Recently, a special associate researcher who is visiting the United States and communicating with me on wechat said: he is a little flustered now, because the three-year assessment is about to expire, and there is still a gap according to the "quantitative indicators" set by the school at the beginning. After graduating from the undergraduate course, the young man studied interdisciplinary for master's and doctor's degree. Because he published an important achievement thesis in the international authoritative journal of Geology and Geophysics, he won the provincial excellent doctoral thesis. After that, he completed his post doctoral work step by step and stayed in school as a special associate researcher. During this period, he completed a postdoctoral fund project and the national youth fund project, and published three good papers. I'm not very clear about the assessment conditions for special associate researchers, and I guess that it is nothing more than hard currency indicators such as project + thesis. Although the young man devoted himself to scientific research, he was a slow-moving man. I joked that he was "slow work leads to meticulous work". So far, he has published four papers, three of which are Journal of geophysical research solid earth and one of which is Tectonophysics. But now the number of assessment indicators seems to be insufficient, who can turn a blind eye to the "black and white" quantitative indicators, especially when he failed to apply for the national general fund project twice in a row, which needs to stop for a year. This is the reason why this young special associate researcher "panicked". Another case is a few days ago, a professor and I talked about one thing. He said that some teachers are now "serious" in their daily work. Compared with the "performance appraisal documents (commonly known as" Hongbaoshu ") issued by the school, they are not interested in any work other than the assessment conditions, especially in some public welfare matters, which make people feel helpless.

The nature of the two cases is slightly different, but the connotation is the same. I think this "excessive quantitative assessment" mechanism will lead to the ecological environment of "impetuous" and "utilitarian" in universities, and hinder the construction of high-level universities in China. This phenomenon may be universal. Therefore, I would like to talk about some immature views on this topic.

As we all know, the public in our country often sum up the work of university teachers as the lofty mission of "teaching and educating". The narrow sense understanding of the function of teaching is to teach students the relevant professional knowledge stipulated in the "Syllabus". However, the responsibility of "educating people" is a little "unclear". To put aside the popular expression of "educating people in a big way" and "cultivating our talents in a big way" is to put aside the expression of "educating people in a big way" and "cultivating our talents in a big way". "Teaching" seems to be able to develop some tangible "assessment poles", such as teaching workload and students' evaluation results. For example, some universities regard students' evaluation of teaching as an important standard of teachers' classroom teaching level, and stipulate that the last 5% of teachers will be "admonished". This kind of simple student evaluation makes the fate of teachers in the hands of students, which seems a bit ironic (Liu Qingsheng, rational view of student evaluation in undergraduate teaching, science website, March 21, 2018). "Teaching and educating people" is undoubtedly an important function of the University, and it is the basis for teachers to establish themselves. However, "teaching and educating" is not likely to use "quantitative indicators" to constrain and assess.

The excessive quantitative assessment of University Teachers (including researchers) is mainly reflected in: in the documents of formulating the annual performance assessment standards for university teachers (especially the introduction of talents), in addition to the flexibility of Ideological and moral conditions, the "quantity" rather than "quality" is mainly used as the assessment conditions for teaching and scientific research achievements. For example, teaching workload (main hours and related work conversion), the number of published papers, publications and impact factors (using journal partition), etc.; the "level" and funding of scientific research projects; the level and ranking of achievement awards, etc. Among them, the standard of the number of published papers has led to a substantial increase in the number of low-quality papers and the emergence of some co-ordinated first authors and co correspondents. These "standards" that violate the law of scientific development make rigorous scholars at a loss. The lack of fair and fair peer evaluation leads to the unsustainable scientific research of some impetuous utilitarian scholars, especially the difficulty in producing significant scientific and technological achievements (such as the current neck technology).

The main disadvantages of excessive quantitative performance appraisal of university teachers are as follows: 1. It does not conform to the objective law of the growth of teachers and scientific and technological talents. The growth of scientific talents has a natural attribute, especially a few "potential stock talents" are difficult to require them to produce high-level scientific and technological achievements in a certain period of time. 2. It is not conducive to the creation of a "peaceful and far-reaching" academic environment, but also a catalyst for the emergence of impetuous and utilitarian environment. It is difficult for scholars who have been grinding their swords for 10 years to survive in this quantitative assessment environment. 3. The uncertainty of assessment index. Because, in the face of different disciplines with different styles, it is difficult to formulate a unified assessment standard, which leads to the confusion of teacher management and service between disciplines. 4. Excessive quantitative assessment mechanism hinders the growth of well-known professors. The growth of famous professors needs a stable and relaxed academic environment. Well known professors need to undertake the "extra" responsibility of guiding students' knowledge outside the classroom. 5. It is easy to introduce some "talents" who are lack of high-quality scientific research process training, rely on "accidental factors" or rely on the reputation of tutors to publish papers. Such talents lack independent and sustainable scientific research ability.

There is always another side to the matter. In the current state of university teachers in China, if there is no appropriate quantitative assessment, those teachers who lack self-discipline will also have the opposite situation. As a dean of a secondary college said to me, "he found that up to now, there are still many professors who do not take a fund or publish a decent paper for many years, feeling helpless.". In fact, in my impression, in order to ensure the quality of teachers, European and American universities first take strict access threshold. They choose one in a hundred, or even one in a hundred, teachers from all over the world. Even so, it is difficult to ensure that individual "laggards" will not be "mixed in". For this reason, these schools will still take the "reward for hard work and punish for laziness" measures for teachers with permanent teaching posts, so that those teachers who regard university teaching posts as their life-long career "do not have to work hard to get a reasonable high income and live a dignified life.". Professor Zhan Hongbing of ScienceNet recently talked about this related topic. He said: by evaluating teachers' annual work reports, they encourage top-notch teachers and first-class teachers. They don't engage in big pot and one size fits all. He believes that as long as it is done fairly and reasonably, no one has any opinion on this practice. The salary increase of American university professors is directly related to the annual report. Some teachers at the same level are paid twice as much (Zhan Hongbing, science net, September 3, 2020). I believe that they will not be so careful in calculating the number of achievements when evaluating the achievements in the annual report of the professor. As the former head of the Department of chemistry at Stanford University said when talking about the evaluation of "tenured professor", the basic standard for us to evaluate a tenured professor is not how many projects and funds he has taken for the Department, but his academic influence in international peers. The academic status and influence of a scholar in the same profession must depend on the quality of the achievements rather than the quantity.

Thank you for your valuable advice.