文/約翰·霍普克羅夫特（John Hopcroft，美） 譯/李睿 楊韞利

2020年12月19日，圖靈獎(jiǎng)獲得者、中國(guó)科學(xué)院外籍院士、北京大學(xué)訪問(wèn)講席教授、前沿計(jì)算研究中心主任約翰·霍普克羅夫特（John Hopcroft）受邀在2020中國(guó)計(jì)算機(jī)教育大會(huì)作題為《以教育質(zhì)量提升助力中國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展》的主旨報(bào)告，介紹他與中國(guó)工程院院士、北京大學(xué)教授高文于2018年共同發(fā)起“高校計(jì)算機(jī)專業(yè)優(yōu)秀教師獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)計(jì)劃”的初衷。以下由北京大學(xué)前沿計(jì)算研究中心翻譯整理自報(bào)告原文，小標(biāo)題為編者所加，以饗讀者。

今天我們?cè)谶@里表彰和獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)一批杰出的教師。54位獲獎(jiǎng)教師是通過(guò)嚴(yán)格的評(píng)審程序，從中國(guó)的44所優(yōu)秀大學(xué)中選拔出來(lái)的。

中國(guó)大學(xué)需要專注提升教學(xué)質(zhì)量

20年前，中國(guó)的父母?jìng)冮_(kāi)始意識(shí)到，他們的孩子需要接受大學(xué)教育才能找到一份理想的工作。為了滿足人們對(duì)高等教育的迫切需要，中國(guó)每年新建近50所大學(xué)，增加了70萬(wàn)名教師來(lái)教授新增的6000萬(wàn)本科生。如今，中國(guó)已經(jīng)具備了為眾多學(xué)生提供教育的基本條件，重點(diǎn)開(kāi)始轉(zhuǎn)向提升教育的質(zhì)量。

中國(guó)的一些頂尖大學(xué)創(chuàng)建了精英班，每個(gè)班選拔25—30名學(xué)生。然而，這些精英班的規(guī)模太小了，遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)不能滿足需求。另外，許多精英班的學(xué)生畢業(yè)后選擇去海外深造，留在中國(guó)申請(qǐng)理工科博士學(xué)位的高質(zhì)量學(xué)生相對(duì)有限。

人才在世界各地是均勻分布的，但機(jī)會(huì)卻并非如此。中國(guó)擁有全世界1/5的人才，所有的優(yōu)秀學(xué)生都希望進(jìn)入頂尖大學(xué)，接受最好的教育。我曾作為客座教授，在中國(guó)的幾所大學(xué)教過(guò)剛?cè)雽W(xué)的新生，他們的水平完全不遜于美國(guó)大學(xué)的新生，甚至更好。然而，當(dāng)我教大三的學(xué)生時(shí)，我發(fā)現(xiàn)他們?cè)谥R(shí)水平和能力上已落后于美國(guó)同年級(jí)的學(xué)生。我意識(shí)到，這可能是中國(guó)大學(xué)的教育質(zhì)量出現(xiàn)了問(wèn)題。

曾有一所中國(guó)C9（九校聯(lián)盟）高校邀請(qǐng)我?guī)退麄兊挠?jì)算機(jī)系招聘老師。兩年后，這些新老師都離開(kāi)了這所大學(xué)。我詢問(wèn)原因，得到的答復(fù)是，學(xué)校的大環(huán)境只注重研究經(jīng)費(fèi)和論文發(fā)表數(shù)量，對(duì)教學(xué)質(zhì)量的關(guān)注度非常低。我和其他一些中國(guó)大學(xué)的老師們交流過(guò)這個(gè)現(xiàn)象，他們也有同感。

中國(guó)的大學(xué)需要提升本科教育質(zhì)量。大學(xué)校長(zhǎng)每屆任期5年，他們普遍認(rèn)為，提高大學(xué)的國(guó)際排名是校長(zhǎng)任期內(nèi)工作成效的最佳體現(xiàn)之一。然而，現(xiàn)有的國(guó)際排名評(píng)價(jià)體系主要是基于研究經(jīng)費(fèi)的多少和發(fā)表論文的數(shù)量，這給老師們帶來(lái)了壓力。為了晉升，他們把大量時(shí)間花在經(jīng)費(fèi)申請(qǐng)和論文發(fā)表上。我想說(shuō)的是，如果校長(zhǎng)們希望提高學(xué)校的排名和聲譽(yù)，他們需要專注于教學(xué)質(zhì)量的提升。

