text | "China Science Daily" reporter Chen Bin
You Zheng
Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and President of Huazhong University of Science and Technology , President of Huazhong University of Science and Technology , he had many choices for his title - academician, president, professor... However, when asked what his colleagues usually call him, You Zheng smiled and told " China Science Daily ": "In school, teachers are always the best name."
In October 2021, "Teacher You", who had worked in Tsinghua University for more than 30 years, left Beijing and returned to Wuhan, thousands of miles away, and took office as president of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. You Zheng is not unfamiliar with the "Yujiashan Forest University" mentioned by students - before becoming "Teacher You" of Tsinghua University , he has always been "Class You" of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
At the 70th anniversary celebration of Huazhong University of Science and Technology on October 6, You Zheng gave a report on the title "Stand up to the sky, pursue excellence - Walk the new path to building a world-class university with Chinese characteristics". During the 27-minute speech, 17 applause spontaneously rang out on the scene.
From Wuhan to Beijing, from classmates to teachers, and then to the current principal, this scientist who has always been committed to the research on intelligent microsystem technology has also completed the "movement" of his life experience. Each identity change process has deepened his thoughts on the trends of higher education in my country and the reform of college governance.
Presidents should have both management and academic abilities
"China Science Daily": In recent years, a group of scientists represented by academicians have served as presidents of universities, and the public has also paid attention to it as a new phenomenon. However, there are great differences between university management and scientific research, both in terms of objects and methods. What do you think are needed to accumulate for a scientist principal to complete his role transformation?
You Zheng: In the tradition of the Chinese nation, there have always been many expectations for "teachers", such as "learning high" and "righteous body" are both keywords. Only by meeting these conditions can you become a good teacher and a good principal. However, in foreign countries, especially in some European and American countries, university presidents usually only have honorary titles, and the specific management of universities is completed by professional administrative management teams such as vice presidents. Therefore, when selecting principals, foreign countries pay more attention to the social influence of candidates, and their popularity plays an important role in connecting universities with social resources.
From the actual situation in our country, as a university president, we must first require ourselves according to the educator standards of "understanding politics and being political". We must not only have a social image based on a higher academic level, but also have excellent management capabilities, and the latter is more important. From this perspective, the position of principal cannot be a "big talent". It also requires the school management while studying academically.
Specifically, although the department chair, dean and principal are all management positions in universities, the three are very different - the work of the department chair and dean is mostly carried out around their own disciplines, and to a certain extent, academic and management can be parallel and promote each other. However, as principals who need to grasp the school's direction, put forward the concept of school management, and lead the coordinated development of all disciplines and various work in the school, it is difficult to take into account 100%.
Before serving as the principal, I had been engaged in research work in the field of microsystem technology for more than 30 years, and established and cultivated a research team with mature systems and clear division of labor. I believe that the principal's main energy should be focused on establishing a scientific and modern talent training and school innovation and governance system. The investment in management should account for more than 85% of his total work investment, which is much greater than his investment in his own teaching and scientific research business. Only when completing this "priority task" can you engage in some specific teaching and scientific research work. As the head of the scientific research team, the scientist president must transform from a "leader" on the front line of scientific research to a "helder" in the academic direction.
"China Science Daily": If we look at the perspective of development, the frequent appearance of "scientists and presidents" in research universities at this stage is true, is it consistent with the current development stage of higher education in my country?
You Zheng: Based on my country's traditional concepts and the strategic deployment of higher education in the new era, the society and the public have dual expectations for the current university presidents. From another perspective, it is precisely because of the long-term overall leadership of the Party over universities and the comprehensive and profound implementation of the fundamental task of "cultivating morality and cultivating people" that there is a soil for the generation of "scientists and principals".
my country has always paid great attention to the comprehensive cultivation of the abilities of university managers and emphasized the "combination of red and specialized schools". Many young teachers in colleges and universities have experienced the transformation from counselors, class teachers, and then from department managers of " shoulders and ", and have gradually participated in the school's governance work. I have worked in colleges and universities for more than 30 years, and have never stopped teaching undergraduates. I have served as deputy director, director, dean, director of the department, assistant to the president, and vice president, and familiar with the management of research universities.
In my opinion, as long as college managers have a firm political stance, rich teaching experience and certain academic accumulation, and follow scientific and systematic laws in management, they can be good "scientist and principals" who meet social expectations and meet the development requirements of colleges and universities.
