Chapter 9 Chapter 08 Why is our educational reform so difficult
Recently, Shenzhen University once again tested the water reform, using the personnel system as a breakthrough. From September 2010, the cadre status of professors will be abolished, and the staff system and appointment system will be implemented throughout the school. If you do not sign a contract, you will not be hired, thus breaking the "iron rice bowl", and Shenzhen University will be "no official" from then on.This bold move has drawn controversy from all sides.The reform of colleges and universities has a long history. Since the setback of the reform of Peking University in 2003, most of the reforms of colleges and universities have been "scratching the ear". The professor's "iron rice bowl" has become an "insurmountable gap". , People in it can't see very clearly.Zhang Bigong, the president of Shenzhen University, made it clear to reporters that the reform may take as long as 20 years.
The "Overall Plan for Deepening Reform and Accelerating Development of Shenzhen University" is specifically divided into the following six aspects: ① implement the personnel distribution system of "appointment of all staff and contract performance"; ② establish and improve the mechanism for the introduction, training and management of high-end talents; ③ actively promote Reform education and teaching, explore innovative and entrepreneurial talent training models; ④ promote scientific research management reform and discipline construction, strengthen and expand superior disciplines; ⑤ implement an "academic-led" internal management system; Construct a university legal person governance structure based on "self-run schools".
Recently, the "de-administration" of universities, including personnel changes, is really hot.Shenzhen University once again began to test the water reform.In fact, the reform of colleges and universities has been reformed for so many years, including the vigorous personnel reform of Peking University in 2003, but in the end it was fruitless. When our students come out of universities and go to society, enterprises and various units, it is actually a barrier.You see, so many students go to various extra-curricular cram schools so desperately, and finally enter the university. Well, after these four years of study, as soon as they earn credits, they find that they are still confused in society.Why is this happening?It is because our education is not successful. Everyone should know that the mainland is not the only one that has carried out education reform in China. For example, Taiwan has also done education reform. Taiwan’s education reform in the 1990s was a vigorous one, and that reform was promoted by Nobel Prize winner Li Yuanzhe. It ended in failure and became a big joke.Taiwan's education reform is based on the superficial phenomenon of the United States. They have established a large number of universities, so the admission rate of Taiwan's universities is as high as 120%, even exceeding the number of people who take the exam. It can be said that everyone has a university.Not only that, but it also promotes the idea of professorial governance.Professors in Taiwan complained that after "professors run the school", even the job of taking out the garbage has to be done by the professor himself.Because since you let the professor manage the school, then you will hire garbage collectors and cleaners yourself in the future, and the school administration will not care.How could the professor have the time to do this, and the professor didn't know how to hire him, so he had to take out the trash by himself, hahaha, it's really funny.I think the universities in Hong Kong have been more successful in the education reforms in the Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.Why is Hong Kong successful?It's not because Hong Kong's reforms are good, but this system is the system of the British rule, which we will talk about later. I found that the reform of any university in our mainland has a problem, that is, it mainly focuses on tossing professors.For example, "Personnel Reform" requires professors to publish papers like in the United States, and then they are not hired, and they cannot get "iron jobs", which is the same as the piece-rate salary.And "no administrative leadership", what does this mean?Just don't give you an official position, don't have any main hall or deputy hall, you are just doing teaching and academic research.I think the recent education reform is basically based on these two, and it does not consider the purpose of the education reform at all?Do readers know that there was probably only one successful university education reform in Chinese history, and that was Cai Yuanpei's.What is the difference between that reform and our current reform?Cai Yuanpei has grasped the real purpose. He believes that universities are to cultivate students' innovative spirit and subjective doubts about the reality, and at the same time cultivate their noble sentiments. In fact, it is to take students as the goal of reform.Students can contribute to society because they are skeptical of society.We changed it over and over again, and what we changed was some trivial things, all of which were reforms at the technical level. I think the main purpose is to toss the teacher. In fact, we generally say that one of the "university diseases" often hyped up by the media is "governmentization", so now we need to "remove administration", which means that professors should not be officials, and cadres should not be given status.Another is "officials who are not professors". This is very important, that is, "professor-level officials" are not acceptable.This phenomenon is unimaginable in Hong Kong. How can an official become a professor suddenly?It is possible for you to offer courses, because some of our very practical courses really need officials, for example, the officials of the stock exchange to hold special courses, such as finance and securities, which is not only feasible, but also very good.But it is impossible to enter the formal faculty system.Moreover, the universities in Hong Kong, China have inherited the system of the British rule, and its administrative system is very large, not as small as the American administrative system.And I think that in Hong Kong universities, the power of the entire administrative system is greater than that of professors, at least not less than that of professors.Universities in the Mainland are even stronger.The gray-haired scholars in the mainland have to bow their noble heads in front of the administrators.At Peking University, a section chief is more powerful than a professor.This is not the case in Hong Kong. The administrators are very polite. They still focus on the words of the professors, and it is absolutely impossible for the professors to bow their heads.Moreover, in various universities in Hong Kong, it is very easy for a professor to call the president. If you have something to ask him, just call him, and he will talk to you, and there is no distinction between superior and inferior.Not only that, but the interaction between students and the principal is also very frequent. For example, the new president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong actually watched the South Africa Football World Cup champion and runner-up match with the students in the middle of the night, which is unimaginable in the mainland.Looking at our mainland again, it is good for ordinary students to meet with the principal once a year, and it is still at the opening ceremony.So Xu Zhihong, the old principal of Peking University, sang "Invisible Wings" at that time, which touched many students in mainland China. They said that the principal could sing pop songs with our students, and they were so touched. You need to know that reform is not a question of how the university itself should be reformed, but whether your external environment can give birth to such a system of scientific management of the university.Do professors in Hong Kong have their own initiative?some.For example, when we hire a new professor, the new professor must visit the school. We invite him to publish a paper, and we will comment on whether his paper is well written. Every professor expresses a little opinion. What is the impression of this kind of question.In the end, it is a few professors who make decisions, about two or three, including senior professors like me.And when a few of us make decisions, all teachers must obey, because it is not a real democracy, or a few big-name