應(yīng)運(yùn)而生的“高校計(jì)算機(jī)專業(yè)優(yōu)秀教師獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)計(jì)劃”

一些新入職的助理教授要為資深教授工作，而不是指導(dǎo)他們自己的研究生。無(wú)論是經(jīng)費(fèi)申請(qǐng)還是論文發(fā)表都與本科生教育沒(méi)有直接關(guān)系。很明顯，大學(xué)培養(yǎng)下一代人才的使命不知何故被忽視了。

創(chuàng)建“高校計(jì)算機(jī)專業(yè)優(yōu)秀教師獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)計(jì)劃”就是為了表彰注重教學(xué)的優(yōu)秀教師，并希望大學(xué)能夠調(diào)整重心，重視本科生教學(xué)質(zhì)量。在李克強(qiáng)總理的鼓勵(lì)和教育部的支持下，以評(píng)估老師教學(xué)質(zhì)量為目的的“高校計(jì)算機(jī)專業(yè)優(yōu)秀教師獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)計(jì)劃”應(yīng)運(yùn)而生。對(duì)大學(xué)本科教學(xué)質(zhì)量的評(píng)估需要一個(gè)衡量標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。該計(jì)劃的評(píng)估標(biāo)準(zhǔn)基于對(duì)老師教學(xué)質(zhì)量的評(píng)價(jià)，而非研究經(jīng)費(fèi)和論文發(fā)表數(shù)量。評(píng)估的過(guò)程得到了中國(guó)一些單位的捐贈(zèng)支持，他們將此視為一項(xiàng)長(zhǎng)期投資，以滿足對(duì)其發(fā)展至關(guān)重要的人才的需求。2020年的捐贈(zèng)單位包括：字節(jié)跳動(dòng)、科大訊飛、騰訊基金會(huì)、平安科技。

評(píng)估涉及兩個(gè)問(wèn)題：授課質(zhì)量和課程內(nèi)容。為了評(píng)估授課質(zhì)量，“獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)計(jì)劃”評(píng)審專家組分派兩位專家隨機(jī)旁聽(tīng)每位候選人的兩堂課，并使用記分卡為所聽(tīng)的課程評(píng)分。記分卡包括以下內(nèi)容：教師對(duì)講授課程內(nèi)容和教材的掌握度；教師是否對(duì)教學(xué)內(nèi)容保持興奮態(tài)度；教師是否和學(xué)生有良好的課堂互動(dòng)；全程認(rèn)真聽(tīng)課的學(xué)生比例（或有多少學(xué)生在低頭玩手機(jī)）；學(xué)生是否準(zhǔn)時(shí)到達(dá)教室上課；教師是否使用幻燈片或黑板。最后，專家會(huì)針對(duì)課堂的整體情況提供一段評(píng)價(jià)。

評(píng)估工作開(kāi)始于2018年。作為試點(diǎn)，我們首先對(duì)中國(guó)C9高校的計(jì)算機(jī)專業(yè)教學(xué)情況進(jìn)行了評(píng)估。2019年，該計(jì)劃的評(píng)估范圍擴(kuò)大到國(guó)內(nèi)的44所大學(xué)。

我們?cè)?jì)劃在2020年春季表彰這54位獲獎(jiǎng)老師，同時(shí)啟動(dòng)新一輪的評(píng)估工作，但新冠肺炎疫情打亂了我們的計(jì)劃。

霍普克羅夫特教授在2020中國(guó)計(jì)算機(jī)教育大會(huì)講話

我們還計(jì)劃通過(guò)評(píng)估結(jié)果告訴大學(xué)的校長(zhǎng)們，他們的學(xué)校在計(jì)算機(jī)專業(yè)的本科教育上表現(xiàn)如何：排前1/4，前一半還是后一半。然而，這一年校長(zhǎng)們忙于在疫情的侵襲下維持大學(xué)的正常運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)，可能沒(méi)有多余的精力關(guān)注我們想要傳達(dá)的信息。

2021年春季開(kāi)始，我們將重新啟動(dòng)評(píng)估工作，并希望創(chuàng)建一份針對(duì)教學(xué)質(zhì)量的大學(xué)排名，這樣家長(zhǎng)們就會(huì)知道孩子申請(qǐng)哪所大學(xué)能夠獲得最好的教育。中國(guó)大學(xué)的校長(zhǎng)們有著極高的素質(zhì)和才能，他們完全有能力迅速將學(xué)校的教學(xué)質(zhì)量提升到斯坦福、伯克利和康奈爾等大學(xué)的水平。

