For liberal arts doctoral students, the weight of life lies in the middle of a paper. How to publish as many papers as possible during the doctoral period has become one of their goals. Yang Zhenyu, a second-year doctoral student at the School of Journalism of Fudan University, said in an interview with the media, "It is too nervous to publish three papers in core journals and complete a doctoral thesis of 65,438+10,000 words in three years."

For science and engineering doctoral students, the pressure is on one project after another. "If you have conditions, you must go. If you don't have conditions, you must create conditions." When Jin Ye left the laboratory building, he turned his head and saw a familiar scene-the engineering laboratory was brightly lit and other professional laboratories were in complete darkness.

In his view, the difference between light and shade just broke the graduate class: unlike other majors, engineering tutors have too many projects and need students to work day and night.

But similarly, everyone needs to spend some time getting to know their doctoral supervisors. In their doctoral career for several years, the word "relationship" may be the core proposition, which needs serious consideration.

With the mentor

It's two o'clock in the morning, and Jin Ye, a 28-year-old second-year doctoral student majoring in information engineering, is more energetic than during the day. He said that since he made a programming project for his tutor, he not only knew how to eat more fruits and vegetables and didn't stay up late, but also became fascinated by the late-night football match broadcast.

"I am comparable to the 28 games broadcast live in the early morning of the World Cup. Even diehard fans don't understand how I did it. " The doctoral student from Guangxi said calmly.

From the "mixed" graduate school of a branch school in Wuhan to the master of engineering, Jin Ye was frustrated in one job interview after another. His "weak personality" makes him lack confidence in his foothold in society.

The other side of this negative emotion is a graduate student's infatuation with plain campus life.

Jin Ye took part in the exam and chose information major as one of the only three doctoral programs in two A-level universities. He said he was really helpless.

"I feel that school is more suitable for me. My parents also think that if I have a doctorate, I can't find a good job, at least I can stay at school. " He said.

In 2008, Jin Ye came to the university campus of this coastal developed city. At that time, his information engineering major had just started his doctoral program for two years. Academic leaders are members of academic associations and lead 22 doctoral students, including Jin Ye. At the same time, the major has joined hands with universities in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, attracting more than 40 doctoral students.

Before Jin Ye studied, there were more than 0/00 masters/kloc in this major within ten years, and 4 postdoctoral students, most of whom were local enterprises.

Before entering the school, Jin Ye considered that this institution was not a key university directly under the Ministry of Education and lacked the strength to apply for national science and technology projects. What I saw with my own eyes in the college also proved that the tutor applied for less than ten national public projects every year, all of which were "leftovers" far from major projects.

But even so, Jin Ye found that the tutor was driving two cars, one of which was an imported car.

In fact, although there are few projects, in this city with relatively developed electronic industry, commercial projects that information engineering students can participate in are endless. The scale ranges from R&D projects of state-owned enterprises to program system development of private companies. Tutors can sell programs to companies in the name of doctoral programs, and the difference can generally reach hundreds of thousands. "The instructor himself doesn't hide it, and he always discusses the project with us enthusiastically."

Therefore, as a doctoral tutor, Jinye is duty-bound to join the team.

The "subsidy" for tutors to do business projects began to exceed the national and university subsidies of less than 1 10,000 yuan per month for doctoral students. There are many kinds of jobs, the big ones are done by many people, and the small ones are done by a doctoral student with a capable master student. After the "division", the tutor subsidy ranges from several hundred yuan to several thousand yuan.

When she first entered school, Jin Ye and her senior doctoral students worked together to do large-scale programming for a logistics company. Due to the tight time, several young people worked almost continuously for a week without taking a break for two or three hours every day. On the handover day, they ordered pizza from the dormitory to celebrate. Before the pizza arrived, the tutor called and asked them to go back to the lab immediately to correct an obvious arithmetic mistake.

In Jinye's eyes, the first two years of his doctoral career are one project after another. Highly repetitive work made him feel like a senior technician without any academic achievements. There seems to be a silent tacit understanding between students and tutors, and between students and students, but no one wants to make it clear.

"The tutor is very busy, and we are also very busy. In this environment, no one will consider any academic issues. Academics are not a climate at all. " Jin Ye said quietly.

Including Jinye, these more than 20 doctors in information engineering don't have to worry about the thesis. Because according to the experience of their predecessors, as long as they choose a point from the process of doing the project during their doctoral period and discuss it a little, the passage of the doctoral thesis and the thesis defense organized by the tutor will not hinder their graduation. Even in the publication of papers with "two authorities and one core", it is only a sparse problem.

