Recently, the Ministry of Education, together with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, issued the Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Teacher Title System in Colleges and Universities. (Visual China/Photo)
Salary of eight thousand, busy publishing papers, applying for funds, staring at the assessment criteria for job title evaluation - 2020 doctoral graduation, pre-hired as a lecturer by a 211 university in Beijing, which has become Tian Liang's daily life, but also the daily life of most "green peppers".
"Green pepper", another name for young university teachers. They are new to the workplace, less than 35 years old, only have junior and middle titles, and "have to climb up (titles) step by step"
Pre-recruitment, that is, the new teacher employment system widely adopted by domestic colleges and universities in recent years. The employment period is three years, and those who pass the assessment during the employment period can be converted to long-term employment, otherwise they will not be renewed.
Recently, the Ministry of Education, together with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, issued the Guiding Opinions on Deepening the Reform of the Teacher Title System in Colleges and Universities (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), emphasizing the setting of more scientific and reasonable evaluation indicators to stimulate the enthusiasm and creativity of teachers in colleges and universities.
On January 27, 2021, the Ministry of Education issued and interpreted the Opinions. After Tian Liang saw the "Opinions", he was mixed. In his view, the measures provide a direction, and there are still many difficulties in their real implementation.
<h3>Avoid "one-size-fits-all" reviews</h3>
In recent years, the employment, salary, housing and other issues of "green pepper" have attracted wide attention, but it is difficult to generalize in reality. Zhang Duanhong, associate professor of the Institute of Higher Education of Tongji University, told Southern Weekend that according to his research and observation, in many first- and second-tier cities, young teachers only have an annual income of more than 100,000 yuan, it is difficult to guarantee a basic and decent life, and solving the housing problem is far away.
Moreover, in the evaluation of the titles of college teachers, the bad tendency of only papers, only "hats", only academic qualifications, only awards, and only projects has brought about the "internal volume" of college careers, which has been criticized in recent years.
As soon as the "Opinions" were released, Ren Youqun, director of the Department of Teacher Work of the Ministry of Education, pointed out that the "Opinions" regarded the refinement and implementation of the teacher evaluation reform as a key path and clarified 4 measures. These four measures are also "broken" and "established" at the same time: breaking the "five onlys" and breaking the "SCI supremacy"; establishing a grading feedback mechanism for assessment and evaluation results, and improving the teaching quality evaluation system.
"The issue of evaluation criteria can be said to be a very core issue in the evaluation of our titles." Liu Dongmei, deputy director of the Department of Professional and Technical Personnel Management of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said that an important principle of this reform is to adhere to the problem-oriented and goal-oriented, and put forward measures around the key and difficult points in the evaluation of teachers' titles. Next, the two ministries will guide all localities and universities to work closely together to formulate specific measures as soon as possible.
Liu Dongmei introduced that in this reform, it is clear that sci and other paper-related indicators are not used as a precondition for job title evaluation and a direct basis for judgment, and the number of papers published, citations, journal impact factor, etc. are only used as a reference for evaluation, and the core is to evaluate the innovation level and scientific value of the research itself. The "Opinions" also proposed that the number of scientific research projects obtained and the scale of funding should not be simply stipulated in the evaluation of professional titles.
Then, after breaking the "five onlys", how will the "Opinions" land, and how will the titles of teachers in colleges and universities be evaluated?
The Southern Weekend reporter noted that in the principle of improving the modern teacher management system, the "Opinions" proposed to implement the autonomy of colleges and universities in employing people, the relevant departments of the government do not uniformly organize the examination for the employment of college personnel, and colleges and universities independently formulate conditions for teacher employment and independently recruit teachers. It is clear that the study experience of going abroad (abroad) and the acquisition of talent titles must not be used as restrictive conditions. The purpose is to avoid using a certain condition or indicator as the "only" criterion for evaluating talents.
The right to evaluate professional titles will be directly delegated to colleges and universities, and the colleges and universities will independently organize the review and appoint according to their posts; according to the characteristics of different disciplines and different posts, they will set evaluation indicators in different categories and determine the evaluation standards and methods.
