Liang Jianwu glanced at Bao Feiyang. At Liang Jianwu's level, and because he was in a special position, he knew more information than Bao Feiyang. The country has begun to expand enrollment this year to promote the expansion of higher education. This decision has been applauded by many ordinary people and is taken for granted by many people. However, just like many policies that are taken for granted by future generations, expanding the scale of higher education and increasing The decision on the number of college admissions has been highly controversial from the beginning, and it was only introduced after fierce debate. In the early days of the founding of the country, there were 205 colleges and universities in the mainland. Later, after many twists and turns, the number of colleges and universities in the mainland was only 392 in 1976. The college entrance examination was resumed in 1977. After that, higher education in the mainland gradually got on the right track, and some colleges and universities were restored. In particular, in 1983, the reform leaders made a speech about the great development of higher education. In the following years, higher education institutions in the mainland ushered in rapid development, with 114 new universities being built every year, reaching 1,016 in 1986. Place. But in 1986, the then leaders of the State Education Commission announced that they would control the size of institutions of higher learning and no longer build new schools. It should be said that this decision was made in response to the rapid expansion of the scale of higher education institutions at that time and the chaos of establishing new higher education institutions everywhere. It was still necessary. After all, institutions of higher learning are not primary and secondary schools. Even if they are primary and secondary schools, a new school is not just a matter of building a few houses. It also requires qualified teachers and students to rush in and build more than 100 institutions of higher learning a year. Even if it is a junior college, there are several in a province on average. How can there be so many professors and teachers? The rectification in 1986 was very necessary, so the Eighth Five-Year Plan formulated at that time proposed that graduate education, undergraduate education and junior college education should basically stabilize the current scale in the early period of the Eighth Five-Year Plan, and that higher education should be appropriately developed according to needs and possibilities in the later period of the Eighth Five-Year Plan. . After the college entrance examination was resumed, the annual number of graduates from our country's colleges and universities increased rapidly from more than 80,000 in 1979 to 393,000 in 1986. After the measures were taken to control the scale of higher education in 1986, the enrollment scale was no longer expanded. The annual enrollment was 620,000, and in 1986 the enrollment was 570,000. In the following years, the number remained at around 600,000. During this period, the number of people taking the college entrance examination increased every year from 1.76 million in 1985. By 1991, the number of people taking the college entrance examination reached 2.96 million, an increase of 120% from 1985, an increase of nearly 75%. However, The number of people admitted to colleges and universities has not increased, which means that the college entrance examination admission rate is nearly half lower than in 1985, only 21%. After several years of adjustment and rectification, until the reform leader¡¯s southern tour speech in 1992, and after the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the reform and development of higher education was once again put on the agenda. Around 1993, the 14th National Congress proposed accelerating reform and actively developing general higher education. It proposed that the scale should be greatly expanded, the structure should be more reasonable, the quality should be improved to a higher level, and the efficiency should be significantly improved. However, the educational reform and development outline issued that year had It was proposed that during the period of governance and rectification, the scale of higher education should be stable, and higher education should focus on optimizing the structure and improving the level. Although there was controversy over the development of higher education at the time, the reform of higher education began to be promoted, among which the most influential There are two points. One is to determine the reform of higher education fees. This reform started in 1989, expanded the pilot program in 1994, and began to be implemented uniformly in 1997. After the reform of higher education tuition fees, the state's burden on higher education has been reduced to a certain extent. The burden of educational development has laid the foundation for the expansion of enrollment in colleges and universities. Another thing is that some colleges and universities started the first major merger. At that time, the basic structure of higher education was one set by the Ministry of Education, another by industry authorities, and another by local governments. That is, the Ministry of Education managed some universities, and the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications The Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Textiles, the Ministry of Electronics, the Ministry of Petroleum, etc. each manage some universities, and each province and city also manages some universities. Colleges and universities affiliated with industry ministries and commissions had relatively distinctive professional features at the beginning, but during the previous expansion of higher education, many other majors were opened. This results in low-level duplication of construction; narrow majors, single subjects, poor school quality and efficiency; small-scale colleges and universities that are both small and comprehensive. Therefore, some places first adjusted the structure of local universities based on the principle of complementation of advantages. Local universities merged and reorganized from multiple universities. Later, the idea of ??"co-construction, adjustment, cooperation, and merger" was formed for the adjustment and reform of universities. In 1998, 9 industry authorities were abolished and in 1999, 5 military industrial corporations were reformed. 