Wen Wei Po reported in 2009 that Wang Ming, a doctor at Fudan University, was famous for his "bodhisattva heart". He feeds the stray cats around the school with cat food every night, rain or shine for several years. Wang Ming once admitted that the cat was just a prop for him to transfer pressure. "If there are no cats in my life, I may go crazy studying alone in recent years."

"Doctoral students are actually passive. I have also heard of good tutors. I believe there must be good tutors, but everything depends on the environment around doctoral students. " Jin Wei said.

passive body posture

The life of doctoral students is similar to that of Okawa Jinye. They passively become "skilled workers" in various projects.

In a non-key science and engineering college in a southwest town, Jia Chao entered the fourth year of his doctoral career. In the eyes of this metallurgical doctoral student, the tutor can always get a major project with a scale of 10 million, almost like a "boss".

The boy who "likes to stay in the laboratory, do experiments and think about problems" transferred from the north to this unsatisfactory school because he failed in English that year. In order to stay in the laboratory, he accepted the encouragement of this school-master and doctor. Because "at that time, all transfers were at their own expense. If you choose to go to graduate school, you need to pay 20 thousand yuan for three years. In order to encourage Master Bo, the condition given by the school is that if you choose to continue your studies, you will be exempted from the tuition fee of 1000, and you will receive public subsidies from the second year of the study, and your accommodation will be free continuously. " "Considering the poor conditions at home and I like scientific research very much, I chose to continue my Ph.D. in this university."

After that, Jia Chao's life is to go to the laboratory at 8: 00 in the morning and go back to the dormitory at 12 in the evening. It goes on and on, sometimes for two or three months.

"But I am very embarrassed that no scientific research results have been published." The young man said. "It's very difficult to read a doctor. I once thought about giving up, mainly for economic reasons. Without money and life, I lost confidence in facing difficulties. But in the most difficult moment, there is only one thought in my heart: since I have chosen, I should not give up. So I have been insisting until now. "

While doing the experiment, Jia Chao had to help the tutor finish his master's degree. In his own words, "I brought out many tutors' masters, including experimental design."

In addition to working hard day after day to help the tutor take care of his younger brothers and sisters, Jia Chao has one thing more than many students, that is, he works as a part-time tutor and substitutes.

From the countryside, his monthly living expenses are nothing more than the constant subsidy of 258 yuan from the state and the subsidy that his tutor can't give to 300 yuan. However, the meals in the school canteen are rising again and again. "In the past, the food in the first year of research was 4 cents or 6 cents, but now it is 1.2 yuan."

But this year, the boss refused to go out to work part-time, and the laboratory was too busy and had no energy, so he gave up part-time work. Therefore, "my little savings this semester were given by my tutor and teaching assistant last semester."

Compared with his tutor, the vice principal's project is more enviable. "In fact, others wear simple clothes and don't drive. However, he got a lot of research funds, usually tens of millions of projects, which are related to metallurgy, because metallurgy is the trump card of our school. "

Because the vice principal's topics in his arms cover a wide range. "If it is an energy project, he will find a graduate student from the Institute of Chemical Technology to do it together. If it's a bio-metallurgical project, you have to find someone from the Academy of Biological Sciences. Therefore, his students are almost all over the school, and it is normal to count 60 students. " He is not the only one in charge of his laboratory, but also several of his assistants, all of whom are doctors trained by him. "His students are all in mass production. I have to pack several buses every time I take it out. "

Wang Yin, a doctoral student majoring in environment at a key university in Beijing, said that the current academic system of quick success and instant benefit has given birth to the growth of "project-oriented" tutors and "project-oriented" doctoral groups. Although the management of tutors and graduate students engaged in business projects in key universities is much stricter than that in ordinary universities, the pressure of national projects alone is enough to kill the research impulse of doctoral students. The doctoral students at the bottom of the ecological chain can't change anything but wait for the improvement of the academic environment.

Wang Yin told reporters that there are too many major national projects for the tutors of this university to cope with. They have no time and energy to work part-time outside. All the projects obtained by the tutor are reported to the college, and then the college gets 8% commission from the project. All the school resources and students used by the project team are free, and the project team members are paid.

"Mentors don't have to secretly pick up projects and rent offices outside. If they want to get a promotion or apply for a bigger project, they must also rely on the previously reported project results. " He told reporters.