大學(xué)的使命是培養(yǎng)人才

大學(xué)的使命是培養(yǎng)下一代人才，而不是搞研究。那么，為什么我們又希望老師們從事研究呢？教師的職業(yè)生涯大約是40年，我們希望老師們能夠在其領(lǐng)域保持前沿水平，不希望他們一成不變地教著40年前的教材，沒(méi)有任何更新和改變。優(yōu)秀教師會(huì)緊跟其領(lǐng)域的發(fā)展，不斷學(xué)習(xí)，參與研究就是表現(xiàn)之一。這里強(qiáng)調(diào)的不是老師的研究水平高低。比如，有的老師可能只是針對(duì)一個(gè)已知結(jié)果尋找更簡(jiǎn)單的證明，或?qū)σ恍┙?jīng)典的理論知識(shí)找到一種更好的教學(xué)方法。我們看重的是老師是否有求知欲，是否會(huì)隨著所在領(lǐng)域的變化而發(fā)展，是否關(guān)心學(xué)生的成功。

第二次世界大戰(zhàn)之后，美國(guó)意識(shí)到科學(xué)在戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)中起到的重要作用，決定大力發(fā)展科學(xué)。他們提出了兩類科學(xué)研究的劃分：應(yīng)用科學(xué)和基礎(chǔ)科學(xué)。

應(yīng)用科學(xué)是為解決具體問(wèn)題而進(jìn)行的研究。美國(guó)有足夠多的研究員和工程師。因此，當(dāng)一家企業(yè)甚至是整個(gè)國(guó)家遇到問(wèn)題，他們可以聘請(qǐng)所需的研究人員來(lái)解決。如果企業(yè)有需要，他們可以直接聘請(qǐng)人才；如果政府有需要，他們會(huì)通過(guò)國(guó)家實(shí)驗(yàn)室聘請(qǐng)研究人員。

與之不同的是，基礎(chǔ)科學(xué)不以具體問(wèn)題為導(dǎo)向，而單純是好奇心驅(qū)動(dòng)的研究。這部分研究適合在大學(xué)開(kāi)展。同時(shí)，大學(xué)還將承擔(dān)培養(yǎng)下一代研究人員的責(zé)任。資助基礎(chǔ)科學(xué)研究是極其重要的。它不僅培養(yǎng)了下一代研究人員，還可能在不經(jīng)意間開(kāi)創(chuàng)一個(gè)全新的領(lǐng)域，新的產(chǎn)業(yè)和上百萬(wàn)的就業(yè)機(jī)會(huì)也會(huì)應(yīng)運(yùn)而生。

目前，中國(guó)還沒(méi)有培養(yǎng)出足夠數(shù)量的科學(xué)和工程類人才來(lái)滿足其對(duì)于應(yīng)用科學(xué)研究的需要。因此，中國(guó)的大學(xué)教師必須同時(shí)兼顧應(yīng)用科學(xué)和基礎(chǔ)科學(xué)的研究。然而，如果大學(xué)不把應(yīng)用科學(xué)和基礎(chǔ)科學(xué)的研究區(qū)分開(kāi)，他們永遠(yuǎn)無(wú)法培養(yǎng)出真正需要的人才。大學(xué)的經(jīng)費(fèi)應(yīng)當(dāng)用來(lái)資助基礎(chǔ)科學(xué)研究，應(yīng)用科學(xué)研究應(yīng)由有相關(guān)需求的企業(yè)和政府機(jī)構(gòu)來(lái)資助。最終，應(yīng)用科學(xué)研究應(yīng)該走出校園，就像麻省理工學(xué)院創(chuàng)建的林肯實(shí)驗(yàn)室、斯坦福大學(xué)創(chuàng)建的斯坦福研究院那樣。

未來(lái)，教育是重中之重

未來(lái)，教育是重中之重。那些在人工智能等重要領(lǐng)域培養(yǎng)出優(yōu)秀人才的國(guó)家將會(huì)吸引企業(yè)投資，開(kāi)創(chuàng)新興產(chǎn)業(yè)，推動(dòng)國(guó)家經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展。國(guó)家的價(jià)值將由人才決定，而不是煤炭、石油、木材等物質(zhì)資源。

