Professor Liu Yunshan of Peking University: University problems cannot all be classified as "internal papers"

October 18, 2023, Beijing. Volunteers of the 3rd "the belt and road initiative" International Cooperation Summit Forum are getting off the elevator. 1400 volunteers from 25 universities, including Tsinghua University and Peking University, provided consultation and guidance, language translation, media, transportation and other services. (Figure/Qu Junyan/China Youth Daily)

The university is becoming a track with no clear destination: academic qualifications are constantly increasing, ranking has become an increasingly important coordinate, and young people are required to find the "optimal solution" as soon as possible ".

The cost of preparing for the college entrance examination is so heavy, but the meaning of entering the university has been tortured. Entering the university campus, you may be faced with silent classrooms, high school campus management, and changed classmates and teacher-student relationships. After squeezing through the single-plank bridge of the college entrance examination, have the students really achieved growth that matches this competition?

Professor at the School of Education, Peking Universityspruce liuIt seems that the real problem of today's university is not only "internal examination" or "devaluation of academic qualifications", but also the lack of timeliness of growth itself and trust between people.

Universities should have given young people a period of trial and error, detours, and exploration time, so that they can gradually form themselves in contact with teachers, peers and the specific world, and even be truly "caught" by something ". however, when the education goes to endless evaluation and ranking, students feel confused: what is worth devoting their whole life to? we discussed some "questions of university" with liu yunshan ".

The change of university: university should be life"Odyssey Period”

The New Weekly: What are the main changes in the university over the years as far as you observe?

spruce liuThe situation of universities has to be seen in a longer history. Classical universities used to be like an ivory tower, outside of society, even above society, with a strong elite color. Oxford University and Cambridge University are both built in secluded places in order to allow a few elite students to connect with great minds in leisure and meditation and complete a kind of personality education. At that time, the diploma was also particularly marked.

Later, universities all over the world gradually entered the society and became "gas stations" serving the economy and the national economy and people's livelihood ". The characteristics of Chinese universities serving the country are particularly strong-after 1949, the higher education of New China has laid the industrial foundation of China. Take the eight universities on Beijing College Road as an example, the normal university belongs to the Ministry of Education, the agricultural university corresponds to the Ministry of Agriculture, and the industrial department of the university of science and technology. Enrollment and training are all "order-based": what kind of people the country needs, universities "train on demand".

In the 1980 s, the enrollment rate of Chinese universities was very low, and the students who could be admitted were strictly screened and highly competitive. After the enrollment expansion of colleges and universities in 1999, the scale of higher education in China has expanded rapidly, and has experienced a rapid transformation from elite, popularization to popularization. In the past, higher education was a positive investment-people might get better opportunities. Later it became a defensive mechanism, even a necessity: you must have this diploma, otherwise you will not even qualify for admission. And this has gone through a lasting more than ten years."The arms race for academic qualifications”. Education scholar Yang Dongping once used"theater effect"To describe this inner-roll competition: after one person stands up, others are forced to stand up in order to see more clearly, and eventually everyone stands watching the play.

The other side of the expansion of enrollment, in addition to the devaluation of academic qualifications, there is professional dilution. For example, an economist argued with me that he could go to Wuhan University after the expansion of enrollment. If he did not expand enrollment, he might not even be able to go to Xiangyang Higher Normal School. But the problem is that Xiangyang Teachers College had a very solid professional education in those days. If he really went to Xiangyang Teachers College, he could become a primary or secondary school teacher after graduation, and his career path was guaranteed. After the expansion of enrollment, disciplines have converged, but professionalism has also been dispelled. As a result, even the basic literacy of "how to be a good teacher" has become a problem.

Superimpose the power of university rankings and marketization, and the situation is even more complicated. In the past, we actually had a number of very good universities, and Tsinghua University and Peking University were not as "unique" and "only two" as they are today ". Since the middle and late 1990 s, the state's centralized construction of key universities has further strengthened the hierarchical differences between universities. From"211”“985"to"Double First-classGradually, the university's identity, disciplines, and resources were incorporated into a clear hierarchy. At the same time,"North clear rate"and other folk indicators further translate this level into the language of educational competition familiar to the public.