In terms of education and teaching management, the "Opinions" proposes that colleges and universities should evaluate the teaching standards, teaching operations, classroom teaching effects, teaching reform and research, teaching awards and other teaching work performance in multiple dimensions; strengthen the proportion of teaching performance and teaching and education effectiveness in performance distribution, job title evaluation, and post promotion assessment, and clarify the minimum class hour requirements for professors to undertake the teaching of specialist students.
Zhang Duanhong analyzed that academic production in different disciplines has diversity, and classification and hierarchical evaluation is an evaluation method that is more suitable for the law of academic production, which helps to avoid the "one-size-fits-all" quantitative evaluation that brings various destructive effects on academic production.
<h3>Peer review is difficult in "human feelings"</h3>
The evaluation system belongs to both the academic evaluation system of colleges and universities and the personnel system. In fact, the title evaluation system itself is a selection mechanism for colleges and universities, which includes three main points: one is that the title is divided into three levels: primary, intermediate and senior; second, each level has a limit on the number of personnel, and the number of people is positively correlated with the title level; third, each title level has the corresponding specific qualification standards and conditions.
Half a year after joining the company, Tian Liang lamented that the anxiety of "green pepper" was indeed great. "It will be better to be rated as a deputy high, the salary can rise from the original eight thousand to nearly ten thousand, and you are eligible to apply for more projects, you can also do horizontal (projects), and there will be many more choices." Research funding is also more abundant. ”
Tian Liang is pre-employed as a "3+3" lecturer. The so-called "3 + 3" is a more popular appointment system in domestic universities, also known as "non-promotion or go". Take three years as a cycle, set a goal to assess the "green pepper", and only by completing the assessment task before the end of the cycle can you stay in the university and become a long-term teacher.
His university has set a goal in two three-year cycles, and in the third year after joining the company, it must receive the National Youth Fund, and before the end of the sixth year, it must be rated as a deputy senior title, that is, associate professor or associate researcher.
Under these checkpoints, If Tian Liang wants to participate in the deputy senior title, he must have two qualifications - one is to take the national youth fund mentioned above, and the other is to issue enough six or seven papers. If it is a teaching-type position, it will also require teaching workload and related awards, and meet these requirements in order to obtain the selection qualification, and the professorial committee will pass the material review and defense among all qualified young teachers, select the best of the best, and determine the candidates for the deputy senior title.
In the past, this process of selecting the best of the best was the number of papers and major scientific research projects. The "Opinions" also emphasize the improvement of the peer expert review mechanism, encourage the exploration of the introduction of external experts and third-party institutions, and emphasize that it is necessary to reserve sufficient time for the review experts to evaluate, and guide the review experts to responsibly provide objective and fair professional review opinions.
Southern Weekend reporter learned that in the existing professional title review system of various colleges and universities, a variety of flexible evaluation methods such as personal debriefing, interview defense, peer review, practical operation, and performance display are used to varying degrees in reality. Zhang Duanhong believes that the biggest problem is that no matter how these methods are used, the number of core journal papers and simple quantitative evaluations based on projects at or above the provincial and ministerial levels will dominate everything and marginalize other evaluations.
In his view, the biggest difficulty of peer evaluation is the immaturity of China's peer review system, and various human and human factors can easily affect the evaluation. "The peer review system cannot be established by issuing a document, and its development and maturity require a long evolutionary cycle." Zhang Duanhong said.
In addition, in the current academic environment, peers are familiar with each other's research, and double-blind reviews at the academic level are difficult to truly implement. Tian Liang believes that each scholar has his own research field, which is easier to identify, "even if the author is hidden, he (the reviewer) will soon know who the paper is."
However, on the other hand, after breaking the "five onlys", a number of green peppers expressed the same confusion to the Southern Weekend reporter: "In fact, there is no standard." For example, Tian Liang is worried that the decision of the review is in the professor's committee, and there will be more room for some fraudulent acts.
In terms of standardizing the appraisal behavior of appraisal experts, Liu Dongmei also stressed that it is necessary to establish relevant systems such as the integrity record of appraisal experts, the pursuit of responsibility for the evaluation of duties and responsibilities, and improve the scientificity, professionalism and pertinence of title evaluation as much as possible.
Southern Weekend reporter He Jiawen Southern Weekend intern Wang Pengkai