Fang is a doctoral student majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology in China Academy of Sciences. In his eyes, due to the difference between scientific research institutions and universities, the role of students will be weakened a lot. "Many times I am an employee." He said.

"Academic innovation needs a good environment. Teachers have scientific research tasks, projects must be completed and articles must be published. Therefore, we must take the' short, flat and fast' route, and we are not allowed to explore freely, otherwise the research group will be dissolved. " He said. "Innovation takes time. In the current domestic environment, graduate students or scientists all aim at making a living. "

A graduate student studying for a master's degree at a key university in Beijing told reporters that he, like many people, insisted on a degree certificate in order to find a decent job because of the pressure of employment. "Our postgraduate living allowance is not high, and many master's lives have problems. What academic interests are we talking about? " He said.

The bottleneck of academic innovation is common among liberal arts graduate students. Many on-the-job doctoral students are crowded under the threshold of the same tutor, and academic collision cannot be formed under realistic conditions. Many in-service doctoral students often postpone graduation, but may not continue their studies after finding a job, so the tutor and students have never met each other from the beginning to the end.

A broken tradition

To this day, Professor Bai Zhidong still clearly remembers the date of his doctoral defense:1May 982 15.

1978 in order to solve the serious shortage of teachers in domestic colleges and universities after the resumption of the college entrance examination, the Ministry of Education set up doctoral pilot programs in China Academy of Sciences, China University of Science and Technology, Fudan University and other scientific research institutes and universities, and directly trained a group of highly educated intellectuals to become doctors. Bai Zhidong, a 56-year-old professor from the School of Mathematics and Statistics of Northeast Normal University, 1978 was admitted to the Department of Mathematics of China University of Science and Technology, and 1982 received the first batch of doctoral degrees in New China after the degree system was rebuilt.

"Originally, doctors were trained to solve the problem of teachers, but our tutor insisted that students write papers." Professor Bai Zhidong told reporters.

Bai Zhidong's tutor is Chen Xiru, an academician of China Academy of Sciences and a professor at the Graduate School of China University of Science and Technology, who is from Hunan. Teacher Chen not only personally sent students' papers to American professors for comments, but also urged these future doctors in China to pay attention to the study of academic monographs.

"At that time, in addition to attending classes, we had to read more than a dozen voluminous academic monographs. After reading it, you need to ask questions and conduct academic discussions. " Professor Bai said. "Today's students may not finish reading those books in five years."

In Professor Bai's view, the fine tradition of doctoral training has been cut off in some academic fields. Now, after the expansion of doctoral education in China, there are too many graduate students, and there are problems of mixed quality from students to tutors.

"We have heard that it is common for doctoral students not to do academics and projects in engineering fields such as computers and architecture." Professor Bai said.

Recalling the strict academic system of that year, Professor Bai said that the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences sent commissioners to inspect the study of graduate students many times, and the qualifications of tutors were very strict.

At that time, you must be a full professor-level expert who has made outstanding achievements in the last three years and can form an excellent team to be a doctoral tutor.

1982, Ma Zhongqi, Xie Huimin, Li Shangzhi, Zhao Lincheng, Feng Yulin and Bai Zhidong were awarded doctor's degrees together after the first doctoral thesis defense in New China. Except for Professor Feng Yulin, former director of the Institute of Software Research of Chinese Academy of Sciences and doctoral supervisor, who received a doctor's degree in engineering, five others received a doctor's degree in science. 1983 On February 27th, the conferring conference of six doctorates was held in the Great Hall of the People.

"At that time, a tutor said that it was hard to say whether the future doctoral students could surpass the first batch. Because the first batch of doctoral students know the difficulty of learning in difficulties, they cherish learning opportunities more. " Bai Zhidong said.

However, the living conditions of doctoral students nowadays seem to depend entirely on their tutors.

In contrast, Lei Jinjiang, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University, is lucky. He thinks that he has met a good tutor and there is a certain "coincidence".

"When I came to Peking University, I found that the teacher was particularly simple. None of the monitors on the table are LCD. I was particularly shocked that the teacher's drinking cup was still enamel, so I decided to follow him. I have always been glad that I met a good boss. " Lei Jinjiang said.

When the reporter told Jin Ye the story of this lucky doctoral student, he didn't show surprise.

"But today's society is so realistic." He just said flatly. Our reporter/Cui Xiaohuowen/Liu Yanping