"Scientists" need humanistic feelings to become "everyone",
"China Science Daily": Some people believe that the current public attention to scientists and principals still hides another cognition, that is, science often has instrumental rationality, while education should reflect humanistic feelings more, which leads to differences in value attributes between the two. What do you think about this?
You Zheng: Many scientific "bigs" often come from comprehensive universities. One very important reason is that the scientific spirit and humanistic feelings are always complementary. With the inquiry spirit of scientists, a person may be able to achieve certain achievements in a certain field of scientific research, but to become a "big guy", he must have both humanistic feelings. This is also an inevitable rule for some universities to move from characteristic disciplines to comprehensive universities in recent years.
The development of education must be in line with the times to meet the needs of the country and the requirements of the times. In the 1950s, in order to accelerate the industrialization process of New China and lay the foundation for economic development, many universities focused on engineering. In recent years, with the rapid development of my country's economy and society, while achieving achievements in all aspects, new requirements have been put forward for universities - adjusting the discipline structure and producing a group of achievements and masters with world influence.
If a university does not have a deep cultural heritage, it is difficult to become a truly first-class university. From the founding of New China to the present, a group of recognized "everyone" tells us that in addition to scientific achievements, the commonality of "everyone" lies in having deep literary literacy and humanistic sentiment.
Internationally, there are many "famous" universities on the ranking list that have been "smashed" with huge amounts of funds in the short term. They can produce a group of articles with high impact factors by working with celebrities, but they will not become first-class universities because they only have the connection in indicators and lack cultural accumulation. Therefore, if you want to become a recognized first-class university, it is indispensable to humanistic quality education and campus atmosphere creation.
"China Science Daily": The "indicators" you mentioned also involve the reform of the talent evaluation mechanism that my country is currently vigorously promoting. How do you think the "Five Onlys" should be broken?
You Zheng: Under the background of the country's vigorous promotion of "breaking the five onlys", there are currently very few pure "five onlys" phenomena in colleges and universities, but its impact is still difficult to completely eliminate in a short period of time.
one-sided quantitative assessment, for example, the negative impact of the well-known "number paper" on scientific research does not need to be repeated. Although foreign universities also have the so-called "number paper" stage, it is often only before teachers obtain tenured teaching positions, because they need to prove their academic abilities through landmark papers. At this time, teachers need to work hard to accumulate their academic achievements, and the orientation of "number papers" is conducive to stimulating their passion for scientific research.But when teachers obtain tenured teaching positions and deepen academic research, simple "counting papers" lose their meaning and naturally no longer implements them.
In comparison, the domestic situation is due to the inertia of quantitative assessment. Many teachers may be in a "number paper" state for a long time and have no time to calm down and do in-depth academic and "big scientific research".
Looking at the overall situation, the key to "breaking the five onlys" is to analyze the specific problems of in detail. After "breaking the five onlys", the most urgent thing is to establish a new evaluation system to formulate different evaluation standards for personnel at different stages, levels, and types of disciplines. We must change the previous evaluation concept and establish a multi-level evaluation mechanism that "focuses on innovation, compares contributions, and talks about quality".
Get rid of the "teacher-centered" "brick making" model
"China Science Daily": In recent years, information technology has had a profound impact on higher education, especially the advent of the mobile Internet era, making knowledge query more convenient. In a sense, "knowledge" is no longer a scarce product. What impact do you think this will have on the educational philosophy and talent training model of colleges and universities?
You Zheng: This issue needs to be analyzed from the two levels of management and teaching. At the management level, informatization and intelligence undoubtedly reduce the heavy data processing burden of managers, but it only provides managers with more decision-making information support, which does not mean that it can replace people's decision-making.
