and need to achieve more skills training and research at the postgraduate stage. If you just go abroad for undergraduate study, you can't find a suitable job abroad after graduation, and you may also lack some professional skills after returning home, based on some inherent prejudices of Chinese people. For example, if you study this major, you should know the knowledge of this major. If you haven't studied this major, you may not understand it for a while.
So if you go to college, you may not find a good job or a good income? Why do you have to work hard to go to college and a prestigious school?
Life is a lifetime, and life is a long run. Don't believe the nonsense "Don't lose at the starting line". There are many people who stop halfway through the 42 km marathon, let alone a lifetime marathon. Learning may be only ten years, but education and growth are lifelong things.
Hang in there, we can win!