人工智能的出現(xiàn)將淘汰大量低水平的工作，從事高水平的工作需要大學(xué)教育。當(dāng)代學(xué)生在走出校園的若干年后，可能在工業(yè)界或政府擔(dān)任重要職位，到那時(shí)，狹隘的科學(xué)教育帶來(lái)的問(wèn)題將逐漸顯現(xiàn)。正因如此，即使是理工學(xué)科，在培養(yǎng)方案中加入歷史、人文以及社會(huì)科學(xué)課程也是非常重要的。

大學(xué)教育不僅是為了讓學(xué)生畢業(yè)后得到一份工作，也是為了讓他們更好地體驗(yàn)和享受人生。在職業(yè)生涯之余，他們也有機(jī)會(huì)享受音樂(lè)、運(yùn)動(dòng)和旅行。他們需要的不僅是理工學(xué)科的知識(shí)，還有綜合素質(zhì)的培養(yǎng)。

做一名教師是很有意義的工作，因?yàn)?0年后你們退休的時(shí)候，終有一天你們會(huì)對(duì)自己幫助過(guò)的學(xué)生以及為國(guó)家作出的貢獻(xiàn)感到驕傲。

中國(guó)有一句名言很適合今天的大會(huì)：“一年之計(jì)，莫如樹(shù)谷；十年之計(jì)，莫如樹(shù)木；終身之計(jì)，莫如樹(shù)人?！苯裉煸谧膬?yōu)秀教師們正在做的就是“百年樹(shù)人”的工作——為國(guó)家培養(yǎng)優(yōu)秀人才。他們意識(shí)到了教育的重要性，希望為中國(guó)的長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)發(fā)展貢獻(xiàn)自己的力量。

December 19th, 2020, the Turing Award winner John Hopcroft, a visiting professor at Peking University and the Director of PKU Center on Frontiers of Computing Studies, made a keynote speech on The Role of Improving Education in China’s Economic Growth at the 2020 Computer Education Conference of China. Below is his full thought-provoking speech.

Today we are here to recognize and honor a group of outstanding faculty. They have been selected by a rigorous process where faculty who care about quality of teaching sat in on lectures of computer science faculty at the top 44 universities in China and selected the 54 teachers that we are recognizing here today.

Universities in China need to focus on improving teaching quality

Twenty years ago parents began to realize that their children needed a college education to get a good job. To prevent unhappy citizens, China needed to provide the capacity to meet this demand. China created approximately 50 universities per year and added 700,000 faculty to handle an additional sixty million undergraduates. Now that the educational capacity has been met, the focus has switched to creating quality.

A number of top universities in China created elite programs with twenty-five to thirty students that are world class. However, the elite programs are too small for China’s needs. Many of the graduates from these elite programs go abroad for their PhD. There are not enough high-quality applicants for China’s PhD programs in science and engineering.

Talent is uniformly distributed around the world but opportunity is not.China has one fifth of the world’s talent and its students want to get into one of the top universities. As a visiting professor I have taught incoming freshmen in Chinese universities who are the equivalent or even better than freshmen in the US. However, when I taught juniors, I noticed a substantial difference in preparation and abilities. This probably happens because of the quality of university education in China. One of the C9 universities invited me to help hire faculty for their CS

Department. After two years, these new hires left the university and I asked them why. They said that the environment was focused on research funding and publication of papers. There was little recognition of quality teaching. There was too much emphasis on seeking research funding and publishing papers.Dedicated faculty at the university that I talked with concurred.

Universities in China need to improve undergraduate education. University presidents have five-year terms and then will be assigned a new job. They believe that if they improve the international ranking of their institution they will be assigned a higher-level position. However, International rankings are based on increasing research funding and the number of papers published. This puts pressure on faculty to spend all their time raising research money and publishing papers in order to be promoted. If presidents desire to raise the ranking of their school, they need to focus on improving the quality of teaching.

Reason to create the program of evaluating undergraduate teaching and recognizing the best faculty

Often the junior faculty work for the senior faculty and do not supervise their own graduate students. Neither fund-raising nor writing papers for publication has anything to do with undergraduate education. It became apparent that somehow the mission of the university, which is to produce the next generation of talent, was being overlooked.

The reason for creating this program of evaluating undergraduate teaching in computer science and recognizing the best faculty was to fix the educational environment in universities and put the focus on quality of teaching.