University rankings and education marketization are superimposed together, and the symbolic value of universities is constantly being enlarged. In the past, a diploma could really be exchanged for a stable and decent position, but in the "arms race of academic qualifications", people turned to the most scarce diplomas, such as those of "Qingbei. Everyone began to race in this expensive direction due to scarcity. This logic also urges people to continue to take the examination, after the undergraduate degree, master's degree, master's degree, and doctor's degree, trying to reshuffle the cards with higher academic qualifications.

But even if a person gets a doctor's degree from "Qingbei", someone will still ask: what is your first degree? If you study in an ordinary college, you will still be questioned in the job market. This shows that what is more and more important today is not what you have learned. Education measures not what professional skills and qualities you have, but whether you are in the top 1% or 1‰ among your peers at the age of 18-your competitiveness and display.

The New WeeklyWhat is the biggest gap between what a university can offer a person today and what students expect when they enter the university?

spruce liuUniversity should be an extremely rare "Odyssey" in life-you can try and make mistakes, explore, anchor and overthrow repeatedly, and finally find what belongs to you-what you really want to do and can do. Some people may ask: why do we have to finish this in the university? Why can't we go to Dali and Lijiang for two years? Isn't that a kind of exploration? The difference is that there are peers and teachers in the university. In the final analysis, education is to provide a new style of life, make people yearned for, provide an openness of life path and life experience, and provide some models of life and rules of doing things.

The most precious part of the university lies in these models-the meaning of the existence of those classics and books is not to let you memorize by rote, but to enable you to open yourself and turn distant things into things that are very close to your heart. I really like a sentence written by a student of humanities: "We are not doing intellectual archaeology, we are looking for ancestors and relatives, and we are looking for ourselves in previous lives." You will find that you and someone belong to the same category of people, or someone spiritual descendants. This is the amount of heart that universities should open up-to make people have light in their eyes, rather than just staring at the trivial things in front of them.

June 5, 2026, Beijing. Peking University graduates take photos at the Summer Palace. (Figure/CFP)

The loss of university: the timeliness of growth, the community of teachers and students

The New Weekly: Recently,Fields PrizeWinner Wang Hong's use of "discouraged" (discouraged, frustrated) when talking about his school experience sparked discussion. Many students find resonance in this word. They are not "Qingbei" students, nor do they think they are geniuses. What do you think of this feeling?

spruce liuToday's education is permeated with a successful learning mentality. People hope that education and growth are a road without resistance. But the growth of young people must not be without resistance-without resistance, you can't really know yourself at all, and only resistance can continuously stimulate a person's life energy. Of course, if the challenge is too big to exceed your current ability, you will indeed feel depressed; when your ability gradually improves, matches and fits with the task, the state of flow will appear. If the ability is high and the challenge is small, people will feel boring instead. Therefore, a good educational environment needs to retain a certain degree of relaxation and allow you to keep trying and making mistakes until you find something that can match your abilities and interests, and find the rhythm of challenge and growth. Wang Hong may not have been top-notch in Peking University and felt depressed, but she has been thinking independently. A young man in the growth of a smooth road, no obstacles, it is an illusion. As long as a person has something he really loves and is willing to devote himself to it, even if he can't do it for the time being, he has already pushed himself to the edge of the known and the unknown. It wasn't easy, but she survived.

The real problem is that we have lost the "timeliness" that should have been in education. Gefei told a metaphor: in the 1980 s, when he was walking in the fields of the countryside, he came to the front and found that there was no road, only a stream blocking the road. He saw someone jump on a wooden pole, so he fumbled along. At that time, people would not worry about where the road was every day. They would just lift their feet and walk, and the scenery would continue to unfold. Climb a mountain and want to climb a little higher. Every day there is fresh progress and interest-this is the process and timeliness of growth. But then with GPS and clear rules, people's minds are thinking "did I choose the best track" all day long, for fear that they chose the wrong track. Once we believe that there is an optimal solution in life, we will desperately want to repeat the path of others. But such growth is lifeless. The smoother the road is and the finer the rules are, the more people find themselves with nowhere to go, because life is not a must-answer question with only standard answers.

"Ununderstanding" is a very important state of life. Because do not understand, people will remain curious, will always have interest in the world. But now behind a lot of public opinion, people believe in success, the optimal solution. It's normal for a person to get a so-called flawed and detour card, but they don't have the patience to go around. Before they can form a real interest and habit, they are already impatient and want to take a shortcut. But everyone wants to take a shortcut, and the result is that there are no shortcuts to take, because the way others come out does not mean that you can directly copy.