professors who have published the most papers make decisions.Of course, we will also adopt the opinions of all professors, but once a decision is made, we must all obey it. In fact, this is a manifestation of discipline, and it is not a pure democracy.And what is the standard we use when selecting new professors?First, check whether the new professor can teach.This is very important. If you express clearly, whether you can be a good teacher is one of the criteria for consideration.Equivalent to a "customer experience".Second, whether the new professor has the potential to publish papers.Why stress this point?Because after new professors come in, they will continue to do research and bring the latest knowledge to the school, so we must confirm whether you have the potential to publish papers.In addition, you must have good eloquence and be able to speak out the knowledge in your stomach.Here are a few directions we've chosen.We will never do anything to me just because this person is my friend. This kind of selfishness is almost impossible in Hong Kong.Because every professor has their own fiduciary responsibility, they feel that it is their responsibility to grade according to these few criteria.Readers, please think about why we have this attitude?Let me tell you, it is not because of my own conscience, but the entire external environment of Hong Kong, that is, the environment outside the university, including the Hong Kong SAR government, has this kind of trust responsibility.Do you know that the official car of a high-ranking official in Hong Kong cannot be used by wives and children, it is only for you to go to work.If you take your kids to school at work, or your dog to the doctor, you breach your fiduciary duty, and big things can happen. I think it is necessary for me to explain what a fiduciary duty is.The parents of college students hand over college students to the university. The society has expectations for the university. How should the university honor their services?The spirit of this contract is the fiduciary responsibility, and it is the real focus of university reform.For example, like me, I push students very hard. Students have to spend a lot of time studying my course, but students can call my private mobile phone to find me at any time. Students can discuss with me if they have questions, and students write reports. I must see it from beginning to end.The students were very moved. They said they were very surprised. How could Professor Lang, who is so famous and so busy, have time to read the students' reports?I don't think it's a surprise because it's my fiduciary duty.Because I push students very hard, my students don't need to undergo retraining after graduation, and they can start working immediately.Let me give you an example. I have a research team in Beijing that helps me do research.I have hired many college students from the mainland, including postgraduates, but basically none of them are competent.Our elimination rate is very high, reaching 95%, forcing me to re-employ students from Hong Kong who I have taught in the past, because Hong Kong students can directly integrate into the system, but our mainland students cannot be integrated into the system. After the end of the year, it means that I have not learned, and I have to teach from beginning to end.How can I have so much time?So a few of my research assistants had to start classes, retrain new researchers, and make up for the time they had wasted in the past four years. On the whole, Hong Kong's education reform is to introduce a system and a discipline, not a simple democracy.Why did the education reform in Taiwan fail?Because they introduced a one person one vote democracy.How about one person one vote?If there are 60% bad professors in a school, the result of one person, one vote is that these people can control the overall situation, they can hire their friends to come in, hire the worst people to come in, it becomes a vicious circle.You say Hong Kong people are not democratic?Democracy enough, but university education in Hong Kong is not democratic, that is, a few of the most outstanding scholars make decisions, and they all try their best to hire the best professors.For example, Zhang Weiying’s teacher, Morris, the Nobel laureate in economics, came to the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a lecture professor, and Mundell, the father of the euro, also came to the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His office is next door to mine.Their salaries are not much, not necessarily higher than that of Tsinghua professors, so why are they willing to come?It is because after they came to the environment of Hong Kong, they found that they could freely display their talents in this environment.Let me give another example. In 2004, which was the era of great discussions on the reform of state-owned enterprises, it was very difficult for me. For example, Gu Chujun sued me. Many scholars in our mainland and spokespersons of interest groups scolded me. But no one from the Chinese University of Hong Kong has ever asked me about this matter. The school gave me absolute respect and academic freedom, which moved me very much.Has this respect for dignity and academic freedom been reflected in the education reform in our mainland?Obviously not, the educational reforms in our mainland are all about tossing professors, and they are all minor technical reforms. Compared with the mainland and Taiwan, the university reforms in Hong Kong should be regarded as relatively few, so many people jokingly say that Hong Kong’s universities have special regulations. There is a saying that goes like this: “If you don’t want to do something, then you can do nothing. If you want to do something, you can’t do anything”, that is to say, it is difficult to do things because of special regulations. It preserves the excellent education system that focused on students and respected academic freedom during the British Raj.Educational reforms in Taiwan and the mainland have basically failed. Why?It is because they did not find the right subject and made random changes, neither taking students as the main body, nor advocating an atmosphere of respect for academic freedom. In fact, in universities, teaching and educating people is the most important level.Many of the "products" of students we have cultivated now only talk about knowledge, and they have neither culture nor life. I think this is a very big problem.First of all, the conduct of our professors in the mainland is not very decent. They are always mixed with the officialdom. The "product" is inferior.I think the core purpose of education is to "educate people". Don't talk about the principal now, just talk about the head teacher. How many times can I go to your dormitory in a year?They have very few opportunities to meet students, so how can they "educate people"?Today's university is a building.On a campus, there are buildings everywhere.You go to Zhongguancun to see, wow, Peking University and Tsinghua University are all high-rise buildings.If hardware is used as the standard, they can all be ranked first in the world.Cambridge University is nothing compared to them. Cambridge is full of dilapidated buildings, dilapidated houses that are hundreds of years old.And in Hong Kong, except for the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which is a bit bigger, other universities are very small.There are only a few buildings in the city and science and technology, and only one building in the University of Science and Technology. In 1990, Taiwan, China carried out the biggest reform in the history of Taiwan education, involving all aspects of education: laws, teachers, curriculum, teaching, textbooks, finance, etc.Learning from the United States, a large number of universities were established. In the end, the admission rate of universities in Taiwan was as high as 120%, which exceeded the number of candidates.The so-called "diverse enrollment" advocated has resulted in lower and lower enrollment scores.In the university entrance examination, the admission rate of the university in 2007 was 96.28%, the minimum original total score was 11.2 points, and the average score for each subject was 2.8 points. In 2008, the university admission rate was 97.10%, and the minimum admission score was 7.69 points. In 2009, the university acceptance rate was 97.14%.Moreover, there is a serious shortfall in the entire university. In 2008, there was a shortage of 4,788 people, and in 2009, there was a shortage of 6,802 people.On the surface, the campus is more beautiful, the teaching equipment has been updated, the management of professors has become more democratic, and the number of schools has increased. In 2004, there were 159 colleges and universities in Taiwan, 88 of which were established after the education reform.
