■ Editorials
In order to comprehensively improve the quality of independent training of talents, China needs to give schools full autonomy in running schools.
Recently, the Ministry of Education and other five departments issued the "General Higher Education Discipline Specialization Adjustment and Optimization Reform Plan" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"), proposing to optimize and adjust about 2025% of the discipline specialization distribution points in colleges and universities by 20, set up a new batch of disciplines that adapt to new technologies, new industries, new formats, and new models, and eliminate disciplines that do not adapt to economic and social development.
The "Plan" makes it clear that the proportion of basic disciplines, especially science and basic medical undergraduate majors, will be further increased. Build a number of future technology colleges, modern industry colleges, high-level public health colleges, excellent engineering colleges, and build a number of professional characteristic colleges.
In 2012, the Ministry of Education issued the Regulations on the Administration of Undergraduate Majors in Ordinary Colleges and Universities, which proposed that colleges and universities should actively adapt to the needs of national and regional economic and social development, and should follow the laws of higher education and talent growth. In the same year, the Ministry of Education proposed to establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism for disciplines and majors, and began to encourage colleges and universities to independently adjust and abolish "surplus, low-quality and misaligned" majors.
This time, it is proposed to optimize and adjust about 2025% of the discipline professional distribution points in colleges and universities by 20, and the pace of adjustment is unprecedented. In order to do a good job in this optimization and adjustment, government departments and schools need to perform their respective duties and go in both directions to further promote the reform of decentralization, management and service in the field of education, as well as the reform of education and teaching in colleges and universities.
From a realistic point of view, China's colleges and universities set up majors, there is a problem of rushing up and blindly chasing "hot", which has led to many new majors, which do not meet the school's positioning and running conditions, and do not have characteristics and high quality.
In recent years, most of the majors withdrawn by colleges and universities are the so-called "hot" majors of previous years. The reason for this problem is that colleges and universities lack the autonomy to run schools, do not form a clear school-running positioning, and do not fully demonstrate the school's positioning, school-running conditions, and society's demand for talents.
In the process of expanding the enrollment of higher education, many undergraduate colleges in China have chosen new majors in order to rapidly expand their scale, and the humanities and social sciences majors with low running costs are much larger than those in science and engineering. This has led to a grim employment situation for graduates of related majors. From attaching importance to scale development to paying attention to quality improvement, it is inevitable to optimize the professional setting of disciplines.
To promote the optimization and adjustment of disciplines, it is necessary to avoid a new rush. For example, in recent years, China's universities have added the most majors, including big data management and application, etc., from the overall trend, in line with the development needs of new technologies and new industries. However, specific to colleges and universities, whether the addition of these majors meets the positioning of the school and whether it has the conditions for running high quality and characteristics, it needs to be carefully demonstrated.
To optimize and adjust majors, government departments may wish to formulate macro strategies and provide information services, such as which talents are needed for the development of new technologies, new industries, and new formats, and how these talents are trained, so as to provide more detailed data support for colleges and universities to open majors, and prevent universities from setting up majors repeatedly, and setting up too many similar majors.
At the same time, it is necessary to implement and expand the autonomy of colleges and universities in running schools, promote the establishment of a modern school system in colleges and universities, and carry out the reform of credit system teaching. The establishment of disciplines belongs to educational affairs and academic affairs, so it is necessary to avoid the adjustment of disciplines led by administrative departments and leaders, and scientific and rigorous demonstrations should be carried out by the professors' committee and academic committee.
The "Plan" clearly states that by 2025, about 10000,300 national-level first-class professional points and about <> training bases for top-notch students in basic disciplines will be built.
Building a first-class professional point is not an easy task. It is necessary to establish a professional evaluation mechanism, pay attention to teachers' education and teaching ability and actual teaching contribution, and guide teachers to devote their energy to education and teaching. Otherwise, the construction of first-class majors may become recognized as first-class majors, and although some majors are called "first-class majors", students and society are not satisfied with the quality of the majors.
Therefore, more important than achieving the goal of optimizing and adjusting the distribution of about 20% of disciplines is to optimize the professional adjustment mechanism. In order to comprehensively improve the quality of independent training of talents, China needs to give schools full autonomy in running schools, and make good use of their autonomy in running schools.