The high-quality higher education resources of Jiangsu Province seem to be "spreading" to the whole province. According to China News Weekly, recently, Southeast University signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement with Nantong City**. At the work promotion meeting of both sides of the university, Huang Ru, president of Southeast University, said, "Under the background of the important strategy of Yangtze River Delta integration, Nantong has unique location advantages and development opportunities, and the two sides will better achieve two-way development and common prosperity." During this period, the delegation of Southeast University also conducted a field trip.
In fact, in addition to Nanjing, Southeast University has opened branches in Wuxi and Suzhou. Under the strategic cooperation framework agreement, the on-site visit to Nantong was regarded by many industry insiders as their intention to set up a new branch in Nantong. In addition, the Institute of Future Technology Innovation of Nanjing University, another "985 Project" university in Jiangsu, was officially opened in Changzhou. The "diffusion" of colleges and universities located in provincial cities in Jiangsu Province to prefecture-level cities has attracted the most attention.
After the Ministry of Education made it clear that it does not encourage or support colleges and universities to carry out cross-provincial schooling, famous schools choose to run schools in other places in the province, which has become a way to expand the scale of schooling in line with the policy. In order to build a high-quality higher education system, famous schools need to change the development idea of expanding the scale of running schools and focus on the construction of school connotation. In order to promote the balanced layout and characteristic development of higher education, the local government should also pay attention to the introduction of high-quality higher education resources to promote the reform of the original colleges and universities, and effectively improve the quality of each local college.
In July 2021, the Ministry of Education issued the "Opinions on the Establishment of Colleges and Universities during the 14th Five-Year Plan Period" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which clearly stated: "Strictly control the operation of colleges and universities in other places. Colleges and universities are not encouraged or supported to carry out cross-provincial and non-local schools, especially strictly control universities affiliated to ministries and commissions and universities in the central and western regions to carry out cross-provincial and non-local schools in the eastern region, and in principle, do not approve the establishment of cross-provincial and non-local campuses. "If it is really necessary to set up a campus in a different place in the province, it shall be coordinated by the provincial people, included in the provincial university setting plan, strictly control the number and conditions, and perform the approval procedures in accordance with the affiliation. For the existing non-local campuses of colleges and universities, we will gradually clean up and standardize them in line with the principle of stability and order. The newly declared schools must not have inter-provincial and non-local campuses. ”
According to the "Opinions", colleges and universities are still allowed to run schools in different places in the province. However, the principle of the state for colleges and universities to run schools in different places, including those in other places in the province, is "strict control". The main purpose of strict control over running schools in other places is to make colleges and universities settle for their own position and pay attention to improving quality, rather than expanding their scale. Because running a school in a different place will inevitably distract the school's energy and bring many specific management problems. For colleges and universities in the central and western regions to run schools in the eastern region, it is more involved in exacerbating the problem of regional imbalance in the distribution of higher education.
At present, some prefecture-level cities in developed areas have the need to develop higher education, and the introduction of famous universities in the province is a realistic path after the policy does not allow the introduction of colleges and universities from other provinces and cities. From the point of view of the local government, the introduction of colleges and universities in the province will quickly change the relatively backward situation of local higher education. These famous schools in the province also have the pursuit of expanding their scale and volume. However, there are two problems in this idea of developing local higher education that deserve attention.
First, the cooperation between local governments and famous schools cannot be quick success. In recent years, some of China's provinces are located in prefecture-level cities, and local undergraduate colleges have moved to provincial capitals, which is a lesson for local cooperation with universities. At the beginning, the local government also attached great importance to these local undergraduate colleges and universities, and hoped that the local undergraduate colleges and universities would contribute to local economic development. However, from a practical point of view, this role has not been quickly revealed, so the local government has lost its enthusiasm for local colleges and universities, and because it is difficult to obtain resources for running schools in the local area, some local undergraduate colleges and universities have gone away. The financial strength of prefecture-level cities in developed areas will be much stronger than that of prefecture-level cities in the central and western regions, but how the local government treats the introduced resources of famous schools is also very important to the direction of famous schools running schools in other places. The contribution of a university to local development should be slowly reflected through personnel training and scientific research, and it is impossible to achieve immediate results.
Second, it is more important to run the original local colleges and universities well than to introduce famous schools to run branch schools. A practical problem in the introduction of famous schools to run schools in other places is, what is the positioning of the school (campus)? The orientation of local undergraduate colleges and universities should be to carry out vocational education and cultivate high-quality applied talents, while the positioning of famous schools is mostly to run comprehensive colleges and universities and cultivate academic talents. The enthusiasm for introducing branch campuses (campuses) of prestigious universities may affect the talent training structure of higher education. As a matter of fact, most of the prefecture-level cities in developed areas already have local undergraduate colleges, but these colleges and universities have not really run well, and there are problems such as unclear positioning of schools, failure to establish a modern university system, large scale, and lack of characteristics.
Therefore, whether it is the development of colleges and universities themselves, or from the perspective of forming a good ecology for the development of local higher education, it is necessary to carry out rigorous demonstration and long-term development planning for colleges and universities in the province to run schools in different places in the province, and no longer regard the running of famous universities in other places in the province as the highlight of the development of higher education. China has entered the era of popularization of higher education, and the development of higher education should no longer blindly expand the scale and add new schools, but need to promote the construction of a high-quality higher education system of education management system and school running system, and run existing colleges and universities in a down-to-earth manner.
Wen Jiang Li. Photo source: Visual China.
Edited by Ji Yuan.