After the education reform in our Taiwan area, we have not seen any gains, but the quality of students is getting worse and worse.What is the significance of democratizing campuses, increasing research funding, and improving professor salaries?Any education reform that does not put students first is doomed to failure.Therefore, we made a big mistake, that is, we completely ignored the concept of "small university".Many of our experts and scholars always take the comprehensive universities in the United States as an example.How big are research universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Yale, and such schools are world-class, so we want to build "big schools."It's annoying to mention these so-called experts and scholars. These people have no understanding of the real situation. What are most universities in the United States like?I will show you a profile.According to the statistics of the authoritative "Higher Education Chronicle" in the United States, among the 2,386 private universities in the United States, there are only 57 large-scale private universities with more than 10,000 students, and 95 universities with 5,000 to 9,999 students.The others are small universities.More importantly, although these small universities are small in scale, their teaching quality is very high. Many small colleges focusing on undergraduate education basically recruit elites.Looking at our current colleges and universities, they are all seeking perfection. Any school basically has all internal organs and all subjects.The administrative organization is becoming more and more bloated, the management is becoming more and more bureaucratic, and the distance between students and professors is increasing, and finally the quality of education is getting worse and worse. Here I want to tell you again that any educational reform that is not student-centered is doomed to fail.Shirley Tillman, the president of Princeton University, just said: "Small is beautiful! Just because we don't need to do everything, we can concentrate our energy and resources on two things. One is very strict undergraduate education. , and the second is very academic postgraduate education. We have achieved these two things to the extreme.” They basically implement a small class tutoring system of 10 to 15 people, precisely because of their focus and responsibility The attitude of responsibility has created the status of this "small university" as a world-class university.In fact, for such a school, people want money and money, and students have a source of students. Why not expand their enrollment like we do?It's very simple, because they first consider the quality of education. If they expand blindly and seek perfection, what will the result be?I don't say that everyone can predict it.If Princeton University does this, it probably won't get the international status it has now.Looking at us again, we are extremely busy building university towns, merging and upgrading universities, and feel good about ourselves. I think this just destroys the possibility of improving the quality of education. I don’t know if readers have discovered that the American system actually has one of its biggest characteristics.what is it then?That is, their core is neither the welfare of professors nor the size of the university, but the quality of students. Looking at our current reforms, they always revolve around the welfare of professors and the size of the school. Have you figured out what to change?I don't know how to change it. In fact, there is still a very important problem in our education reform today, that is, we have not established a correct evaluation standard at all.That is to say, until today we have not found a correct way to solve the problem of allocation and evaluation of educational financial resources.In terms of education assessment, we are not a star behind. We are 105 years behind the UK, 45 years behind the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, and 31 years behind the United States.What's even more sad is that in the social discussion about medium and long-term education development planning, almost no one of us realizes this kind of backwardness in an absolute sense. What is the basis of our current education financial allocation?It's very simple, just go through a simple formula first, and then add an estimate.This approach is problematic and has obvious flaws.The first is the utilization rate of funds. Our capital utilization rate is very low. Do you know why?It is because for the school, winning the appropriation is the most important thing, and it has become a fundamental purpose. As for how to use it and whether it can produce benefits after use, there is no one to control it at all, and there is no supervision mechanism, which has caused many problems. Waste of funds.In addition, there is our appropriation formula, which is very rough and does not reflect the actual cost behavior of colleges and universities, nor does it show any differences between colleges and universities.I'll show you the UK funding formula and you'll see how far behind we are.Before appropriating funds in the UK, you must first calculate the standard resources of your school, and then calculate how much resources are actually used. Finally, the difference between the two must be controlled within 5%.So how to calculate standard resources?They divided all disciplines in the university into four categories, and the weight of resources allocated to different categories of disciplines is different. Among them, medicine is 4.5, engineering disciplines based on experiments are 2.0, and others require laboratories and studios. The subject of fieldwork and field work is 1.5, and the rest of the subjects are 1.0. To put it simply, the resources that the government needs to invest in training a doctor are 4.5 times that of business school students.Then the British government considered some other additional subsidies.What is the biggest advantage of such a standard?That is, colleges and universities do not need to run projects and apply for funding every day to build laboratories or to obtain necessary resources.If you go to universities in Hong Kong with a similar system, you will know that the computer laboratories in Hong Kong universities use the most advanced computers, and there are a lot of them. For engineering schools, almost every student has one, while business There is no such a good computer room in the college.Do readers know what the funding system in our mainland is based on?Very simple, it is the number of students in school, and this is the only policy parameter, that is to say, whichever school has more students can win more funding.It is driven by this kind of economic interests that has caused the blind expansion of enrollment in our current colleges and universities.What is the result of this blind expansion?I think it's just another bunch of lecturers who can only read from the book to the students. We also have to figure out a question, that is, who should evaluate and allocate funds to universities?You must know that government officials without teaching experience cannot understand how universities should evaluate and allocate funds, and those government officials with teaching experience or school management experience are not suitable for evaluation and allocation. Why?Because there are conflicts of interest, and there are serious disciplinary biases.Hong Kong has done the best in this regard. The members of the Education Grants Committee of the University of Hong Kong are all non-government figures, including some overseas experts, local veterans from various industries, etc. They are appointed by the Chief Executive of the SAR Government. Representatives are a pure group of experts.Because these experts are basically not restricted by the government and can express their opinions relatively freely, their opinions are highly independent, scientific and impartial, and the evaluation results are naturally the most reliable. In addition, if the government evaluates and allocates funds, there is another biggest limitation.For example, after an evaluation, what if the business school believes that its accounting standards are too low?If they were dealing with a government agency, they would probably have