Professor Richard Gere, former chairman of Stanford University's chemistry department and chairman of the National Funding Committee's International Performance Assessment Expert Committee, said of Stanford's tenured professor appointment.This concept is contrary to the promotion of some university teachers, talent evaluation and daily performance evaluation of scientific research projects, especially the National Natural Science Fund project as an important indicator of the implementation of incentives.
A few days ago, I stayed in Guiyang for a few days, chatting with several university professors.We talked about the scientific evaluation topics involved in the daily performance evaluation of universities.I asked professors what they think of some universities awarding National Natural Science Foundation projects directly as performance indicators.The two Sun Yat-sen professors agreed that the reward was neither scientific nor reasonable.In fact, our university directly participates in the promotion of university faculty titles, talent evaluation and appointment of scientific research projects as performance.This approach confuses the basic idea and values of the "input-output" relationship in scientific research.It is true that despite the irregularities in project evaluation, a scholar can host some important scientific research projects, especially as the "chief scientist" and project leader of some major national projects.However, when the project has just been approved or is still in the process of being implemented and the outcome is unclear, it is clearly neither scientific nor reasonable to give the project manager or members a corresponding "honor" or "material" reward.This is because some scholars have completed such projects with poor quality and poor results, which is not uncommon in some academic institutions in China, which is also the main reason for the unfair distribution of such "high-level" scientific research projects.For example, some projects have not been allocated to young and middle-aged scientists and technicians who are truly capable of hosting projects.It is against the axiom that such a large amount of state funds is spent and no corresponding scientific and technological achievements are produced as the basis for scholars' "plus officials and honors".This reward not only lacks fairness and justice, but also intensifies the impetuosity and utilitarianism of academia.
On February 2, 2012, I recalled in my article, "Also Talking About Scientific Evaluation: Ranking of Direct Colleges and Universities by the Education Academy of the Ministry of Education," that "in 2009 the Institute of Education and Science issued the first (and so far only) ranking.The indicators used in the ranking are three categories: talent (teachers), funds (education and research funds), assets; and outputs are mainly two categories: training students (undergraduate and graduate students) and achievements (published papers, awards and patents).In this ranking, the medium-sized Central China Agricultural University ranked 11th, ranking first among the seven direct universities in Wuhan, and far ahead of some "985" universities.There is a school with more research funds on this list.Since research funds are the denominator of performance evaluation as input in the index system, the more funds, the worse the natural performance.I think this kind of performance evaluation, although not necessarily perfect, is also a wake-up call for organizations and individuals who only use various means to compete for funds without focusing on practical research.This performance evaluation should be an integral part of scientific evaluation.”
Scientific research projects are essentially funded by different departments, such as the state's research start-up fee of millions of yuan per person imported from overseas, and many universities usually give newly introduced scholars a start-up fund.Although these new faculty members often experience full postgraduate education and even post-doctoral research experience, the University hopes that this funding will enable them to immediately enter scientific roles.
We should not use research projects and funding as indicators of achievement in talent performance evaluation, which should belong to the consensus of the international academic community.As Stanford University professor said above, whether a scholar is good or not depends mainly on the influence of his academic achievements in his peers, not on the funding of scientific research projects.We can easily check the homepage of the world's leading universities, and we can see less news reports promoting the scientific research projects of our professors.The professors' personal pages at these universities are usually the most prominent of two parts: resumes (research features) and representative thesis records, some professors will list honors and related awards, and some scholars will list "funding projects."Universities in the appointment of teachers mainly depends on their achievements (representative works) in the field of contribution and influence, usually do not pay as much attention to some academic institutions in China.