In China’s higher education system, various academic competitions and innovation & entrepreneurship contests have become the top priority for many universities’ student affairs. The severity of this hyper-competition and the depth of its harmful effects will soon become apparent. Undergraduate education should focus on cultivating people — strengthening foundational professional knowledge and nurturing individuals with a sense of social responsibility who can advance the nation, the people, and society. It should not produce “competition specialists” or “award collectors.” Overemphasizing research and innovation is detrimental to grounded learning; it is more likely to rush things unnaturally and even breed corruption.
Medical students, in particular, should not pour enormous energy into various competitions, especially at the undergraduate level, where academic burdens are already extremely heavy. For the vast majority of medical students, it is simply impossible to have spare energy to complete competitions with high quality. Behind this false prosperity lies the entanglement of vested interest groups. In most current competitions, what is really being tested is the level of the supervising faculty — students need only apply a thin layer of polish. In schools where overall quality is low, what matters is the average: since the competitions must go on and nobody is particularly strong, awards are distributed evenly — anyone who signs up might win. For individual students, aside from squandering time that could have been put to better use, all they gain is a certificate.
For some high-level competitions, the criteria are often oriented toward quick success — how much social value a startup has created, how much money it has earned — goals that are out of reach for most universities and students. Behind this illusory prosperity operates a network of professional competition-consulting firms. These companies pre-plan projects, fabricate data, apply for patents, and even manufacture news coverage. They maintain extraordinary connections with judging panels across the country. Students in need can join these organizations through various channels for a “win-win” arrangement.
The greatest harm caused by blindly participating in competitions is the failure to achieve the fundamental goal of education: cultivating moral character. Students are no longer striving for personal ideals or social progress but for tangible benefits — after all, awards mean bonus points for graduate school admissions and cash prizes, while supervising faculty also receive corresponding rewards. This distorts the values of some individuals. At the same time, disorderly and blind participation in all manner of competitions seriously undermines students’ mastery of foundational knowledge, creating a three-way loss: students receive hollow rewards, waste time, fail to learn, and may even have their studies compromised while experiencing a profound sense of unfairness; faculty cannot form accurate assessments based on students’ “performance” or “performances” — excelling in competitions does not indicate solid foundations, strong abilities, innovative spirit, or excellence; and universities, though seemingly the biggest beneficiaries, deviate from the overarching goal of talent cultivation, ultimately failing the Party, the state, and the people — after all, ordinary citizens only feel happy when they see all those dazzling awards.
The primary cause of this phenomenon is that most competition evaluations rely essentially on subjective judgment — a nod from a handful of experts. Most of these experts serve simultaneously as both referees and competitors, which is absolutely unreasonable and fundamentally unsolvable. Meanwhile, college student competitions lack oversight mechanisms; fabrication, subcontracting, and intermediary practices all exist openly in gray areas. This situation will only intensify, producing a crop of illusory projects and superficially impressive “competition people.”
I won’t bother comparing this with other countries — it wouldn’t change anything anyway. Just be careful out there.
中文原文 / Chinese Original
我国高等教育体系中，各类学科竞赛、创新创业竞赛已成为众多高校学生工作的重中之重，其内卷之重，危害影响之深即将在不远的将来显现。大学本科教育应该以育人为主，强化专业基础知识，培养具有社会责任感，能够担当国家、民族、社会向前发展的人，而不是比赛专业户或者拿奖专业户，过度地强调科研和创新不利于脚踏实地地学习，更容易拔苗助长，甚至滋生腐败。
医学生尤其不应该将大量精力投入到各类竞赛中去，特别是本科阶段，学业负担本身就极重，对于绝大多数医学生而言不可能有多余的精力去高质量完成各类竞赛，在虚假繁荣的背后是利益集团的绑定。目前大多数竞赛拼的是指导教师水平，学生只需要简单包装一下即可。在整体水平较低的学校，拼的是平均数，反正比赛得搞，大家水平都不行，那就平均分配，谁报了都有可能获奖，对于学生个人而言，除了浪费了大量可以去浪费的时间外，只能收获证书一张。对于一些高水平的比赛，往往有急功近利的要求，譬如说开了公司创造了多少社会价值挣了多少钱，这对于绝大多数高校和学生而言是可望而不可即的，在这个虚假繁荣的背后是专业竞赛公司的运作，这些公司提前就筹划好了项目，做好了数据，能申请专利，更能上新闻，与各地的评审专家都有着不一般的联系，学生如果有需要，就可以通过各类渠道加入这个组织，实现双赢。
盲目参加竞赛带来的最大危害是无法实现立德树人的人才培养目标，同学们不是为了个人理想和社会发展在奋斗，而是为了现实的好处，毕竟得了奖可以考研加分，可以有奖金，指导教师也会有相应的奖励，这会扭曲一部分人的价值观念。同时，无序混乱地盲目参加各类竞赛会严重影响了学生基础知识的学习，造成三输，学生只能得到虚无缥缈的奖励，浪费了时间，学不到知识，甚至影响学习，还会深刻体会到所谓的不公平；教师无法根据学生的”表现”或者”表演”获得正确的认知和评价，竞赛搞得好，不代表基础好、能力强，更不代表有创新精神，也不是优秀人才的标识；学校看似获利最大，但偏离了人才培养总目标，对不起党和国家，更对不起人民，毕竟老百姓看到各种名目繁多的奖项只会觉得高兴。
造成这一现象的主要原因是大部分竞赛的评选都基本依靠主观评价，就靠几个专家点头，大部分专家既是裁判员又是运动员，这是绝对不合理的，基本无解。同时，大学生竞赛缺乏监督机制，造假、转包、中介现像都在灰色地带正常存在，这个现象只会愈演愈烈，培养出一堆虚无缥缈的项目和外强中干的竞赛人。
就不对比国外了，也改变不了什么，耗子尾汁吧。
发表回复