to swallow their anger, or they would have to be busy running projects every day, trying to find ways to get approval from the leader.But in the British system, because universities are facing independent committees, these people are not life-long officials, but social figures with a limited period of time, so the different opinions of these universities can naturally be quickly and smoothly fed back to the committee. , the committee can make a new decision based on its own judgment. In fact, what the media is saying now, "Shenzhen University is testing the waters of reform again", means that Shenzhen University has reformed before. In the 1980s, the famous principal Luo Zhengqi's several reform measures were known as No. 1 in the history of domestic education.Students pay to go to school, graduates do not pay for distribution, faculty appointment system, credit system, and work-study system were all created by Shenzhen University in the 1980s.Moreover, in the 1980s, the principal Luo Zhengqi had a famous saying: "The heart of colleges and universities should be the library, not the office building of the party and government leadership." But 30 years have passed, and now the second reform has begun. Crossing the river by feeling the stones for the first time means that it has flowed back again, and this second reform occurred.Our entire education system is rigid. When you find that you want to push it, you push it aside and it goes back to the old way. The rigidity of our education system is even more terrifying and stubborn than that of state-owned monopoly enterprises.If we compare a university to a listed company, then you have to face the pressure of the board of directors, small shareholders, and the market.Motivation comes with pressure, right?Does Shenzhen University and many other schools have this pressure?The deep pressure comes from the top, which is a top-down driving force, so it is very passive. If the top does not push, it will not move forward.Chinese universities are absolutely monopolized. All universities in China are at the same level. They are all so rigid and monopolized that there is no pressure for reform. And the fiduciary responsibility I mentioned earlier, what if it is viewed from the perspective of a student's parent or student?When I pay the tuition fees, the university has a fiduciary responsibility to us. How will my pressure be transmitted?There is no conduction now.If the goods are not in the right version, for example, after graduating from a college student, they find that the school education they have received in the past few years is useless.then what should we do?The usual way is to retrain enterprises, and there is no transmission mechanism that puts pressure on universities.So now there are a lot of induction training in China. You can see that those multinational companies are very smart. Anyway, you know that you have learned it for nothing. So when selecting students, first, look at which university you graduated from. If it is a famous brand, Through the alumni who are scattered in all walks of life by classmates, it will be convenient to do something in the future.Second, they basically know your university’s method of educating students, whether they can match up with his company, and the rest can completely retrain you, as long as you have the potential.Therefore, we have formed another market outside the university, which is retraining. If this is the case, there will be no pressure to transmit back to the university, so the university does not need to be reformed. To put it bluntly, our sorrow is that our students spend five to six thousand yuan a semester to buy a brand and a diploma.What is reality?Even if you have a diploma, you may not be able to gain a foothold in society, but if you do not have a diploma, you will definitely not be able to gain a foothold. This is also an inevitable result of monopoly.Because there are still a small number of people who can enter the university, at least it means that you have to have a certain level to enter.Chinese universities have monopolized to the point that they can search for the best students in the whole of China, let them come out after stamping a mark, go through an on-the-job training, and then let them adapt to the working status of the company.From the point of view of the whole process, there is a lack of a pressure transmission mechanism, and no effective pressure has been formed. Therefore, it is impossible for universities to reform, and the reform is only a minor change. Therefore, all university reforms will repeat the mistakes of the past. Afterwards it was the same. From the 2003 Peking University personnel reform, Zhang Weiying's lonely back to the present, this is only a small cycle of reform.If we take a long-term view, since 1911, the reform of our Chinese universities first imitated Japan, then imitated European universities, and later became interested in the American university model, but none of them really succeeded. What is the problem? ?It is the lack of a transmission mechanism for pressure.The reform of Harvard University has not stopped. They also have a small reform in a few years and a major reform in a few decades. Their educational reform has never stopped. How did they reform?This is very stressful.Let me give you an example. I will take business schools as an example. Many professional magazines in the United States often rank universities. The rankings include the employment situation of students, feedback from companies, etc., and they are ranked every year. Through such a mechanism, information is fed back to School, this puts a lot of pressure on the school.Therefore, the business schools of various universities in the United States are reforming every year, and they are completely market-oriented. This is a difference between Chinese and American universities.American universities have no walls, and they have a benign interaction with society.However, Chinese universities have walls, so the huge pressure is kept out, and Chinese universities have no pressure to force them to carry out reforms. But the most serious problem is not that the walls of Chinese universities prevent the pressure of reform from entering, but that through this wall, those Vanity Fairs have come in.Many of our universities can no longer accommodate a peaceful desk, and have become government-business clubs, with all kinds of factors from government departments and enterprises involved.But what I think is more optimistic is that although the brands of Chinese universities are bad, Chinese college students are first-rate.They can go to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and go abroad to receive education, so this competition is very important.This is why I say that Hong Kong universities entering Shenzhen is a good thing, because this is competition, and students can make choices. He can study in the United States or in Hong Kong, China. After that, the school will be under pressure, and it hopes to reform. This is the external pressure to make it reform, and this is the driving force for university reform. Alfred Chandler emphasized that the advantages of scale do not come naturally. First, large-scale production only makes sense when faced with a large market (in the 19th and 20th centuries, American companies had a clear advantage over other countries). Second, even if you are dealing with a large market, investing in large-scale production equipment only makes sense if you have the management skills needed to keep your plant running at sufficient capacity and the marketing skills needed to handle multiple customers. significance. DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil, Sears, and U.S. Steel stand out in the United States more because of their different technological opportunities than because of their organizational and managerial capabilities to exploit them comprehensively.They complement the "invisible hand" of the market with visible management.One result of this situation is that many companies have grown in size, not just because they have many branch factories, but because the best way to ensure efficient production in these factories is to focus on the production of raw materials as well as Product distribution and marketing.This trend was regrettably too often followed by the central planners of communism, who believed that health services, holiday cottages, and farms to feed the workers were sufficient for efficient production. In the early 1990s, a Polish minister of industry told me that the Novy Huta steelworks on the border of Krakow (a city in southern Poland) needed only to strengthen its perimeter to be able to declare it an independent factory. The Visible Hand was published in 1977, just as volatile economic conditions began to limit Chandler's views on American business.In the 25 years since, a growing number of large companies, especially those in traditional manufacturing, have surpassed their smaller, nimble competitors.These competitors focus more on core activities and coordinate with suppliers in other ways than through full vertical integration.The reasons aren't just about technology, either.For example, growing international trade and domestic competition are making many companies more sophisticated in their activities. This article is excerpted from "Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life" by Paul Seabright