Everyone is calculating and choosing, but what really matters is not choice, but "acceptance"-to accept the call of fate, first realize that he is caught by something, he is chosen by things, he is passive. Did Wang Hong choose mathematics? In a sense, it is better to say that she was caught by mathematics than she chose mathematics. This kind of "being caught" is mutual identification and protection. Zweig said something similar, to the effect that man must find refuge in some immortal cause. A person's luck and happiness may lie in the fact that when he was young, there was just one thing that caught him clearly, so that he could devote himself to it and regard it as the god in his own life. Today, many young people are in a state of waiting for the price, contradictory, hesitant, careful, unable to grasp anything, and are always in anxiety.

The New WeeklySome people complain that "university teachers are not good at class", while others criticize "students are too silent now". What's wrong with college classes?

spruce liuA reporter told me that some students are now in a state of "not listening to a lesson and not escaping a lesson". When asked why they didn't skip classes, the students said that they didn't even have the motivation to escape. This reminds me of a very typical character in Western literature-Bartobi, whose mantra is "I 'd rather not"-not that he wants to do something, but that he doesn't want to do anything. This means that this person is completely stuck.

Today's education can easily trap students in an invisible net, which is woven from words. Vocabulary is important, of course, but vocabulary must become a real tool, a map of cognition. If you don't walk at all, what's the use of just looking at the map? Words are like wine brewed from food, but people have to eat food after all, and they can't live by drinking alone. Today, many people learn to live like "hydroponic plants"-instead of putting their roots into the ground, they hang in the water and live on the nutrient solution in the water. The root of the problem is that the connection between them and the world has been cut off.

There is another factor behind this, that is, the teacher-student relationship itself has changed. University teaching is stuffed into a set of smooth accountability channels. On the one hand, it is like a player and a spectator. On the other hand, there are various KPI pressures. In addition, the network has created a cocoon of information and cognition. The teacher is an example, a set of methodology, a kind of insight, and a kind of taste embodied in a specific person. It is to make students yearn for this subject because they are close to this person. But now teachers are increasingly unable to attract students, and they can't really shelter students. In this way, how can universities rebuild a safe, friendly and easy community of mutual trust?

Looking Ahead: Reunderstanding Intelligence and Resources

The New WeeklyWhat do you think about the future direction of university education?

spruce liu: I like Dewey's understanding of "intelligence": intelligence is not a noun, but more like an adverb. "I am born to be useful" never means that this person is naturally smarter than others, but that everyone always has something worth devoting to and paying. Intelligence is the state in which you can concentrate on one thing, overcome obstacles, and constantly force out what is inside you. Recently people often say "hand rub", I like this word very much. When you pinch something with your own hands, it is not outside of you. Your enthusiasm, aesthetics, and body temperature will all merge with the things in your hands. After integration, this matter really becomes "your business". Life is made up of specific things: do things, space is constantly opened; Do things one by one, things will have feelings with you and become your things. Life is a series of things-the radius of life, isn't it expanded in this way?

In the past, we always talked about students becoming more and more atomized, becoming more and more unfamiliar with each other, and the communication between students in the same major and dormitory was decreasing. But in the past two years, I have also seen the other side: students are actually re-establishing their own support systems and no longer organize their lives in the way the school arranges. Majors are arranged, dormitories are arranged, but their enthusiasm lies in taking the initiative to do what they really like-in these things, they begin to form their own small groups, create societies and clubs, and define their own hobbies, such as reading clubs, film review groups, running groups, mystery fiction clubs, etc. It doesn't matter what they are, what matters is that they are rich and diverse enough to make people willing to really participate in them.

Behind this is a transformation of the university function: from cultivating "human capital" to cultivating a "person". The correspondence between universities and specific occupations is becoming more and more loose, and general education is becoming more and more emphasized. But what exactly is "general knowledge"? I think it is by no means a pantheon, superficial encyclopedic knowledge. "Tong" refers to a person's state, access, knowledge-this person should be active and lively. I like to sum it up in one sentence: there is light in my eyes, something in my hands, something strong at my feet, and love in my heart.

