Huang Daren
0 Born in April 1945, from Xiangshan, Zhejiang Province, professor of mathematics. He graduated from the Department of Mathematics of Zhejiang University and then stayed at the school to teach. In 1985, he went to the University of South Carolina as a visiting scholar. He has served as director of the Academic Affairs Office and vice provost of Zhejiang University. From 1992 to 1998, he served as vice president of Zhejiang University. In November 1998, he was transferred to the position of executive vice president of Sun Yat-sen University. From August 1999 to December 2010, he served as president of Sun Yat-sen University.
Historical significance of large-scale enrollment expansion
Chen Zhiwen: You took office as the president of Sun Yat-sen University in 1999, and it was exactly the same year that China's higher education began a "large enrollment expansion". What do you think of the major expansion of enrollment that year?
Huang Daren: When we evaluate the expansion of enrollment, we should see what problems should be solved in higher education at that time. At that time, the main demand for higher education was to improve the gross enrollment rate of and the education level of the labor force.
Now some people will say that the gross enrollment rate has increased, but the quality has decreased. I believe that as the development of higher education has reached today, it is necessary to put forward higher requirements for quality, but don’t forget that the first thing to solve was the need for the general public to receive higher education.
Chen Zhiwen: We set the goal at that time to reach 40%, and now it has reached 48.1%.
Huang Daren: This is a great progress. First of all, we have to look at the background at that time. Any policy is phased and historical.
Chen Zhiwen: What impact did the expansion of enrollment have on Sun Yat-sen University?
Huang Daren: At that time, Guangdong Province gave us CUHK tasks. According to the provincial government, Guangdong Province did not have enough high-quality educational resources and required us to expand enrollment. We originally recruited 5,000 people a year, and the province required to expand enrollment of 3,000.
I always believe that what CUHK needs to do is elite education, which is CUHK’s own positioning for running schools. However, to solve the problem of popularization of higher education, an important contribution of CUHK is to expand enrollment. At the same time, the school must expand space for the development of new disciplines, so the campus must also be expanded. The land of the Zhuhai campus was found by my former principal Wang Xunzhang. After I took over, I implemented the land he found. The real credit was my ex.
I have always highly praised the two party committee secretaries who have worked with me. Secretary Li Yanbao said that the Zhuhai campus should be made into an authentic CUHK rather than a branch, and the CUHK culture should be inherited and carried forward as much as possible in the Zhuhai campus. In practice, he went to Zhuhai as soon as the weekends came. The Party Secretary not only pointed out the direction, but also practiced it.
Chen Zhiwen: The construction of Sun Yat-sen University Zhuhai Campus can be said to be in line with the trend of popularization of higher education at that time.
Huang Daren: We opened a new campus at that time, which was consistent with the national policy.
Chen Zhiwen: Have you encountered difficulties in running schools on multiple campuses?
Huang Daren: Multi-campus school management is not our choice, it does not mean that we want to run a new campus. From the principal's perspective, of course I would rather concentrate on one campus, but the cultural heritage protection building in the old campus cannot be moved, and there is no room for expansion next to it. So it is not that we intend to run schools on multiple campuses, but that we have to do it.
On the one hand, the cost of running schools in multiple campuses has increased significantly; on the other hand, the division and layout of disciplines have also become a major contradiction in running schools in multiple campuses. At that time, I had an idea. I thought that the people behind were always smarter than us. Many things were hard to see clearly for a while, so there must be a transition first and leave it to the people behind to solve it. Another idea is whether our enrollment number will always be at 8,000? This is the first thing to consider.
In addition, it is still difficult to make clear judgments on the discipline development plan in the short term. Our approach at that time was to run several colleges similar to the original disciplines, and let the old colleges lead new colleges, mainly to solve the problem of enrollment expansion.
For example, our Lingnan College is very good, it is mainly based on economics, and we opened an International Business School in Zhuhai. We have a foreign language college and we have a translation college in Zhuhai. There is also the School of Geography, which has established the School of Tourism.At the beginning, the dean of the parent college was the dean of the new college in the past, so that the faculty could be allocated and the parent college could also provide support. I think this is very important for the establishment of a new college. At that time, a decision was made to not expand clinical medicine and maintain the scale of elite education.