118 general colleges and universities, 106 adult colleges and universities and hundreds of technical secondary schools and technical schools needed to be adjusted. This was also the climax of college mergers around 2000. An important reason. In this wave of college adjustment, the number of college admissions has also increased to a certain extent. In 1992, the number of enrollments in ordinary colleges and universities nationwide increased by 130,000 compared with the previous year, reaching 754,000. In 1993, it increased to 920,000. It exceeded 1 million for the first time in seven years, reaching 1.08 million in 1998, and the admission rate reached 33.4%! With the enrollment expansion launched this year, the number of students enrolled has reached 160.??, an increase of 520,000 from 1998, an increase of nearly 50%, and the overall admission rate exceeded 50%. But this is still the largest increase. Starting from 1999, mainland universities began to develop rapidly. In 2000, the number of college entrance examination admissions increased again by 610,000, reaching 2.21 million. In 2001, the number increased by 400,000, and 2.6 million were admitted. In 2002, the number increased again by 600,000, with 3.2 million admitted; in 2003, the number increased by 620,000, with 3.82 million admitted; in 2004 and 2005, the number increased by about 600,000, until 2006, when the number of admissions reached 5.3 million. , an increase of 260,000 from the previous year. In the following years, the number increased by about 300,000 every year. Starting in 2011, it gradually dropped to 200,000 and 100,000. The annual number of admissions to colleges and universities exceeded 7 million. , the college entrance examination admission rate is approaching 80%! Both the total number and the admission rate are already very high. From enrolling 1.08 million people in 1998 to 6 million in 2008, the enrollment scale of mainland universities has expanded six times in ten years, with an average enrollment expansion of 500,000 students per year. Calculated for a university that enrolls 5,000 students each year, it is equivalent to an annual expansion of 100 universities The rapid expansion of the scale of higher education has had a great impact on mainland society. In 1998, there was a debate on whether to continue to control the scale of higher education or to expand the scale of higher education. After taking office, this government put forward the development strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education. The proposal of the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education put forward new requirements for the development of higher education. Since 1998, there has been a debate in academic circles and public opinion about whether to expand the scale of higher education and whether it should be blindly expanded. Moderates believe that the current scale of higher education in the mainland is relatively large. Their theoretical basis is that the number of graduates of the same level of colleges and universities in my country every year has reached 1.61 million, including full-time and adult education, plus 260,000 There are 1.87 million graduates who have obtained equivalent qualifications through self-study exams, exceeding the number of college graduates in the United States. This was the data stated by a major official of the Ministry of Education at the time. However, there was a problem with this data comparison, that is, the number of U.S. graduates used for comparison was 1.71 million graduates awarded bachelor's and associate bachelor's degrees, while mainland graduates included In addition to undergraduate graduates with degrees and junior college graduates without degrees, including adult education and self-study examinations, if we simply compare graduates with bachelor's degrees, there are 1.17 million in the United States and only 430,000 in the mainland. The gap is still relatively large. If we specifically look at the postgraduate stage, the number of graduate degree holders in the United States is 12.7 times the number of graduates from mainland China, and the gap is even greater. Moderates also believe that my country's current economic development scale is dominated by labor-intensive economy, and there will be no qualitative change in the first half of the next century. In addition, our country has a large population, especially a large number of low-quality people, and there is great employment pressure. Therefore, it is not advisable to give up the quantitative advantage of the labor force and blindly compare with the quality advantage. Therefore, the focus of educational development should be primary and secondary education, focusing on cultivating various skilled labor and technical personnel. Moderates also explain that the mainland should not blindly expand the scale of higher education from aspects such as population structure, allocation of education funds, cost per student, student-teacher ratio, and even the quality of college teachers. It should be said that part of the reasons given by the moderates are reasonable and pertinent. Except for the fact that the scale of my country's higher education is already the largest in the world, the other issues are very objective. The expansion of enrollment in colleges and universities since 1999 has indeed led to some of the problems that moderates are worried about. For example, higher education is expanding too fast, but the educational content and teaching staff cannot keep up, and the value of college students is rapidly depreciating. In addition, after the expansion of higher education enrollment, people only focus on universities, and it is difficult to enroll students in technical schools and vocational schools. Young people are going to universities instead of learning technology, resulting in a shortage of skilled workers. In Bao Feiyang¡¯s view, the continuous expansion of the scale of higher education is the only way for the mainland. It is irresponsible to believe that labor-intensive industries in the mainland will dominate the economy for a long time, and it also underestimates the potential of the mainland's economic development. Although the reform and opening up has been going on for 20 years, as the great leader said, these 20 years have been like crossing the river by feeling for the stones. The speed of reform can be said to be very fast or very slow. The changes are indeed great, but Still not big enough. The private economy has become an important part of the national economy, but the dominant position of the public economy has always been emphasized, and it has only recently begun to change its narrative. This will be the last bastion of economic reform in the Mainland. After the barriers of ownership are finally abandoned, all the potential of the Mainland economy will be fully stimulated, leading to astonishing rapid development. Mainland reform is actually a process of constantly breaking down barriers and loosening the economy. From the beginning of the public ownership economy, which did not allow the existence of any non-public economy, to breaking down barriers by dividing land to households and household contracting, and then allowing the emergence of self-employed individuals, Allow individuals to contract operations and gradually relax restrictions on the non-public economy. The effect of liberalization is also obvious, and private individuals and the private economy have gainedDevelop rapidly.