The strength of a nation lies in the vigor of its youth; its prosperity in their progress. Young talent serves as the lifeblood of a nation's strategic technological prowess. Cultivating a high-caliber cohort of young scientific and technological talent is not just an imperative for high-quality development; it's a consensus among delegates at the National Two Sessions. Addressing the pain points in the training and development of young scientific and technological talent requires targeted strategies.
Zhao Yuliang, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, highlights the disconnect between the innovation chain and the industrial chain as a bottleneck hindering the formation of new productive forces. Echoing this sentiment, Ye Meilan, a delegate to the National People's Congress (NPC) and president of Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, emphasizes the need to leverage talent as the linchpin for achieving deep integration between the industrial chain and the innovation chain.
By shaping a talent ecosystem, we can facilitate the organic connection between the innovation chain and the industrial chain, thereby effectively enhancing the success rate of technology transfer and commercialization, which is crucial for driving the development of new productive forces and enhancing China's technological competitiveness.
However, a prominent issue within the talent ecosystem is that many young scientific and technological professionals lack a deep understanding of production and research dynamics as well as industry development trends due to their focus on frontline work. This results in difficulties in identifying industry demands, understanding industrial development trends, and aligning research topics with industry needs.
Fundamentally, one of the significant reasons for this issue lies in the outdated nature of the education system's curriculum and talent cultivation models.
Jiang Yan, a member of the CPPCC National Committee and deputy chief engineer of Shengong Group, found through research that industries leading new productive forces, such as high-end manufacturing, benchmark against the most advanced factories globally. However, students and teachers are not sufficiently aware of the materials and testing methods being employed.
Under the traditional education model, students generally lack industry awareness and interdisciplinary integration and practical skills.
To better cultivate high-level, composite young talents needed by industries, it's imperative to explore talent cultivation models that integrate disciplines with industries.
Firstly, aligning educational programs with industry resources is essential. This means fostering close interactions between existing educational processes and industries through deep collaboration between schools and enterprises. This includes revising talent development plans, restructuring practical teaching systems, and exploring deep integration in co-building teaching resources, assembling teaching teams, transforming practical teaching, and innovating entrepreneurship education.
Secondly, by conducting market demand surveys and analysis, setting up industry-related courses to ensure that the curriculum meets industry requirements is crucial. Simultaneously, fostering collaboration between schools and enterprises to jointly construct curriculum systems can enhance the quality of talent cultivation. Moreover, aiming to cultivate industry talents oriented toward the future, timely updates and iterations of the professional curriculum content are necessary.
Additionally, hiring industry executives and senior engineers as internship mentors and graduate project supervisors, exploring the co-construction of training bases between universities and enterprises, and providing students with diverse internship opportunities can expose students to the latest industry technologies, concepts, and processes in practice.
In such a talent cultivation model, not only can students benefit from a learning environment closely linked to the industry, but universities can also gain access to teaching resources combined with practical experience, effectively enhancing students' practical and innovative thinking abilities.
Certainly, supporting such explorations requires multi-party collaboration, including government guidance, corporate participation, and university implementation, to form a concerted effort. Through measures such as industry-education integration and practical teaching, efforts should be made to cultivate a group of young scientific and technological talents who understand both technology and industry, injecting new vitality into the country's industrial upgrading and economic development.