The purpose of running a new college is to digest a large amount of enrollment expansion. If the enrollment scale will be reduced in the future, it will be very simple to adjust. If you want to lay out new disciplines, closing such a college can free up space and resources. The school has not given these new colleges a task to construct disciplines, so that the changes in the discipline layout will be very small. The new colleges are mainly teaching, and their discipline construction is coordinated by the parent college.
After a few years, I found that the student enrollment situation of the International Business School, the Translation School and the Tourism School is not worse than that of the headquarters, and the employment is also very good. An unexpected gain is that the subject ranking of the Tourism Academy has even entered the top ten in the QS world rankings.
Chen Zhiwen: The construction of Zhuhai campus has increased the capacity of students, which means more faculty is needed. How did you do it at that time?
Huang Daren: teachers are mainly solved by the dean. The policy given to them is to focus on teaching, and how much students there are, how much funding you will be given. These funds are packaged to the dean, who can be used to recruit teachers and short-term recruitment, but as a result, several deans did a good job. I think it is crucial to a dean.
For schools, of course, we should pay attention to introducing subject leaders, but hiring excellent deans is of particular significance. I like to say that first-class deans hire first-class talents, second-class deans look for third-class scholars.
Three levels of education evaluation
Chen Zhiwen: How do you view the problem of reversing the unscientific educational evaluation orientation and resolutely overcoming the stubborn problems of only scores, only studies, only diplomas, only papers, and only hats?
Huang Daren: I think there should be three levels to solve the problem of higher education evaluation: the first is the national evaluation of education, the second is the Ministry of Education's evaluation of universities, and the third is the internal evaluation of teachers of schools.
At the national evaluation level of education, for example, the 2015 Vocational Education Conference emphasized the need to build a modern vocational education system, because it has always been promoted by the education authorities, so it is easy for everyone to look at this from the perspective of academic improvement, and instead lose the characteristics of vocational education. I think vocational education may be more beneficial if you put it in the entire national education system or lifelong education system.
Recently, I went to Guangdong Open University for investigation and saw that they took the lead in making a "Guangdong Lifelong Education Qualification Framework Level Standard", which divided seven levels. On the left is the academic education system from primary school and middle school to junior college, undergraduate, master, and doctoral degree, in the middle is the vocational education system, and on the right is the vocational qualification system, trying to find some equivalent relationships between different types of education and between education and labor. Guangdong Open University is also working hard to put it into practice by establishing credit banks.
Guangdong Lifelong Education Qualification Framework Source: Southern Daily
I think this system designed by Guangdong Open University is still very meaningful. They believe that the highest professional and technical level should be comparable to that of a doctorate.
Recently, I also saw a news report saying that a young actor had a fake doctoral thesis. In fact, I think he acted very well, and there was no need to seek a doctorate degree, especially using improper means.
There is another example in establishing a national education system. In 2012, I visited Singapore Nanyang Institute of Technology. The first PPT introduced to me by its former dean Lin Jingdong was the Singapore education system. He did not introduce the situation of the college first, but showed me the entire national education system of Singapore and immediately understood the position of this school in the national education system.
The Singapore system has two characteristics: First, the School of Technology Education (equivalent to domestic secondary vocational schools), the School of Science and Technology (equivalent to domestic higher vocational schools) and the university. These three different levels and types of education are interconnected, and general education and vocational education are integrated with each other.
Second, all employed students can return to the School of Technology Education, Polytechnic or University for further studies at any time. In Singapore, education is not only upward along the academic qualifications, but two-way.
Excerpted from the PPTh
demonstrated by the former dean of Nanyang Institute of Technology in Singapore during an interview with President Huang Daren. One is an attempt by Guangdong Province and the other is the situation in Singapore. I think the benefit of these two systems is that it is not "only scores, only admission, only diplomas, only papers". Such a system should be established at the national level, so that we will not only evaluate people, but also have multiple evaluations.
Chen Zhiwen: I agree with your point of view.
Huang Daren: Let’s talk about the evaluation of universities by the Ministry of Education. There are many different views in society regarding the evaluation of universities based on disciplines. I think we must also see the positive role of discipline evaluation and historical progress.
