At the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, Zhejiang, which has been trapped in the shortcomings of higher education for many years, ushered in a blockbuster fall
On February 18, in the 2024 "Thousands and Trillions" major projects held in Zhejiang, the Shuangpu Campus Project of the Hangzhou Advanced Research Institute of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the "Hangzhou Higher Institute of UCAS") occupied the "C position" in the Hangzhou branch, known as the "first shovel" of the Year of the Dragon in Hangzhou, and the signal significance is extraordinary.
Not long ago, the construction of the Shaoxing campus of Hangzhou Dianzi University took a key step, ushering in the ...... of graduate students majoring in integrated circuit engineering who moved from Hangzhou
Over the past few years, Zhejiang has been plagued by shortcomings in the development of higher education: first, there is an obvious fault line in high-level universities except for Zhejiang University, and second, there are many "gaps" in Taizhou, Lishui and Quzhou in the southern region, which have become bottlenecks that the local government strives to overcome.
At the first meeting of the Spring Festival last year, Zhejiang proposed to implement the "Double First-Class 196 Project", sounding the clarion call for a strong province in higher education, and making it clear that it is necessary to actively explore the construction model of "at least one high-level university in a city". In this year's "first meeting of the new year", Zhejiang focused on the construction of a strong province with talents, and its determination to make up for the shortcomings of higher education jumped on paper.
As the fourth largest province in the country's economy, how can Zhejiang really get out of the "depression of higher education"?
Bloom at multiple points
In the context of innovation-driven development, many places are planning to build new universities, and the Yangtze River Delta has been moving more recently.
Recently, the key points of the work of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission in 2024 were revealed, and the construction of "Shanghai Sino-German University of Science and Technology (tentative name)" and "Shanghai Sino-British University of Arts (tentative name)" will be promoted. The former will provide a large number of high-level interdisciplinary talents to meet the needs of the industry in China and Germany, while the latter aims to support Shanghai to build an international capital of design, fashion and brand.
In addition, the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education previously announced that it plans to set up Jiangsu Vocational College and Lianyungang Normal College, and Wuxi also announced that it will build Wuxi Taihu University, Wuxi Vocational and Technical University, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications Wuxi Campus and other universities; In Anhui, Hefei Institute of Technology (the new campus of Jianghuai University) will welcome the first batch of new students to ...... in September this year
Zhejiang's performance seems to be more rapid, showing a momentum of "multi-point flowering".
In November last year, the official website of the Ministry of Education issued a public announcement on the proposed agreement to set up undergraduate colleges and universities, Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Jiaxing University, Bengbu Medical College, Hefei College were upgraded to universities simultaneously, and the construction of colleges and universities in the province took an important step.
Focusing on 2024, Hangzhou will be the "first shovel of the Year of the Dragon" in the Shuangpu Campus project of Hangzhou High School of UCAS; Jinhua Institute of Technology, the first public undergraduate university in Jinhua, will be completed and opened this year, and Zhejiang Animation Vocational College is also accelerating its construction; In Shaoxing, Hangzhou Electric Shaoxing Campus ushered in key progress; In Ningbo, the construction of the Eastern University of Technology (tentative name) is speeding up, and the Sino-German cooperative university and the University of Hong Kong (Ningbo) are also striving for landing.
It is not difficult to find that almost all of these new universities have one thing in common, that is, they are close to the local emerging hot industries and cultivate urgently needed innovative talents and industrial application talents.
Taking Hangzhou's "First Shovel in the Year of the Dragon" as an example, since it landed in Hangzhou in 2019, the Hangzhou High School of UCAS has become the largest second-level college of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, introducing 8 colleges such as physics and optoelectronics, life and health, and pharmacy, and incubating more than 40 enterprises closely around the needs of Hangzhou's industrial development. With the construction of the Shuangpu Campus of Hangzhou High School of UCAS, it is expected to further drive the in-depth integration of industry, university and research, and inject scientific and technological innovation vitality into the development of Hangzhou.
Another example is Hangzhou Electric Shaoxing Campus, as the first professional college named "Integrated Circuit Science and Engineering" in Zhejiang Province, which undoubtedly plays an important supporting role in Shaoxing's construction of a national integrated circuit industry innovation center, and will focus on building the most leading and benchmarking integrated circuit industry-education integration base in Zhejiang.
In the tide of new first-class school construction, Zhejiang is particularly active, and all cities in the province are also intensively looking for "breakthrough" opportunities.
Weak link
In terms of economic volume, Zhejiang's GDP has crossed the 8 trillion yuan mark, ranking fourth in the country. However, the level of development of higher education does not match the economic strength
According to the data, there are 109 ordinary universities in Zhejiang, ranking 11th among 31 provinces. In the Yangtze River Delta region, Shanghai and Jiangsu both have 10 subordinate universities, Anhui has 2, and Zhejiang has only 1.
When it comes to "double first-class" universities, there are only 3 universities in Zhejiang, ranking 12th in the country, which is far from the level of 156 universities such as Shanghai and Jiangsu. What makes Zhejiang feel even more "stinging" is that Guangdong, which used to be also a "depression of higher education", has caught up, and 8 colleges and universities have successfully ranked among the "double first-class". The local ** can't help asking: How far is Zhejiang from the "double first-class" strong province?