Recently, the "de-administration" of universities, including personnel changes, is really hot.Shenzhen University once again began to test the water reform.In fact, the reform of colleges and universities has been reformed for so many years, including the vigorous personnel reform of Peking University in 2003, but in the end it was fruitless. When our students come out of universities and go to society, enterprises and various units, it is actually a barrier.You see, so many students go to various extra-curricular cram schools so desperately, and finally enter the university. Well, after these four years of study, as soon as they earn credits, they find that they are still confused in society.Why is this happening?It is because our education is not successful. Everyone should know that the mainland is not the only one that has carried out education reform in China. For example, Taiwan has also done education reform. Taiwan’s education reform in the 1990s was a vigorous one, and that reform was promoted by Nobel Prize winner Li Yuanzhe. It ended in failure and became a big joke.Taiwan's education reform is based on the superficial phenomenon of the United States. They have established a large number of universities, so the admission rate of Taiwan's universities is as high as 120%, even exceeding the number of people who take the exam. It can be said that everyone has a university.Not only that, but it also promotes the idea of professorial governance.Professors in Taiwan complained that after "professors run the school", even the job of taking out the garbage has to be done by the professor himself.Because since you let the professor manage the school, then you will hire garbage collectors and cleaners yourself in the future, and the school administration will not care.How could the professor have the time to do this, and the professor didn't know how to hire him, so he had to take out the trash by himself, hahaha, it's really funny.I think the universities in Hong Kong have been more successful in the education reforms in the Mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.Why is Hong Kong successful?It's not because Hong Kong's reforms are good, but this system is the system of the British rule, which we will talk about later. I found that the reform of any university in our mainland has a problem, that is, it mainly focuses on tossing professors.For example, "Personnel Reform" requires professors to publish papers like in the United States, and then they are not hired, and they cannot get "iron jobs", which is the same as the piece-rate salary.And "no administrative leadership", what does this mean?Just don't give you an official position, don't have any main hall or deputy hall, you are just doing teaching and academic research.I think the recent education reform is basically based on these two, and it does not consider the purpose of the education reform at all?Do readers know that there was probably only one successful university education reform in Chinese history, and that was Cai Yuanpei's.What is the difference between that reform and our current reform?Cai Yuanpei has grasped the real purpose. He believes that universities are to cultivate students' innovative spirit and subjective doubts about the reality, and at the same time cultivate their noble sentiments. In fact, it is to take students as the goal of reform.Students can contribute to society because they are skeptical of society.We changed it over and over again, and what we changed was some trivial things, all of which were reforms at the technical level. I think the main purpose is to toss the teacher. In fact, we generally say that one of the "university diseases" often hyped up by the media is "governmentization", so now we need to "remove administration", which means that professors should not be officials, and cadres should not be given status.Another is "officials who are not professors". This is very important, that is, "professor-level officials" are not acceptable.This phenomenon is unimaginable in Hong Kong. How can an official become a professor suddenly?It is possible for you to offer courses, because some of our very practical courses really need officials, for example, the officials of the stock exchange to hold special courses, such as finance and securities, which is not only feasible, but also very good.But it is impossible to enter the formal faculty system.Moreover, the universities in Hong Kong, China have inherited the system of the British rule, and its administrative system is very large, not as small as the American administrative system.And I think that in Hong Kong universities, the power of the entire administrative system is greater than that of professors, at least not less than that of professors.Universities in the Mainland are even stronger.The gray-haired scholars in the mainland have to bow their noble heads in front of the administrators.At Peking University, a section chief is more powerful than a professor.This is not the case in Hong Kong. The administrators are very polite. They still focus on the words of the professors, and it is absolutely impossible for the professors to bow their heads.Moreover, in various universities in Hong Kong, it is very easy for a professor to call the president. If you have something to ask him, just call him, and he will talk to you, and there is no distinction between superior and inferior.Not only that, but the interaction between students and the principal is also very frequent. For example, the new president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong actually watched the South Africa Football World Cup champion and runner-up match with the students in the middle of the night, which is unimaginable in the mainland.Looking at our mainland again, it is good for ordinary students to meet with the principal once a year, and it is still at the opening ceremony.So Xu Zhihong, the old principal of Peking University, sang "Invisible Wings" at that time, which touched many students in mainland China. They said that the principal could sing pop songs with our students, and they were so touched. You need to know that reform is not a question of how the university itself should be reformed, but whether your external environment can give birth to such a system of scientific management of the university.Do professors in Hong Kong have their own initiative?some.For example, when we hire a new professor, the new professor must visit the school. We invite him to publish a paper, and we will comment on whether his paper is well written. Every professor expresses a little opinion. What is the impression of this kind of question.In the end, it is a few professors who make decisions, about two or three, including senior professors like me.And when a few of us make decisions, all teachers must obey, because it is not a real democracy, or a few big-name professors who have published the most papers make decisions.Of course, we will also adopt the opinions of all professors, but once a decision is made, we must all obey it. In fact, this is a manifestation of discipline, and it is not a pure democracy.And what is the standard we use when selecting new professors?First, check whether the new professor can teach.This is very important. If you express clearly, whether you can be a good teacher is one of the criteria for consideration.Equivalent to a "customer experience".Second, whether the new professor has the potential to publish papers.Why stress this point?Because after new professors come in, they will continue to do research and bring the latest knowledge to the school, so we must confirm whether you have the potential to publish papers.In addition, you must have good eloquence and