On the one hand, discipline construction is the basis for the rapid development of Chinese universities. Under the guidance of the Ministry of Education, universities' understanding of the significance of discipline construction is also deepening. At the beginning, it may be limited to focusing on scientific research and postgraduate education. Later, discipline construction is regarded as the process of organizational construction, emphasizing the importance of platform construction, paying attention to the relationship between the establishment of the college and the subject caliber, and now paying more attention to the role of discipline construction in talent cultivation.
On the other hand, the issue of subject evaluation caliber is actually changing. I remember that Zhejiang University proposed to manage teaching in the Lu Yongxiang era, and the second-level discipline of was established as a research institute. At that time, the Ministry of Education's subject evaluation caliber was also a second-level discipline, which was very helpful for my early work from Zhejiang University to Sun Yat-sen University.
This time the selection and construction of "Double First-Class" is guided by first-level disciplines. The caliber of discipline evaluation is constantly changing and is also adapting to the needs of social development. In addition to the first-level subject evaluation of the degree center, there are also QS, THS, etc., which enrich the methods of subject evaluation.
For example, the tourism discipline mentioned above is a secondary discipline under the first-level discipline of business administration in the subject evaluation of the degree center, but it is a first-level discipline in the QS discipline ranking. There are many different discipline evaluation methods, which are conducive to the characteristics of each university.
Based on this, I think that in addition to subject evaluation, we should also pay more attention to social evaluation. First, many university rankings have reputation indicators in the indicator system, which is actually combined with social evaluation. Second, if the rankings are too different from the actual strength of universities, and they do not have credibility and market, it is difficult to survive. To a certain extent, I am not negative about the rankings.
At the same time, I also think that the rankings cannot influence the university's school management practice. I think we cannot deliberately pursue some indicators to cause deformation of the action.
I often give examples of ESI. At that time, we were having a meeting in Beijing. A leader of the Ministry of Education said when giving a report that we can pay attention to the ESI indicator. Then, the presidents of the two universities with the largest number of disciplines entering the top 1% of ESI came on stage to speak. My heart was stuttering at that time, because I had said harsh words in the school that as long as I became the principal, I would never give any indicators to the college, and I didn’t even have scientific research indicators. I always believed that the results were done by the teacher, not by the principal. I even said ashamed, and I didn't even know what ESI is. I am also planning to check it out after I go back and find two subjects closest to 1% to work hard. After the results were checked, my colleagues told me that the top 1% of CUHK ranked third in the country. I was very happy at the time, and later said at the school meeting that ESI gave me the feeling that when I looked back, the person was in the dim light. I hope we won’t pursue indicators, but when we really evaluated college based on indicators, we performed well. I think this is probably the highest level I want to pursue.
Chen Zhiwen: is the same as the current exam-oriented education. The score is not wrong, but the goal is to score.
Huang Daren: Current university rankings, I think no principal dares to say that I don’t mind because it directly affects enrollment.
Chen Zhiwen: What other issues do you pay attention to about education evaluation?
Huang Daren: also has the issue of "paper-only" which is essentially a problem of evaluation of teachers within the university.
I went to Hong Kong Chinese University of (Shenzhen) for evaluation some time ago. It is an independent school that has been opened for five years, and I focused on understanding their teaching staff building. The vice president in charge of personnel also asked to introduce the situation of Hong Kong universities. He turned out to be the director of the Personnel Director of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
There are 277 teachers in Hong Kong and Zhongshen, which are divided into three series: the first series is Tenure, which is generally the tenured professor, with both teaching and scientific research, with more than 170 people; the second series is Teaching, which has teaching tasks but no scientific research requirements, with 100 people; the third series is Research, which only does scientific research but not teaching, and currently only has 1 person.
I asked them, what are the requirements for teachers in the Teaching series? They said that there is only one standard for the Teaching series of teachers' assessment and promotion, which is to teach. During the assessment, you do not require you to fill out any scientific research projects you undertake, nor do you require you to publish many papers. You only do teaching, and you do not need to fill in a form related to scientific research.
I asked, is it only the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) that is the case. He said no, it is the case for universities in the University of Hong Kong, University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Chinese and Commonwealth countries.
I think this matter is worth our consideration. Should Chinese universities also establish a team of teachers focusing on teaching? Different universities have different proportions according to their own school positioning, but they are no longer choosing individual teaching that are particularly excellent as embellishments. If universities want to make changes on the issue of "paper-only" and should open up channels for teacher classification evaluation.