Not only that, in terms of disciplines, Zhejiang has 23 "double first-class" disciplines, of which 21 are in Zhejiang University, and only China Academy of Art and Ningbo University account for 1 each among the provincial universities, of which the only first-class discipline of Ningbo University has been shown a "yellow card". This also intuitively reflects that there is a fault in the pattern of higher education in Zhejiang. As people in local education circles said, only one "aircraft carrier" of Zhejiang University cannot form a cluster combat effectiveness.
Not only is the construction of "double first-class", but also the imbalance of this distribution is also reflected in the layout of higher education in Zhejiang. At present, there are 60 undergraduate colleges and universities in Zhejiang, of which 29 are in Hangzhou, 9, 6, 4, 4 and 3 in Ningbo, Wenzhou, Jiaxing, Shaoxing and Jinhua respectively, while there is only 1 in Taizhou, Lishui and Quzhou in the southern region.
If the imbalance in the structure of colleges and universities is a prominent constraint for Zhejiang to build a "double first-class" strong province, then the imbalance in the distribution of higher education resources is a weak link that Zhejiang must overcome to build a strong province in higher education.
These two "imbalances" are also the "heart diseases" that have lasted in Zhejiang for many years. In 2017, after inspecting Shanghai, Jiangsu and Anhui, the party and government delegation of Zhejiang Province pointed out that there are three mismatches in higher education in the province
Higher education does not match Zhejiang's status in the country, the needs of Zhejiang's economic and social development, and the aspirations of the people of Zhejiang to go to a good university at their doorstep.
Jin Xuejun, executive dean of the Institute of Public Policy of Zhejiang University, pointed out that compared with Guangdong's investment in higher education and construction effectiveness, the scale, proportion and growth rate of Zhejiang's education investment are small, and there are problems such as lagging talent training system and school-running methods, a small number of colleges and universities, and unreasonable discipline distribution.
In his view, it is necessary to learn from the experience of Guangdong's higher education construction, increase the investment in provincial colleges and universities, deepen the reform of the talent training system, increase the number of colleges and universities, and reasonably plan the distribution of disciplines. For example, for some strong colleges and universities or independent colleges, they will be converted into undergraduate schools through absorption, reorganization, reconstruction, etc.; Build a number of school-enterprise joint colleges and universities, and promote the collaborative education of universities and enterprises.
Through the path
Since last year, Zhejiang has sounded the clarion call for a new round of construction of a strong province with higher education.
At the beginning of last year, Zhejiang's "first meeting of the new year" proposed to seize new tracks such as the "Double First-class 196 Project"; In August last year, a high-level meeting was held to promote the construction of a strong province in higher education and a high-level university, and the "Opinions on Promoting the Construction of High-level Universities" and "Several Opinions on Accelerating the High-quality Development of Ordinary Colleges and Universities" were issued to support and promote a new round of high-quality development of higher education with extraordinary efforts.
Among them, the construction of high-level universities and "actively exploring the construction model of at least one high-level university in a city" are important breakthroughs.
In 2024, the work report of Zhejiang Province proposes to vigorously implement the "Double First-Class 196 Project", support Zhejiang University to build a world-class university, support Westlake University to build a high-level new university, and support provincial universities to build a high-level university.
Enthusiasm from all over the province is also gradually emerging. For example, in October last year, the "Implementation Plan for Accelerating the High-quality Development of Higher Education in Wenzhou (2023-2027)" proposed:
By 2027, we will strive to select 2 universities into the "Double First-Class 196 Project" colleges and universities in Zhejiang Province, and 2 colleges and universities will be selected as the next round of national "Double High Plan" construction units, so as to achieve a breakthrough in the national "Double First-Class" universities and vocational undergraduate colleges, and the retention rate of college graduates will reach more than 43%, and Wenzhou's position as one of the three major higher education centers in Zhejiang Province will be more stable.
The question is, how can this be achieved?
Compared with Guangzhou's advantages of cooperating with Hong Kong and Macao, in the eyes of the outside world, Zhejiang should speed up the unbalanced distribution of high-quality higher education resources, on the one hand, relying on the radiation of Hangzhou's high-level universities to other cities, and on the other hand, relying on local social capital and entrepreneurial feelings to build a small but refined new type of university.
For example, Ningbo Oriental University of Technology (tentative name), which Zhejiang has named and supported the preparation, is a new type of research university organized by social forces, supported by the state, and jointly built by provinces and cities. According to the plan, the university fully takes into account the characteristics of the industrial structure of Ningbo, Zhejiang and even the Yangtze River Delta, and will focus on electronic information, advanced manufacturing and new energy.
From a broader perspective, as a major economic province in the east, under the overall situation of high-quality development, Zhejiang should "really take the lead", accelerate the construction of scientific and technological innovation system and the cultivation of advanced manufacturing clusters, and the support of innovation resources and high-quality talents is indispensable.
Just yesterday, Yi Lianhong, Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, went to the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education for investigation, emphasizing that it is necessary to strengthen the concept that education quality is the core competitiveness, talent increment is the new dividend of development, and scientific and technological variables are the new track of change.
In other words, the integrated development of education, science and technology, and talents is becoming a new enabling point for the development of higher education in Zhejiang. With the "chess pieces" falling one by one, can Zhejiang higher education successfully break through?