Innovation is at the core of China's overall modernization drive. Science and engineering are two engines of innovation. Only by combining engineering with science and technology, and closely linking scientific discovery, engineering innovation and industrial development, can we provide an inexhaustible source of power for economic and social development. Engineering science and technology is an important driving force for the evolution of the times, economic development and social change, and a solid support for the prosperity of the country, national rejuvenation and people's well-being. At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation has formed a historic intersection with the development of human society, posing more severe challenges to the progress and innovation of engineering science and technology.

Success comes from merit, and industry comes from talent. China attaches great importance to engineering education. It has become the largest engineering education country in the world. It has trained tens of millions of high-level engineering and technical talents, constantly improved China's industrialization level, and provided a solid intellectual support for China's and global industrial development. However, China's engineering education is large but not strong, and the training and construction of outstanding engineers cannot meet the needs of national strategy and industrial development. Since 2010, the country has successively launched and implemented versions 1.0 and 2.0 of the Excellent Engineer Education and Training Plan, providing strong talent support for the rapid development of China's strategic emerging industries and the transformation and upgrading of the manufacturing industry. Recently, the Ministry of Education and the State owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council jointly held a meeting to promote the training of outstanding engineers. For the first time, excellent engineer colleges were set up in 10 well-known universities, including Tsinghua University and Zhejiang University. The training plan for outstanding engineers was upgraded again, and leading engineers were actively trained for a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform.

Excellent engineers are an important part of the national strategic talent force. Together with field engineers, technicians and industrial workers, they form a skilled talent team and are at the top of this team. The education and training of outstanding engineers is the focus of high-quality development of higher education in the new era, and is an important focus and breakthrough point for first-class universities to train craftsmen from large countries. How can we cultivate a group of high-level outstanding engineers who love the Party and serve the country, devote themselves to their work, have outstanding technological innovation capabilities, and are good at solving complex engineering problems? It is urgent to innovate the education methods of the first batch of outstanding engineers' colleges, deepen reform, and speed up the "last mile" of training outstanding engineers.

Accelerate the promotion of engineering education to realize the fundamental transformation from the single and independent discipline to the cross discipline and deep integration of schools and enterprises. Traditional engineering education often pays attention to the unity of disciplines and industries, and emphasizes the independence of closed-loop talent training, which is far from meeting the new trend and requirements of cross integration and comprehensive development in the current engineering science and technology field. The interdisciplinary integration is the cornerstone of engineering education innovation. According to statistics, in the past 25 years, the proportion of research achievements of interdisciplinary cooperation in the Nobel Prize reached 47%. As the composition and integration of a variety of basic technologies and core technologies, modern engineering needs comprehensive integration of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge and skills when facing complex practical problems. This requires the excellent engineering college to build a university to actively meet the national strategic needs, adapt to the development requirements of the national and local emerging strategic industries, take the whole university's efforts to integrate the cross disciplines, actively cooperate with leading industry enterprises, deeply promote the integration of schools and enterprises, industry and education, and accelerate the organic connection of "talent chain - innovation chain - industry chain", Deepen and promote the fundamental transformation of the mode of cultivating talents for outstanding projects in colleges and universities from single closed-loop to cross integration.

Accelerate the promotion of engineering training objectives to realize the fundamental transformation from attaching importance to theory teaching to attaching importance to engineering innovation ability. The traditional engineering education is based on the social industrial structure and its needs. Under the conditions of the liberal arts, science and work division system, it cultivates engineering professional and technical talents, focusing on teaching, and attaching importance to the teaching of theoretical knowledge rather than ability training. This situation is not only far from the international advanced engineering education concept, but also unable to adapt to the rapid development of the new scientific and technological revolution and industrial upgrading. In this regard, in terms of training objectives for outstanding engineers, it is urgent to grasp the future development trend of engineering science and technology, actively shift from knowledge to core quality and innovation ability, and strive to integrate the "trinity" education concept of value shaping, ability training and knowledge teaching into the whole process of talent training. Love the Party and serve the country, dedication and dedication are the core value requirements for outstanding engineers. We should actively build a curriculum system that combines general knowledge and specialty, in class and extracurricular, theory and practice, and strengthen the cultivation of family and country feelings and dedication spirit; We should constantly innovate teaching methods, create a practice platform of "real weapons and real guns", set up classrooms and laboratories in the front line of engineering and industry, transform real projects and real topics into "training ground" and "sharpening stone" for students to practice, let students practice their ability to find, analyze and solve problems on the project site, strengthen the cultivation of diversified thinking ability, strengthen the ability to innovate technology and be good at solving complex engineering problems, Cultivate outstanding talents with excellent quality, outstanding ability, good at technical innovation and undertaking complex projects.

Accelerate the promotion of evaluation criteria to realize the fundamental transformation from paper oriented, award oriented to actual innovation contribution oriented. Evaluation is related to the direction of education development. What kind of evaluation baton is, what kind of school guidance is. On the one hand, actively explore and constantly improve the capability standards and training quality standards of outstanding engineers with Chinese characteristics, promote the organic connection with professional qualification certification, and establish an excellent engineer certification system that is in line with international standards. On the other hand, the construction of the College of Outstanding Engineers should deepen the implementation of the General Plan for Deepening the Reform of Educational Evaluation in the New Era, actively promote the reform of evaluation methods, improve evaluation standards, speed up the elimination of the persistent problems of only scores, only entering a higher school, only diploma, only paper, and only hat, speed up the establishment of evaluation standards oriented by practical innovation, problem solving and practical contributions, and strive to form an evaluation standard that everyone is eager to become a talent It is a good situation that everyone strives to become a talent, everyone can become a talent, and everyone can give full play to his talent.

(The author is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Education Department of East China Normal University)

China Education Daily, November 17, 2022, 2nd edition

Author: Liu Shiqing