Now that the national reform has entered the deep water area, the first batch of management disciplines in China have also reached a new historical starting point.
This fall, Tianjin University's Department of Management and Economics celebrated its 30th anniversary.The teachers made a profound summary of the series of commemorative activities: "Standing up for thirty, witnessing China."Since 1984, when the Ministry of Education approved the establishment of the first four management and economic colleges after Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Wuhan University and Tianjin University.
At the 30th anniversary event, Tianjin University invited some prestigious colleagues from home and abroad to discuss "the mission and social responsibility of the business school".Li Rongrong, former director of SASAC and vice chairman of China International Economic Exchange Center, graduated from Tianda University. 1984 was the first year of China's urban economic reform, and business school grew with this reform.
According to the Blue Book on Management: China's Management Development Report (2014), released by the Chinese Academy of Management Sciences in late September, China's management science has matured since the mid-1980s.
Among business schools, the most widely known educational program is the Master of Business Administration (MBA), the first professional master's degree approved in the country.Qian Yingyi, dean of Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, summed up at the 30th anniversary celebration that China's MBA and EMBA education are the products of China's economic reform and opening-up.In the Financial Times EMBA ranking, three of the top 10 projects in the world in 2013 were in mainland China, an internationally recognized degree that is very prominent in all disciplines and special projects of higher education in China.
Over the past 30 years, management has undoubtedly been a popular field of study.On September 16, at the annual meeting of the European and American alumni associations, Shi Yigong, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at Tsinghua University, expressed his feelings when he talked about training innovative talents.I went to the School of Economics and Management.Even the meta-biologist who wanted to train the most said he wanted to go to a financial company.
According to the 86-year-old professor of Tianjin University, Yin Bangyan recalled that the first enrollment of management majors after reform and opening-up was a "hot" major.Tianda faced a lot of difficulties in recruiting the first undergraduate students in management, but only the students did not worry, and the enrollment exceeded the planned number.
However, in the forum of "Mission and Social Responsibility of Business School", more discussion is about reflection and confusion.
Guo Chongqing, an 81-year-old academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and former director of the National Natural Science Foundation's management science department, told Tianjin University that the 30-year history is nothing short of a big deal for China.It's hard to sum up everyone's achievements in one word, it's a process of "rebirth in the fire."But today, in the context of new technology shocks and China's economic transformation, can China's management education adapt?
Guo Chongqing asked his colleagues: "When big data, the Internet, cloud computing, are we ready?One idea he recently emphasized was that "the Internet will redefine governance."
Big data, he says, is a close representation of the human real world, and past models of management lack empirical evidence.The new technological revolution will open up a new paradigm for management scientific research, and the management community should seize this opportunity.However, the peer-review system of management is becoming more and more a thesis-oriented academic value preference, indulging in models but lacking data support, deviating from practice, empirical and experimental.
In his view, the evaluation system "pushed us to the point where we could no longer push."”
Zhao Chunjun, former dean of the Tsinghua School of Management, also pointed out that a notable problem in China's management education is the tendency to deviate from reality, which is closely related to the pursuit of a "research-based management school."He is not in favour of that.
He said that many universities have set goals for the construction of research universities, and in line with them, management schools should be "research-based management schools", but which business schools in the world are "research-based"?He studied in the United States for a year as a Fulbright scholar and could not find a so-called "research business school."MIT's Sloan School of Management is somewhat like a "research business school," and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania is not a simple word to sum up.
More than a decade ago, Zhao Chunjun said, North American business schools were strongly criticized and discussed for a long time in both academia and the practical world.Yale, Stanford and other business schools have carried out relatively large-scale reforms.If we do not pay attention to this development, we will probably not know where our problems are.In order for the School of Management to stand strong in China, it must serve China's economic and social development, and the people trained must also serve China's economic and social development.
Wang Fanghua, former dean of Shanghai Jiaotong University's Antai School of Economics and Management, said people often say "thirty-thirty," but just as young people are confused about buying a house, getting married, and career development.
According to Wang Fanghua, they recently conducted a survey of 52 schools that are considered the best in China and asked how to allocate their energy to scientific research, talent development and social services.Twenty per cent is spent on human resources development and five per cent on social services."In this way, our university called the Institute.”
Speaking of the teacher evaluation system, Zhao Chunjun pointed out that the leaders of every school and every college should ask themselves how they manage teachers."To put it mildly is to do it like a production team in the days of the People's Commune."Leaders like to average out a lot of metrics and then link them to the teacher's income and how much they get done," you say, "can teachers behave like intellectuals?This has been going on for more than a decade, and it was originally a small number of schools.I've observed this phenomenon, and I think human resources experts should really look into it, or the team will really ruin it.”
Wang Fanghua's other perplexity is that schools have proposed to become world-class universities and world-class business schools, bringing in a large number of returnees, but some schools no longer accept people with Chinese doctorates.A very strange phenomenon is that many third-rate university students have worked hard to enter first-rate universities, and the best way out is to teach at second-rate universities.
Zhao Chunjun did a sensational thing during his tenure as president of Tsinghua School of Management.In 2002, the Tsinghua School of Business and Management introduced 28 "million-dollar professors" at a time.But he can't stand the rule that some schools have set in order to compete for first-class status, "as long as Dr. Yang, not 鼈."He called it "foreign dogma."
Zhao Shuming, honorary dean of Nanjing University Business School, lamented that many things now follow the trend, first-class universities, some smaller schools, assessment teachers are required to publish papers in first-class journals.
Xi Youmin, former vice-president of Xi'an Jiaotong University, joked that his undergraduate degree from Shaanxi Mechanical College was impossible to enter Xi'an Jiaotong University by today's standards.
Xi Youmin believes that this is due to the resource allocation system and the evaluation system.Good universities are trapped in existing institutions.The state distributes resources to schools through various projects, and the principal has to calculate them every day.He suggested that the university should be regulated and guaranteed by legislation, not just by the university's charter.In terms of resource allocation, eliminate the phenomenon of "running money in".
He also believes that many principals and secretaries often use the system as an excuse for their inaction.Under the current system, they still have the power to do a lot of things.
Li Jiajun, president of Tianjin University, also believes that if a school can really run well, the school itself can still do a lot of things.Tianda is currently piloting in several disciplines, hoping to create a relatively relaxed environment with a higher degree of freedom and greater autonomy to do what can be done on campus.He joked, "There's also a president in this matter, don't always talk about the principal."”
It sounds like a natural thing – most of the topics discussed at the University's "Business School Mission and Social Responsibility" forum have nothing to do with business schools, but point directly to universities: administration, resource allocation, faculty hiring and evaluation.None of these perplexities that the university has encountered has fallen from the business school in its early years.
Wang Fanghua said that the country's reform and development are now only complaining about things.In the allocation of resources, the business school has its own characteristics, especially its own running income, and only a small part of the higher-level investment, so the business school has the power to do a lot of things."Business schools should be ahead of the curve in university reform.Our reforms must provide experience in the reform of universities.