应用性追求:中国高等教育人才培养的 长时段历史考察

中国应用型人才培养的实践并非新近的事情。从长时段历史考察,中国共产党与中华人民共和国对于应用型人才的培养探索甚至渊源于150年前的近代转型传统。与主张“君子不器”的传统高等教育不同,近现代意义上的制度化高等教育自引入中国之日起,就一直肩负着国家层面赋予的应用型人才培养任务,甚至并未因社会制度变革而中断。晚清时期,朝廷与精英基于“师夷长技以制夷”兴办了一批具有专科性质的学堂;南京国民政府基于毕业生失业严重以及“高等教育破产”的争议,着眼于调整高等教育结构;中华人民共和国成立初期,基于“专门人才”急需而实施院系调整与专业细分;改革开放以来,基于就业制度市场化变革与高等教育分类发展需要而作出院校转型的决策部署。这些政策及措施意味着高等教育承载着国家(政府)的意志和期待、民族(社会)的渴望和要求。在中国高等教育后续发展中,应注意高等教育的理想类型与现实复杂性之间的问题,努力在创新知识生产模式中推动应用型高等教育的内涵式发展。

The Pursuit of Application:A Long-term Historical Review of Talent Cultivation in China’s Higher Education

From a long period of historical investigation,the Chinese practice of the cultivation of applied talents is not new,that is,the exploration of the cultivation of applied talents by the Communist Party of China and new China originated from the modern transformation tradition 150 years ago.Unlike the traditional higher education advocating that“a wise man will not make himself into a mere machine fit only to do one kind of work”,the institutionalized higher education in the modern sense has been shouldering the task of cultivating applied talents given by the state since it was introduced into China,even without interruption due to the change of social system.In the late Qing Dynasty,the imperial court and elites set up a number of specialized schools based on the idea of“learn from foreigners to compete with foreigners”;Nanjing National Government focused on adjusting the structure of higher education based on the dispute of serious unemployment of graduates and“bankruptcy of higher education”;in the early stage of the founding of the People’s Republic of China,it was urgent to implement the adjustment of colleges and departments and the subdivision of majors based on“specialized talents”;since the reform and opening up,based on the needs of market-oriented reform of employment system and classified development of higher education,the decision-making and deployment of college transformation have been made.These policies and measures mean that higher education bears the will and expectation of the state(government)and the desire and requirement of the nation(society).In the follow-up development of China’s higher education,the attention should be paid to the problem between the ideal type of higher education and the complexity of reality,and strive to promote the connotative development of application-oriented higher education in the innovation of knowledge production mode.