About internal governance of universities
Chen Zhiwen: I just talked about some relatively macro issues. I would like to ask some questions about internal governance of universities below. What do you think is the first issue that needs to be paid attention to in internal governance of universities?
Huang Daren: In recent years, I have participated in more undergraduate education work reviews and evaluations. A deeper feeling is that the university's positioning of running schools has not yet attracted the general attention of universities. The meaning of the school positioning proposal is not well explained. Most of them are a slogan. There is no good preaching of this positioning in the school, and it has not become a guide to action.
Chen Zhiwen: The positioning of universities in running schools directly affects the direction of talent training. Different types of universities should have different positioning of running schools to cultivate different types of talents.
Huang Daren: After resigning as the president of CUHK, I went to about 400 universities. I believe that Chinese universities have objectively seven levels, "985" and "211", and are now changed to first-class university construction universities and first-class discipline construction universities. Below are universities with doctoral granting rights, universities called universities, colleges with master's granting rights, local undergraduate colleges, and higher vocational colleges.
Look carefully. The talent training positioning of schools at different levels is different. It is related to what stage it is. In talent training, the more you pay attention to cultivating generalists, so the entry point of teaching reform is often general education; the further downwards, the more you emphasize application-oriented, and the entry point of teaching reform is professional education.
The higher the professional level, the wider the professional level. I remember Peking University applied to hold a major in politics, economics, philosophy (politics, economics, philosophy), and Tsinghua University recruits and trains according to 16 major categories. The more you go to the bottom, the more detailed the major, and you will run it according to the professional direction. Shanghai Lixin Accounting College is a very good applied university. It has a financial major, divided according to the four sub-industry directions of the financial industry. Banking, securities, futures, and insurance are divided into four directions for training.
is in different historical stages, and there will be different teaching reforms, different professional calibers, and different talent training plans.
I have been to a university with a ranking of about 100 in various places. The slogan I put forward was to enter the top 100 in the country. I asked the school to pay attention to one thing, there is a major, which is set up in two colleges to run in seven directions. This is not like a top 100 college.
Why is the positioning of school management so important? It determines your professional perspective and talent training plan. The school positioning is different, and the assessment indicators of the school should also be different, so that you will not require employment rates from Tsinghua University and Peking University, and the further study rates from newly established undergraduate universities.
I also have a point of view on the positioning of school management, which is to clarify that the positioning of school management is not only a matter of colleges and universities, but also a place where organizers should play a greater role.
Huang Daren China Education Online/Photo
Chen Zhiwen: In other words, the government must guide the positioning of universities in running schools, but the government has not done enough in this regard at present.
Huang Daren: Next I will go to a university in Guangdong for evaluation. I have studied the materials carefully and I have also communicated with the principal of the school. This is an old undergraduate degree, which was mainly based on liberal arts and science. In 2015, 15 majors were closed in one year because the school positioning changed from comprehensive to science and engineering. When talking to the principal of this university, I asked him how you changed your school positioning? He said it was a requirement of Guangdong Province, requiring the construction of a high-level science and engineering university.
I think that Chinese universities are the government’s investment in construction. As organizers, the government must reflect the organizers’ will. But many times, we forget, and the government also forgets. As a principal, you cannot blindly emphasize the autonomy of running schools and forget the needs of local governments. I think this university is a typical example. The organizer has made a request to support you in terms of funding, but you have to run an engineering university.
The government should manage this part. What I hope you will do and what kind of people you will cultivate. The government influences universities, or guides universities, which is the most important thing.
The slogan put forward by Guangdong Province in high-level universities: "Breaking, making up for, strengthening", "Breaking up for first-class, making up for shortcomings, strengthening characteristics, especially strengthening characteristics. The local municipal government must check the school's positioning meets the needs of economic and social development in this region. This is the real relationship between government and universities.
I always feel that the organizer must be separated from the organizer, and the organizer's will and commitments must be reflected in " University Charter ". I went to Taiwan University. The then president of National Taiwan University was Li Sizen. I talked about the charter to him. When he opened the drawer, he showed it to me and said that all his power was here, and what the charter was given to him was.
I went to University of Macau . At that time, President Zhao Wei said that the constitution of the University of Macau is divided into four parts. The first part was from the Chief Executive and the second part was approved by the Legislative Council. The third part is approved by the board of directors, and the fourth part is approved by the University of Macau itself. For example, in order to set up an additional vice president for a college, I saw that the power was on the board of directors, so I reported it to the board of directors for approval.
