Resistance to Reform

The Ministry of Education wants to carry out engineering education reform, selecting ten 985 universities as pilot schools. Tongji is “fortunate” (or unfortunate) to be among them. Tongji University’s Software School is even more “fortunate” (or unfortunate) to be the pilot school within the pilot university.

The rationale for engineering education is solid. Current higher education still focuses on elite education for training scientists. But with the fervent expansion of enrollment, higher education has already become平民ized. Among current undergraduates and college students, only about 1% actually go on to doctoral level. The remaining 99% go to work in society as engineers. Of course we need engineering education — learning for application, not just cultivating research talent. Drop the pretense, don’t see yourselves as上天’s favored children. Be practical, engineering-oriented talent — ready to work upon graduation. Apparently there are even long-term strategic plans: within a few years, engineering master’s students will account for 2/3 of all master’s students, with the rest being academic master’s.

Last week I attended a summit on engineering education reform. The academicians and leaders are fully aware of the problems in current higher education. So why don’t they change? Simply put, as someone said, reform always faces resistance. All阻碍 and opposition to reform come from two sources: on one hand, interference from certain vested interests; on the other hand, interference from defenders of the old system and old ways. Engineering education reform is no exception.

Let’s talk about vested interests first. Whose interests would engineering education reform harm? Quite a few groups. First, the interests of pilot universities might be受损. Our Tongji finally made it into the 985 club. Even with the best reform, how much better could we get? Could we leapfrog Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, to become a world top university? Obviously impossible. On the contrary, if the reform goes poorly, we might lose ground and regress. So the university is reluctant to change. It will never completely overhaul the current teaching system. Instead, it has set a baseline of maintaining the big picture and running pilot classes. Meaning: the big picture stays the same, pick 10 or 20 people as guinea pigs. A somewhat perfunctory approach.

Now about defenders of the old ways. Who are they? I dare say 80% of current university faculty are defenders of the old ways. Why? Engineering education is fundamentally different from science education — their methodologies and ways of thinking are worlds apart. To implement engineering education, you first need engineering-oriented teachers. If the teachers aren’t engineering-oriented, how can you produce engineering-oriented students? And how do current university talent recruitment criteria and teacher evaluation mechanisms relate to engineering? The vast majority of teachers are PhDs who went straight from school to school, with zero engineering experience. A computer science professor who can’t write code is perfectly normal. Moreover, teacher evaluations — whether for promotion or performance — are primarily based on research achievements. To overturn this, the Ministry of Education would need the courage to fire half the current teachers and hire a new batch according to engineering requirements. Obviously impossible. The current professors and leaders were all selected based on these academic standards. Would anyone dare to say they themselves aren’t engineering-oriented enough, don’t meet engineering education reform requirements, and should voluntarily step down?

So, the pilot universities don’t support reform, and the teachers implementing the reform don’t support it either. Can this reform succeed? I doubt it.