be able to speak out the knowledge in your stomach.Here are a few directions we've chosen.We will never do anything to me just because this person is my friend. This kind of selfishness is almost impossible in Hong Kong.Because every professor has their own fiduciary responsibility, they feel that it is their responsibility to grade according to these few criteria.Readers, please think about why we have this attitude?Let me tell you, it is not because of my own conscience, but the entire external environment of Hong Kong, that is, the environment outside the university, including the Hong Kong SAR government, has this kind of trust responsibility.Do you know that the official car of a high-ranking official in Hong Kong cannot be used by wives and children, it is only for you to go to work.If you take your kids to school at work, or your dog to the doctor, you breach your fiduciary duty, and big things can happen. I think it is necessary for me to explain what a fiduciary duty is.The parents of college students hand over college students to the university. The society has expectations for the university. How should the university honor their services?The spirit of this contract is the fiduciary responsibility, and it is the real focus of university reform.For example, like me, I push students very hard. Students have to spend a lot of time studying my course, but students can call my private mobile phone to find me at any time. Students can discuss with me if they have questions, and students write reports. I must see it from beginning to end.The students were very moved. They said they were very surprised. How could Professor Lang, who is so famous and so busy, have time to read the students' reports?I don't think it's a surprise because it's my fiduciary duty.Because I push students very hard, my students don't need to undergo retraining after graduation, and they can start working immediately.Let me give you an example. I have a research team in Beijing that helps me do research.I have hired many college students from the mainland, including postgraduates, but basically none of them are competent.Our elimination rate is very high, reaching 95%, forcing me to re-employ students from Hong Kong who I have taught in the past, because Hong Kong students can directly integrate into the system, but our mainland students cannot be integrated into the system. After the end of the year, it means that I have not learned, and I have to teach from beginning to end.How can I have so much time?So a few of my research assistants had to start classes, retrain new researchers, and make up for the time they had wasted in the past four years. On the whole, Hong Kong's education reform is to introduce a system and a discipline, not a simple democracy.Why did the education reform in Taiwan fail?Because they introduced a one person one vote democracy.How about one person one vote?If there are 60% bad professors in a school, the result of one person, one vote is that these people can control the overall situation, they can hire their friends to come in, hire the worst people to come in, it becomes a vicious circle.You say Hong Kong people are not democratic?Democracy enough, but university education in Hong Kong is not democratic, that is, a few of the most outstanding scholars make decisions, and they all try their best to hire the best professors.For example, Zhang Weiying’s teacher, Morris, the Nobel laureate in economics, came to the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a lecture professor, and Mundell, the father of the euro, also came to the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His office is next door to mine.Their salaries are not much, not necessarily higher than that of Tsinghua professors, so why are they willing to come?It is because after they came to the environment of Hong Kong, they found that they could freely display their talents in this environment.Let me give another example. In 2004, which was the era of great discussions on the reform of state-owned enterprises, it was very difficult for me. For example, Gu Chujun sued me. Many scholars in our mainland and spokespersons of interest groups scolded me. But no one from the Chinese University of Hong Kong has ever asked me about this matter. The school gave me absolute respect and academic freedom, which moved me very much.Has this respect for dignity and academic freedom been reflected in the education reform in our mainland?Obviously not, the educational reforms in our mainland are all about tossing professors, and they are all minor technical reforms. Compared with the mainland and Taiwan, the university reforms in Hong Kong should be regarded as relatively few, so many people jokingly say that Hong Kong’s universities have special regulations. There is a saying that goes like this: “If you don’t want to do something, then you can do nothing. If you want to do something, you can’t do anything”, that is to say, it is difficult to do things because of special regulations. It preserves the excellent education system that focused on students and respected academic freedom during the British Raj.Educational reforms in Taiwan and the mainland have basically failed. Why?It is because they did not find the right subject and made random changes, neither taking students as the main body, nor advocating an atmosphere of respect for academic freedom. In fact, in universities, teaching and educating people is the most important level.Many of the "products" of students we have cultivated now only talk about knowledge, and they have neither culture nor life. I think this is a very big problem.First of all, the conduct of our professors in the mainland is not very decent. They are always mixed with the officialdom. The "product" is inferior.I think the core purpose of education is to "educate people". Don't talk about the principal now, just talk about the head teacher. How many times can I go to your dormitory in a year?They have very few opportunities to meet students, so how can they "educate people"?Today's university is a building.On a campus, there are buildings everywhere.You go to Zhongguancun to see, wow, Peking University and Tsinghua University are all high-rise buildings.If hardware is used as the standard, they can all be ranked first in the world.Cambridge University is nothing compared to them. Cambridge is full of dilapidated buildings, dilapidated houses that are hundreds of years old.And in Hong Kong, except for the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which is a bit bigger, other universities are very small.There are only a few buildings in the city and science and technology, and only one building in the University of Science and Technology. In 1990, Taiwan, China carried out the biggest reform in the history of Taiwan education, involving all aspects of education: laws, teachers, curriculum, teaching, textbooks, finance, etc.Learning from the United States, a large number of universities were established. In the end, the admission rate of universities in Taiwan was as high as 120%, which exceeded the number of candidates.The so-called "diverse enrollment" advocated has resulted in lower and lower enrollment scores.In the university entrance examination, the admission rate of the university in 2007 was 96.28%, the minimum original total score was 11.2 points, and the average score for each subject was 2.8 points. In 2008, the university admission rate was 97.10%, and the minimum admission score was 7.69 points. In 2009, the university acceptance rate was 97.14%.Moreover, there is a serious shortfall in the entire university. In 2008, there was a shortage of 4,788 people, and in 2009, there was a shortage of 6,802 people.On the surface, the campus is more beautiful, the teaching equipment has been updated, the management of professors has become more democratic, and the number of schools has increased. In 2004, there were 159 colleges and universities in Taiwan, 88 of which were established after the education reform.