Chen Zhiwen: In other words, the government has some misplaced and absent in the management of higher education. Many things the government is now under the supervision of the principal should be under the supervision of the government, but it should be under the supervision of the government, but it does not.
There is another question. One of the questions you have been talking about is the management of the school and college levels. How did you consider it?
Huang Daren: It turns out that we talk about internal governance of universities, and we focus more on the principal responsibility system under the leadership of the Party Committee. At this stage, many schools focus on the management of the school and college levels, which means the downward shift of the management focus. The key is how to fully exert the enthusiasm of the college level. In the words of Zhang Jie, then president of Shanghai Jiaotong University, it is from "school-run college" to "school-run college". For this reason, I went to some universities for research, saw many good cases and some problems.
I went to a college in a discussion, and the dean introduced us to the achievements made in teaching and analyzed what problems still exist and what causes them. He said that what we lacked in teaching is that students’ international exchanges are not carried out enough. He analyzed that the first reason is determined by the characteristics of the college’s disciplines; the second reason is that students come from several surrounding provinces, and family economic conditions restrict the development of international exchanges; the third reason is that the National Scholarship Fund Committee has given few places.
I think the core of the management of the school and college is the sharing of responsibilities. If the school places financial and personnel rights on the college, the college should have the ability to recreate policies and formulate policies suitable for the college's characteristics based on the actual situation of the college, and promote the development of various undertakings of the college. Emphasizing the characteristics of the subject and the economic situation of students cannot change the current situation of international exchanges.
Chen Zhiwen: There will always be responsibilities and difficulties, but the dean did not realize that this responsibility lies with him.
Huang Daren: was originally the school level to solve these problems, but under the management of the school and college levels, I said earlier that each college must have the ability to rebuild policies, how to use these resources to solve problems. Therefore, the two-level management of the school and college actually puts higher requirements on the dean of the college.
I also realize that the reform of the management of the two-level schools and colleges is a process, a process of re-selecting and re-training of the college deans.
Chen Zhiwen: From your perspective, what is the most important task for a principal to run a university well?
Huang Daren: Once, the former Director of Management Peijun of the Personnel Department was now working in the Higher Education Association. He came to me to chat and said that he was working on a project, the relationship between internal governance of the university and the construction of "Double First-Class". He asked me a question: As the president of the university, what do you think is the most important job?
I blurted out three things: one is the positioning of the university, which means you need to understand what kind of school you want to run; the second is the layout of disciplines and majors; and the third is to create a good atmosphere in the university.
He laughed and said that he had just found Secretary Li Yanbao a few days ago and asked the secretary what he was in charge of. Secretary Li also blurted out three points: one is the positioning of the university, the second is the direction of running schools, and the third is the atmosphere of running schools. He said that there are two things that are the same for you. I said that we were not often seen. He said that both of you attach importance to the positioning of the university and the creation of the school atmosphere.
Image source: Sun Yat-sen University official blog
I think that atmosphere is actually the construction of university culture. The most important thing in university culture construction is the creation of administrative culture. Talent training and scientific research in universities were completed by teachers, but in what state they worked was something that secretary, principal and management cadres should pay attention to. Therefore, the school-running philosophy mentioned by CUHK at that time included "teachers are universities", "universities are academic communities", and "treat students well". I often say that first-class universities are not only a reflection of academic level, but also a reflection of management level. Even the academic culture of universities is determined by administrative culture.
Chen Zhiwen: The last question, what do you think is the most important quality of being a principal?
Huang Daren: I think whether it is a principal or other leading cadres, the key is to be a person, and the most important thing is to be a person's quality. After leaving the post of the CUHK President, I went back to Hangzhou to visit some old friends. During a chat, I talked about some of the gains and losses of being a principal. That friend blurted out and said, "Being a principal is to be a human being."
When doing audit and evaluation in Shantou University , I saw two words in the school administrative building: leniency and integrity. I checked it online and found that it was explained from the collection of "Records of the Grand Historian": It means lenient, polite and upright, and everyone will come to it. I think these two words actually explain the essence of university management thoroughly. This should be especially true for the president as a representative of university administrators.
