Recently, the news that some domestic universities claim to be world-class universities in an all-round way has been strongly questioned by the academic circles. Some people are inclined to emotional simple reprimand, some people are rational analysis and reasonable, think that there is no real sense of world-class university in China. It seems that I haven't seen the real world famous universities in Europe and the United States publicize the statement that they belong to world-class universities in their homepages. My comment on the relevant blog post is that it is too simple to simply evaluate whether a university is world-class by using the information of some university rankings. In fact, we can simply evaluate whether our university has reached the "world-class" level and quality in terms of talents and achievements: whether your university has trained world-class talents; whether your university has produced world-class scientific and technological achievements. The former has a definition of the basic standard of "what is a world-class talent". I don't fully agree that the world's first-class talents should only use Nobel Prize winners as the standard. In my talent concept, some of the older generation of scientists in our country have become world-class talents. Even after the reform and opening up, there are some people in China who have made great achievements in science and technology. Although the number is small, they can also be classified as world-class talents. What is a world-class talent is a topic of different opinions. We ordinary people don't have to take it seriously. However, the world-class scientific and technological achievements can still have some standards that we ordinary people understand, such as whether your achievements have changed our way of life and improved our quality of life. For example, Mr. Yuan Longping's hybrid rice and Mr. Tu youyou's artemisinin scientific and technological achievements are undoubtedly world-class scientific and technological achievements rooted in China.

In the second half of this year, the University launched a "big discussion on school running ideas" to mobilize the staff and students of the whole university to listen to opinions around the five "excellence" of "running a high-level university": management excellence, education excellence, academic excellence, cultural excellence and guarantee excellence. To this end, the University held various representative forums for all staff to make suggestions.  

I was invited to attend the forum of representatives of retirees. The Secretary of the Party committee and a deputy secretary of the school, two vice presidents and heads of relevant departments attended to listen to opinions. At the forum, some retired leaders expressed the hope that the discussion on the idea of running a school would not take the form, and that some consensus opinions that would help to improve the governance level of the school would be formed, so as to provide decision-making for the establishment of an "internationally renowned research university in the field of Geosciences". Combined with my own experience, I put forward my own understanding and opinions on "management excellence" and "education excellence". In my speech at the forum, I first read out two wechat messages related to the "Discussion on school running ideas" sent to relevant leaders and friends on my mobile phone.

The first wechat is for two vice presidents: XL and ys. On that day, the vice president of Li Siguang College (hereinafter referred to as Li Yuan) came to visit me at home. I once again talked to her about "general education". I suggest setting up a "general education course" among the students of Li College. If there is a shortage of teachers, please go to the neighboring universities. Just as XX University asked me to teach their physics students the course of "geophysics" (Guangming Daily reported this matter on February 28, 2004 with the title of "more famous teachers in the undergraduate platform of University of Geosciences"). General courses generally include: Natural Science Foundation; Humanities and Social Sciences; scientific methods and so on. We must raise the "general education" of college students to a high level and cultivate innovative talents. If we stick to it for a long time, it may form an educational feature. My opinion can also be transferred to the vice president in charge of teaching.

The second wechat is for the leaders of the University and some departments: "the last paragraph of my article" the meaning of scientific chicken soup ": I once saw an article recording a moving scene: one day, he and several classmates passed by his alma mater Northwest University and met a professor when they were at school. Professor is now old, wearing high myopia glasses, armpit with thick books, stooping past them, they can't help standing on the roadside bowing to the teacher, and watching the teacher leave, even though they didn't have their lessons when they were in school. Obviously, these graduates are still enjoying the scientific chicken soup provided by the University's "noble morality and profound specialty" professor. I would like to ask leaders of schools and functional departments to recall how many well-known professors in our school are so respected.

The first of the above two wechat items involves general education of "education excellence". For this reason, I once wrote an article: it is a long way to go for universities to carry out general education (China Science Daily, September 23, 2019). This paper expounds the profound significance of general education in cultivating college students' independent and innovative thinking. General education focuses on cultivating students' lifelong learning concept, independent scientific research methods and questioning critical thinking, which is an important measure for universities to cultivate innovative talents. For a long time in China, no matter what level of undergraduate education, it mainly belongs to professional skills education. Teachers mainly teach students some professional knowledge and skills based on teaching materials. We should admit that the quality of professional knowledge and skills education in China's universities is excellent, which has made an important contribution to serving the national economy. Today, some of our university professors are still quiet in their brilliant professional teaching memories. They generally don't realize that the professional skill education instilled in Universities for a long time is just a little higher than the students' technical ability cultivated by the corresponding vocational and technical colleges, which is not worth showing off in front of the modern higher education concept. Our teachers generally do not teach students how to think independently and dare to question the knowledge taught by teachers. This reminds me of the scene that Professor Jiang Zhi, my college physics teacher, often reminded us to "think more" in class more than 50 years ago, so that our classmates gave him the nickname of "think more teacher" after class. We are satisfied that college students can quickly find a life-long satisfied technical position after graduation, and "get started quickly" in technology. Therefore, in the eyes of some university administrators and professors, general education courses are "not doing their proper work" and "not cutting off". However, it is these "non professional" general education courses that have made the brilliant achievements of creative education in European and American universities. The president of Harvard University said: college students get more knowledge out of class than in class. His words are worthy of our consideration.

My second suggestion concerns the scientific evaluation of "management excellence". This topic has always been a hot topic in academia and the public. Scientific evaluation is an important measure for the construction of high-level universities, and it is the basic guarantee for creating a "peaceful and far-reaching" university academic environment. Insisting on the scientific evaluation will bring up a group of high-level teachers who "do not have to work hard" and "sharpen a sword in ten years". The core of "scientific evaluation" is to change the assessment standard from "quantity of achievements" to "quality of achievements". For a long time, the evaluation mechanism with the number of achievements as the main evaluation standard has played a positive and historic role in creating the academic environment and internationalization of universities. However, with the rapid development of social diversification and modern higher education concept, the talent evaluation standard based on the number of achievements has spawned some short-term and quick "scientific and technological achievements", which are hotbeds of academic corruption and seriously restrict the cultivation of innovative talents and the sound development of science and technology in China's University education. As the president of Cambridge University Lester said: the university should provide enough time and space for professors, so that scholars can choose calmly; let them contribute to the knowledge system of the University.