The New WeeklyHow does university education face the impact of the AI age?

spruce liuTo cultivate people who cannot be replaced by AI, people must become actors. The key is to redefine "resources," especially resources like people and people. It is not to say that only famous teachers and famous schools can create good conditions. It is precisely ordinary students in ordinary schools who need to find what they really love. The most important resource in education is the spirit of human beings. Therefore, the educational environment must be diversified, fault-tolerant, and truly respect differences-the truly top-notch people do not converge, but have greater differences and are more "stubborn". Geniuses often appear in groups and have the characteristics of self-organization. When a person moves, the people around him see it and start to do something by themselves. Resources are never "waiting", "relying" and "asking". When you walk to a stream, you can pick up a bamboo pole and cross it over-this bamboo pole is just a common thing, but you turn it into a resource; and if you walk like this and cross obstacles repeatedly, the path itself will gradually become a new resource. A good school should have multiple overpasses that can be walked in any direction, not a track that can only be climbed.

Over the years, I have been criticizing the popular discourse of "autonomous learning"-the kind of autonomous learning packaged as goal-oriented, continuous self-reflection and self-monitoring. In the final analysis, it is a set of behaviorist operation methods: set the rules clearly and then act according to the indicators; The so-called reflection is just to constantly examine oneself against standards and against others. The result is that all people are increasingly converging and tired of each other. This path is being AI to truly end. After the emergence of the AI, many routine and regularized jobs are being replaced, which highlights the uniqueness of a person-your personal experience, your real passion.

This also means how university education can face the challenges of the "post-work era. Work is no longer an iron rice bowl, it increasingly requires a person to continue learning. And continuous learning depends on a person's motivation, what he is happy and good, the habits he has developed in the process, and the real connection he has established with the world, which is his own, unique, and the mutual traction between things.

The New Weekly: After students graduate from college, companies may still look at some traditional sense of economic value and efficiency when recruiting. If a student takes an unusual road, will he go nowhere?

spruce liuI understand that concern. From the social level, we really need some bottom-up mechanisms. In the discussion of "post-work society", the concepts of citizen's salary and basic welfare have been mentioned all the time, which is the direction that society itself should move forward. Only when the income gap is not so wide can a person have the confidence to do what he really wants to do. What kind of person an enterprise will choose depends on what kind of enterprise it is. If it is a large hierarchical organization, it naturally places more emphasis on people's origin and position; but if more and more job opportunities become flat and flexible in the future, it may not be a good choice for a person to set up a "one-person company" based on his own expertise, provided that it can really be seen. For companies and society to see and recognize this ability that is difficult to quantify, the key is for everyone to learn to discover and identify what they can achieve.

The real challenges of this generation are in a sense more complex than those of previous generations, because they no longer live on a certain track, but in a torrent. In the past, people's life was more like a clear table. It was very clear what to do at what age. When they were 20 years old, they could probably see what they would look like in the next few decades. This may be boring, but sure. Today this is not the case at all. Life has become more like a polyphony, like five fingers playing at the same time. But it also means that you may suddenly be "caught" by one thing, one person, and life has new plasticity. As for whether there is no way to go? I think, walk, there will be a way. What really makes people have no way to go is precisely the mentality of always calculating "whether there is an optimal solution"-when you get a hand, you start to constantly compare with others, which is the most expensive.

We need to re-establish a trust: trust in our abilities, trust in our current state, and trust in fate itself. In the university stage, a person should observe and experience his own situation more, and embrace his own destiny and opportunities, instead of worrying about "whether I will fall tomorrow" every day ". You are already walking on the road, with your own feet, where can you fall? A lot of pain is actually imagined.

I often say a word: "back half a step, chest 33.33cm." Chest 33.33cm refers to starting from the nearest thing to oneself and what you can really do. Once you start to do it, you are loosening something. To step back half a step is to let people not get stuck in place, push themselves into a dead end, and tighten all the contradictions. Society will not change automatically just because you wait in place-someone has to take the first step and create first, then others will see it and follow it.

Therefore, don't reduce the university problem to a pure academic competition, and don't just reduce today's problems to internal papers in general. What is more worth asking today is how to rebuild trust-to trust yourself again, to trust others again, and to believe that this society is still worth investing in.

April 15, 2025, Chengdu, Sichuan. In the kitchen of Sichuan Tourism College, students are busy working by the stove, accurately restoring several representative dishes of Sichuan. (Figure/NurPhoto/CFP)