After the education reform in our Taiwan area, we have not seen any gains, but the quality of students is getting worse and worse.What is the significance of democratizing campuses, increasing research funding, and improving professor salaries?Any education reform that does not put students first is doomed to failure.Therefore, we made a big mistake, that is, we completely ignored the concept of "small university".Many of our experts and scholars always take the comprehensive universities in the United States as an example.How big are research universities like Harvard, Pennsylvania, and Yale, and such schools are world-class, so we want to build "big schools."It's annoying to mention these so-called experts and scholars. These people have no understanding of the real situation. What are most universities in the United States like?I will show you a profile.According to the statistics of the authoritative "Higher Education Chronicle" in the United States, among the 2,386 private universities in the United States, there are only 57 large-scale private universities with more than 10,000 students, and 95 universities with 5,000 to 9,999 students.The others are small universities.More importantly, although these small universities are small in scale, their teaching quality is very high. Many small colleges focusing on undergraduate education basically recruit elites.Looking at our current colleges and universities, they are all seeking perfection. Any school basically has all internal organs and all subjects.The administrative organization is becoming more and more bloated, the management is becoming more and more bureaucratic, and the distance between students and professors is increasing, and finally the quality of education is getting worse and worse. Here I want to tell you again that any educational reform that is not student-centered is doomed to fail.Shirley Tillman, the president of Princeton University, just said: "Small is beautiful! Just because we don't need to do everything, we can concentrate our energy and resources on two things. One is very strict undergraduate education. , and the second is very academic postgraduate education. We have achieved these two things to the extreme.” They basically implement a small class tutoring system of 10 to 15 people, precisely because of their focus and responsibility The attitude of responsibility has created the status of this "small university" as a world-class university.In fact, for such a school, people want money and money, and students have a source of students. Why not expand their enrollment like we do?It's very simple, because they first consider the quality of education. If they expand blindly and seek perfection, what will the result be?I don't say that everyone can predict it.If Princeton University does this, it probably won't get the international status it has now.Looking at us again, we are extremely busy building university towns, merging and upgrading universities, and feel good about ourselves. I think this just destroys the possibility of improving the quality of education. I don’t know if readers have discovered that the American system actually has one of its biggest characteristics.what is it then?That is, their core is neither the welfare of professors nor the size of the university, but the quality of students. Looking at our current reforms, they always revolve around the welfare of professors and the size of the school. Have you figured out what to change?I don't know how to change it. In fact, there is still a very important problem in our education reform today, that is, we have not established a correct evaluation standard at all.That is to say, until today we have not found a correct way to solve the problem of allocation and evaluation of educational financial resources.In terms of education assessment, we are not a star behind. We are 105 years behind the UK, 45 years behind the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China, and 31 years behind the United States.What's even more sad is that in the social discussion about medium and long-term education development planning, almost no one of us realizes this kind of backwardness in an absolute sense. What is the basis of our current education financial allocation?It's very simple, just go through a simple formula first, and then add an estimate.This approach is problematic and has obvious flaws.The first is the utilization rate of funds. Our capital utilization rate is very low. Do you know why?It is because for the school, winning the appropriation is the most important thing, and it has become a fundamental purpose. As for how to use it and whether it can produce benefits after use, there is no one to control it at all, and there is no supervision mechanism, which has caused many problems. Waste of funds.In addition, there is our appropriation formula, which is very rough and does not reflect the actual cost behavior of colleges and universities, nor does it show any differences between colleges and universities.I'll show you the UK funding formula and you'll see how far behind we are.Before appropriating funds in the UK, you must first calculate the standard resources of your school, and then calculate how much resources are actually used. Finally, the difference between the two must be controlled within 5%.So how to calculate standard resources?They divided all disciplines in the university into four categories, and the weight of resources allocated to different categories of disciplines is different. Among them, medicine is 4.5, engineering disciplines based on experiments are 2.0, and others require laboratories and studios. The subject of fieldwork and field work is 1.5, and the rest of the subjects are 1.0. To put it simply, the resources that the government needs to invest in training a doctor are 4.5 times that of business school students.Then the British government considered some other additional subsidies.What is the biggest advantage of such a standard?That is, colleges and universities do not need to run projects and apply for funding every day to build laboratories or to obtain necessary resources.If you go to universities in Hong Kong with a similar system, you will know that the computer laboratories in Hong Kong universities use the most advanced computers, and there are a lot of them. For engineering schools, almost every student has one, while business There is no such a good computer room in the college.Do readers know what the funding system in our mainland is based on?Very simple, it is the number of students in school, and this is the only policy parameter, that is to say, whichever school has more students can win more funding.It is driven by this kind of economic interests that has caused the blind expansion of enrollment in our current colleges and universities.What is the result of this blind expansion?I think it's just another bunch of lecturers who can only read from the book to the students. We also have to figure out a question, that is, who should evaluate and allocate funds to universities?You must know that government officials without teaching experience cannot understand how universities should evaluate and allocate funds, and those government officials with teaching experience or school management experience are not suitable for evaluation and allocation. Why?Because there are conflicts of interest, and there are serious disciplinary biases.Hong Kong has done the best in this regard. The members of the Education Grants Committee of the University of Hong Kong are all non-government figures, including some overseas experts, local veterans from various industries, etc. They are appointed by the Chief Executive of the SAR Government. Representatives are a pure group of experts.Because these experts are basically not restricted by the government and can express their opinions relatively freely, their opinions are highly independent, scientific and impartial, and the evaluation results are naturally the most reliable. In addition, if the government evaluates and allocates funds, there is another biggest limitation.For example, after an evaluation, what if the business school believes that its accounting standards are too low?If they were dealing with a government agency, they would probably have to swallow their anger, or they would have to be busy running projects every day, trying to find ways to get approval from the leader.But in the British system, because universities are facing independent committees, these people are not life-long officials, but social figures with a limited period of time, so the different opinions of these universities can naturally be quickly and smoothly fed back to the committee. , the committee can make a new decision based on its own judgment. In fact, what the media is saying now, "Shenzhen University is testing the waters of reform again", means that Shenzhen University has reformed before. In the 1980s, the famous principal Luo Zhengqi's several reform measures were known as No. 1 in the history of domestic education.Students pay to go to school, graduates do not pay for distribution, faculty appointment