It can be seen that over the past 40 years of the Reform and Openingup, great progress has been made in the construction of universities anddisciplines in China. On one hand, the continuous expansion of theundergraduates and graduates has provided considerable high-qualitytalents for China's modernization drive. On the other hand, scientificresearch has grown from scratch and from weakness to strength; some ofthe research has approached or even reached the center of the worldacademic stage, providing important support for China to build itself into ascientific and technological power.
Meanwhile, we should also admit that there is still a large gap betweenthe development of universities and disciplines in China and the topinnovative universities in Europe and the United States, and somecharacteristics may become constraints hindering future development.First, there are too few original scientific research achievements inuniversities, too few key technological breakthroughs to solve the"bottleneck" problems in the field of science, engineering and medicine,and a little new knowledge and few ideas with great influence in the field ofhumanities and social sciences. At present, our university researchinstitutions and personnel have enlarged their scale, but there is still acertain distance from the "stronger" development; they are generally in thestage of studying the German model. Reasons behind this are mixed, suchas the false evaluation standard of "five-only" (paper only, official titleonly, academic title only, academic background only, award only), thepoor graduate matriculate quality and defective cultivating methods andso on.
Second, it is difficult to bring in top global talents to enrich ourteaching staffs. The attraction of American universities to the world's besttalents has provided a lasting impetus for the sustainable development oftheir universities and disciplines. In contrast, despite the rapid growth ofChina's economic strength in recent years, the attraction of our universitiesto the global top talents is still limited, which may attribute to the culturaldifferences between the East and the West, the policies and regulations ontalent introduction, etc.
Third, an overall innovation environment has not been built tostimulate the vitality of various innovative subjects. Nowadays, theboundaries of universities are becoming vaguer and vaguer, and they areincreasingly closely connected with the government, enterprises and otherinnovative subjects. With the rapid development of scientific andtechnological innovation, the output of original scientific knowledgeproduced only by universities is far from meeting the needs of the countryand society. It is necessary to form a holistic environment for innovation,in which universities are an important link. One of the successfulexperiences of American universities is the close integration betweenuniversities and other innovative entities, which creates innovation points,such as MIT's integration with the defense industry, Stanford University'scooperation with the high-tech enterprises of Silicon Valley, and so on.Recently, China has also begun to attach importance to the role ofuniversities in major scientific research projects and transformation ofscientific and technological achievements, and encourages the innovation ofcombining production, education, research and application in universities.
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