From the management level, if college management relies entirely on informatization, the necessity of management will be lost. In other words, the current responsibility of managers is to use information-assisted decision-making means to improve the level of modern governance in schools, rather than handing over decision-making power to computers and programmers. This is especially true for teaching work in
. The talent training model must get rid of the previous "teacher-centered" "brick making" model, that is, teachers only burn students into a "brick" with a unified standard purpose based on their own knowledge reserves. At this stage, with the change of national needs and the requirements of the times, students must realize themselves that "whether the interests are, how should they be done, and what can be done well", which is the fundamental thing to cultivate people. In this regard, the increasingly developed information technology can provide full support for exploratory teaching and inspiring teaching, and achieve teaching in accordance with the aptitude. Of course, new technologies will also bring new problems. For example, PPT courseware replaces teachers' flexible blackboard writing and immersive reasoning teaching process, making it difficult to reproduce the scene of teachers and students pushing a formula and solving the same problem together. In terms of ability cultivation, foreign universities generally adopt the knowledge learning and comprehensive application experience of "big assignments" is worth learning from - in course learning, professors will assign a question to students to complete it after class, but in order to answer it, the knowledge taught in the classroom alone is far from enough, and students need to learn a large number of courses independently. Everyone recognizes that this process is extremely valuable and challenging. From a macro perspective, the knowledge taught in the classroom is only a small part of the knowledge that is finally mastered. Among those who returned from studying abroad in famous overseas universities, many people praised this after-school "big homework" teaching method.
"China Science Daily": In recent years, domestic universities have also carried out heuristic and inquiry-based teaching exploration, especially supporting undergraduates to do scientific research. But there are some debates about this. Some people believe that undergraduates do not have research capabilities, while others argue that no threshold should be set for researchers. Which method do you think is more beneficial for talent training?
You Zheng: Academic research can be carried out at any academic and degree stage. Even at the undergraduate stage, students' academic research and inquiry behavior should be placed in an important position, otherwise the attributes of academic research will be lost.
Of course, research on different academic qualifications and degree stages should be different. Without a certain knowledge reserve and thinking accumulation, it is not realistic to suddenly have academic research capabilities in a short period of time. The ancients said: "If you study without thinking, you will be confused; if you think without learning, you will be in danger." My understanding is that "thinking" means that students should think independently.In contrast, the proportion of inculcated courses in colleges and universities is still relatively high, and the part that allows students to think independently is not enough. It is believed that inculcating more knowledge into students is a kind of "responsible" cultivation, and this concept needs to be changed.
At the same time, the current teacher assessment system is based on " work points " as the standard, which leads to teachers trying to find ways to set up more classes and teach more classes, while the quality and necessity of courses are ignored.
Therefore, from the perspective of teaching management, teachers should not only have the right to decide the allocation ratio of teaching knowledge and students' independent exploration, but also set the number of teachers in the course based on the actual needs of students' training, so that every teacher can concentrate on teaching the class and leave enough time for students to think and explore independently.
Domestic universities must cross the threshold of "convergence"
"China Science Daily": In recent years, Huazhong University of Science and Technology has made many optimizations and adjustments in its discipline layout, and the overall discipline distribution is more balanced, and the professional advantages of engineering have not changed. As the principal, you put forward the school-running concept of "standing up to the sky and pursuing excellence" and deepen the reform of engineer talent training with the construction of new engineering science. In your opinion, what are the common problems that colleges and universities need to face in talent training at present?
You Zheng: Historically, Huazhong University of Science and Technology has taken a path of development from a single science and engineering university to an comprehensive university . This year, we proposed that the future goal of building Huazhong University of Science and Technology is to build a socialist university with Chinese characteristics and Chinese characteristics, a world-class socialist university with Chinese characteristics and a Chinese-style Chinese University of Science and Technology. The choice of this path not only takes into account the needs orientation of the country, but also is based on the objective requirements for the development of university in the future talent training, but also conforms to the actual situation of the school.
At present, the development of my country's universities faces two problems: "previous" and "long-term". Therefore, in terms of talent training, universities must not only be determined to cultivate top social elites, such as pillars of governing the country, academic masters, talents who develop businesses, generals who strengthen the army, etc., but also cultivate a large number of talents urgently needed by society. If we do not pay attention to the long-term training of top-notch basic talents, we may not reach the ideal height.
But at the same time, for the development problems that need to be solved urgently at the moment, I believe that we must increase the efforts to train outstanding engineers and strengthen the training of "specialized, specialized and lacking" talents and innovative and entrepreneurial talents. This is determined based on the characteristics of Huazhong University of Science and Technology's discipline development, its regional characteristics, and the talent advantages we have.
Face the future. If our country's universities want to go further, they must cross the threshold of "convergence". At present, there are thousands of universities in China. If each university has its own characteristics instead of focusing on "paper majors" and "ranked majors", it will definitely be able to cultivate various talents that meet social needs. To achieve this goal, a series of institutional and mechanism reforms are required to focus on key issues such as evaluation and assessment. This is a topic that all university administrators need to face and strive to explore.