system, credit system, and work-study system were all created by Shenzhen University in the 1980s.Moreover, in the 1980s, the principal Luo Zhengqi had a famous saying: "The heart of colleges and universities should be the library, not the office building of the party and government leadership." But 30 years have passed, and now the second reform has begun. Crossing the river by feeling the stones for the first time means that it has flowed back again, and this second reform occurred.Our entire education system is rigid. When you find that you want to push it, you push it aside and it goes back to the old way. The rigidity of our education system is even more terrifying and stubborn than that of state-owned monopoly enterprises.If we compare a university to a listed company, then you have to face the pressure of the board of directors, small shareholders, and the market.Motivation comes with pressure, right?Does Shenzhen University and many other schools have this pressure?The deep pressure comes from the top, which is a top-down driving force, so it is very passive. If the top does not push, it will not move forward.Chinese universities are absolutely monopolized. All universities in China are at the same level. They are all so rigid and monopolized that there is no pressure for reform. And the fiduciary responsibility I mentioned earlier, what if it is viewed from the perspective of a student's parent or student?When I pay the tuition fees, the university has a fiduciary responsibility to us. How will my pressure be transmitted?There is no conduction now.If the goods are not in the right version, for example, after graduating from a college student, they find that the school education they have received in the past few years is useless.then what should we do?The usual way is to retrain enterprises, and there is no transmission mechanism that puts pressure on universities.So now there are a lot of induction training in China. You can see that those multinational companies are very smart. Anyway, you know that you have learned it for nothing. So when selecting students, first, look at which university you graduated from. If it is a famous brand, Through the alumni who are scattered in all walks of life by classmates, it will be convenient to do something in the future.Second, they basically know your university’s method of educating students, whether they can match up with his company, and the rest can completely retrain you, as long as you have the potential.Therefore, we have formed another market outside the university, which is retraining. If this is the case, there will be no pressure to transmit back to the university, so the university does not need to be reformed. To put it bluntly, our sorrow is that our students spend five to six thousand yuan a semester to buy a brand and a diploma.What is reality?Even if you have a diploma, you may not be able to gain a foothold in society, but if you do not have a diploma, you will definitely not be able to gain a foothold. This is also an inevitable result of monopoly.Because there are still a small number of people who can enter the university, at least it means that you have to have a certain level to enter.Chinese universities have monopolized to the point that they can search for the best students in the whole of China, let them come out after stamping a mark, go through an on-the-job training, and then let them adapt to the working status of the company.From the point of view of the whole process, there is a lack of a pressure transmission mechanism, and no effective pressure has been formed. Therefore, it is impossible for universities to reform, and the reform is only a minor change. Therefore, all university reforms will repeat the mistakes of the past. Afterwards it was the same. From the 2003 Peking University personnel reform, Zhang Weiying's lonely back to the present, this is only a small cycle of reform.If we take a long-term view, since 1911, the reform of our Chinese universities first imitated Japan, then imitated European universities, and later became interested in the American university model, but none of them really succeeded. What is the problem? ?It is the lack of a transmission mechanism for pressure.The reform of Harvard University has not stopped. They also have a small reform in a few years and a major reform in a few decades. Their educational reform has never stopped. How did they reform?This is very stressful.Let me give you an example. I will take business schools as an example. Many professional magazines in the United States often rank universities. The rankings include the employment situation of students, feedback from companies, etc., and they are ranked every year. Through such a mechanism, information is fed back to School, this puts a lot of pressure on the school.Therefore, the business schools of various universities in the United States are reforming every year, and they are completely market-oriented. This is a difference between Chinese and American universities.American universities have no walls, and they have a benign interaction with society.However, Chinese universities have walls, so the huge pressure is kept out, and Chinese universities have no pressure to force them to carry out reforms. But the most serious problem is not that the walls of Chinese universities prevent the pressure of reform from entering, but that through this wall, those Vanity Fairs have come in.Many of our universities can no longer accommodate a peaceful desk, and have become government-business clubs, with all kinds of factors from government departments and enterprises involved.But what I think is more optimistic is that although the brands of Chinese universities are bad, Chinese college students are first-rate.They can go to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and go abroad to receive education, so this competition is very important.This is why I say that Hong Kong universities entering Shenzhen is a good thing, because this is competition, and students can make choices. He can study in the United States or in Hong Kong, China. After that, the school will be under pressure, and it hopes to reform. This is the external pressure to make it reform, and this is the driving force for university reform. Alfred Chandler emphasized that the advantages of scale do not come naturally. First, large-scale production only makes sense when faced with a large market (in the 19th and 20th centuries, American companies had a clear advantage over other countries). Second, even if you are dealing with a large market, investing in large-scale production equipment only makes sense if you have the management skills needed to keep your plant running at sufficient capacity and the marketing skills needed to handle multiple customers. significance. DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil, Sears, and U.S. Steel stand out in the United States more because of their different technological opportunities than because of their organizational and managerial capabilities to exploit them comprehensively.They complement the "invisible hand" of the market with visible management.One result of this situation is that many companies have grown in size, not just because they have many branch factories, but because the best way to ensure efficient production in these factories is to focus on the production of raw materials as well as Product distribution and marketing.This trend was regrettably too often followed by the central planners of communism, who believed that health services, holiday cottages, and farms to feed the workers were sufficient for efficient production. In the early 1990s, a Polish minister of industry told me that the Novy Huta steelworks on the border of Krakow (a city in southern Poland) needed only to strengthen its perimeter to be able to declare it an independent factory. The Visible Hand was published in 1977, just as volatile economic conditions began to limit Chandler's views on American business.In the 25 years since, a growing number of large companies, especially those in traditional manufacturing, have surpassed their smaller, nimble competitors.These competitors focus more on core activities and coordinate with suppliers in other ways than through full vertical integration.The reasons aren't just about technology, either.For example, growing international trade and domestic competition are making many companies more sophisticated in their activities. This article is excerpted from "Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life" by Paul Seabright