With the blessing of Premier Li Keqiang who wants quality education for China and the permission of the Ministry of Education, a program was developed to start evaluating the level of teaching. Rating universities on the quality of undergraduate teaching requires a metric. Instead of papers and fundraising,faculty would be judged on the quality of their teaching and their international reputation as viewed by people in the field.The process was funded by a group of companies in China who envisioned this as a long-term investment to increase the talent pool essential to their growth. In 2020, the set of companies include: Bytedance, iFlyTek, Tencent Foundation, and Ping An Technology.

Evaluation considered two issues: the quality of the lecture and the content of the course. To evaluate the quality of the lecture,two emeritus faculty members, or faculty known to be committed to outstanding teaching and who were without bias, sat in on two lectures of each faculty member and used a score card to evaluate the quality of the lecture. The score card consisted of the following items:

Is the faculty member knowledgeable with current material?Is the faculty member excited about the material? Does the faculty member engage the students? What percentage of the students are following the class, at the beginning and at the end? How many are on their cellphones? Did the students arrive on time? Did the faculty member use PowerPoint or the blackboard?

The evaluation process started three years ago when we evaluated teaching in computer science at the top nine universities in China. Two years ago the program was expanded to the top 44 universities in China.

We had planned to recognize these 54 outstanding faculty in Spring of 2020 and had hoped to Start the next round of evaluations of the top 44 institutions by then, but the virus played havoc with our plans.

We had also planned to tell university presidents how well their undergraduate education programs were doing: whether they were in the top quarter, the top half but not the top quarter, or in the bottom half. However, we felt that the presidents were totally focused on running their institution with the virus and that our message would be lost.

We restarted the evaluation this spring and hope to create a ranking of institutions so parents will know which school their children should apply to in order to get the best education. University presidents are of very high quality and talented. They could quickly bring top institutions up to the quality of Stanford, Berkeley, and Cornell.

The mission of universing is to create talent

The mission of a university is to create the next generation of talent, not research. Thus, why do we want faculty engaged in research? The career of a faculty member is roughly 40 years and we want faculty to keep abreast of their evolving field. We do not want them teaching 40-year-old material, if it is no longer important. Curious faculty will keep abreast of the field.Being involved in research is a sign of curiosity. We do not look at how state of the art a faculty member’s research is. A faculty member might just be researching how to find a simpler proof of a known result or a better way to teach some known item.Things we look for in a faculty member is if they are curious and will develop with changes in their field and if they care about the success of all their students.

After World War II the United States realized how important a role science played in the war and made a decision to fund science. They created two classes of science: applied and basic.Applied science is research done to solve a specific problem.The United States has enough scientists and engineers so if a company or the country has a problem, they can hire the researchers necessary to solve the problem. If a company has a problem they need to solve they will hire the talent directly. If the government has a problem they will hire researchers and carry it out in a national laboratory in a timely fashion.

Basic research, on the other hand, is research someone does simply because they are curious about it. There often is no application, only curiosity. A decision was made to carry out basic research in universities where it would train a new generation of researchers. The decision to fund basic research was extremely important. Not only did it educate new researchers but occasionally it led to a new field of research not even envisioned. It created new industries and millions of jobs.

At this moment China has not developed a sufficient quantity of science and engineering talent to meet their need for applied research. Thus, faculty in Chinese universities engage in both applied and basic research. However, if universities do not keep applied and basic research separate, they will never produce the talent that they need. It is appropriate for the university budget to fund basic research. However, applied research should be funded by the companies and government agencies that request it. Ultimately, the applied research should be moved off campus as the US universities like MIT did in creating Lincoln Laboratory and Stanford did in creating Stanford Research Institute.

In the future, education will be important

In the future education will be important. Those nations that create talent in important areas such as AI will attract companies, create new enterprises, and grow their gross domestic product. The importance of nations will be determined by talent rather than physical resources such as coal, oil, or timber.

The advent of AI will automate low-level jobs, which will be eliminated. Higher quality jobs will require a university education. As students get older, they may be in important positions in industry or government and a narrow science education would be a problem. For this reason, it is important that science and engineering curricula include courses in history, the social sciences, and the humanities.

Universities need to educate students not just so they will get an important job but also so that they will enjoy life. During their careers they will have opportunities to enjoy music, sports,travel. They will need exposure to more than just science or engineering.

I found a Chinese Proverb that is perfect for today: If you would plan for one year, plant rice. If you would plan for ten years,plant an apple tree. If you would plan for one hundred years,educate people. Many of our outstanding faculty are planning for a hundred years.They recognize the importance of education and want to make the nation’s environment good for all individuals.