Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
You're listening to Roundtable.
I'm Niu Honglin with Steve and Fei Fei.
For decades, countries have invested heavily in engineering education.
Yet many still struggle with a familiar problem.
Graduates who are theoretically excellent but practically unprepared.
The gap between laboratory research and industrial production is not unique to China, but China is one of the few countries attempting to close it through a coordinated national system rather than isolated reforms.
What's emerging is not just a new training model, but a redefinition of how engineers are made.
Today, we invite you to take a look at the country's outstanding engineer training reform and figure out why it matters to you and me as well.
And it's Monday today.
We know Mondays can be a little tough, but we're here to give you that extra boost to start your week strong.
Motivational Monday is a segment where we share wisdom, stories and insights to power you through the days ahead.
Don't you miss it.
But just before that...
Today's engineering students face a double pressure.
On one side, industries demand immediate, job-ready skills.
On the other, universities still reward papers, titles, and abstract metrics.
Caught in between are young researchers asking whether years of study will translate into real-world impact.
China has been systematically tackling this mismatch through a massive engineer training reform.
Over the past three years, this initiative has seen remarkable early success.
Over 80 of its first 2000 graduates secured positions in their specialized field at leading companies.
This strategic national scale program provides a compelling reason why China is often referred as engineering state.
We'll talk about the engineering state part a little bit later, but let's talk about this three-year-old reform system or training model.
Exactly what happened three years ago and what is the results now?
Well, it's a coordinated national initiative called the Outstanding Engineer Training Reform.
So it was driven by some of the central authorities the Minister of Education, the Minister of Industry, Information Technology and the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Ministry Commission, which are all overseeing in different sectors of the society.
So the three work together and they sort of have this establishment of an organized committee, institutionalized and large-scale school and enterprise joint training system for high-level master and doctoral students.
So meaning this program is not only just targeting at, for example, vocational education, but more outstanding or high-level engineers.
Yeah, and they have some specific goals too, for example, in fields like ai chips and robotics that are key to economic and industrial transitions.
There's a real need and an urgent need for for breakthroughs, technological breakthroughs there, so the reform looks to train talent that can work on those breakthroughs as quickly as possible.
That's one of the big goals.
Also, they want to address the disconnect as well, that kind of long-standing global challenge where academic training often fails to meet real-world industrial needs.
You talk about writing papers for journals and things like that, as opposed to being in a factory or in a lab hands-on working with particular projects.
Yes, and that is very important and quite also a successful try for those students.
A student from Tsinghua University, one of China's top universities, said that when i joined the program i thought it would be a three-year you know the standard post-graduate study and uh, it turns out i already after three years.
I forgot i'm still a student.
I feel like an engineer in a factory because i spend most of of my time in a factory, and that is how practical it can be after joining the program.
So yeah, as part of the reform, there are actually 50 national colleges.
These are colleges set up within universities, really prestigious engineering universities like Tsinghua.
And there are also four national innovation research institutes and they are located in hubs like Beijing, Shanghai and the Greater Bay Area, which are also technological and scientific hubs in the country, so that students have the opportunity, the hands-on opportunities, to really test out their research topics.
And I think also very interestingly within this model, universities and companies and enterprises they can determine their student enrollment, their training plans, their research topics together.
So that is not just who has the upper hand in the design of these reforms, but our sort of universities and enterprises are on the same equal level, equal position, so that they can determine what matters for the real world.
So let's say I am 10 years younger and I am a passionate engineer who want to take part in this.
What am I looking at?
What can I expect that will happen in my future three years?
Can I also be 10 years younger?
I don't need the engineering aspect.
I just want to be 10 years younger in this scenario.
What can you expect?
Well, I think now what they're doing is they're creating a better pipeline for graduates to high-value jobs, and there's proof of that.
In the three years that you mentioned, Yehong Lin, this particular model has enrolled and trained about 26000 masters and doctoral students worldwide engineering, so it's a lot more comforting is that the right word for the students to know what kind of path they are on.
I was reading about the United States just to see if engineering students were dealing with any difficulties there, and one of the the hardships that they suffer is that there's an unrealistic outcome in their minds when they, when they get into engineering in the first place.
The example given was you know, a lot of young engineering students will be thinking oh, I'm going to be designing the next cool car or something like that.
Hands-on, practical.
And then they find themselves writing papers in a lab, designing things that they don't have any interest in.
And there's a lot of disappointment sometimes for engineering students but they don't have that knowledge of what types of career paths they could be on when they're going through their programs.
So I think when you have something like this happening here in China, it's just a lot more clear for the students.
Yeah, and that is the reason.
As part of this reform, they have these mentors, who basically come from enterprises.
Who is not within the universities?
Who is not a professor?
They're just experts.
Yeah, they're experts and they know what's happening in the real world and they know what the problem is.
So they can talk directly with the students and to see what your research direction can be and how possibly the solution can be.
And so we think also for a lot of these students, for example engineering master students they need to spend a minimum one year working in enterprises.
And for doctoral students, they must spend a minimum of two years in enterprises, meaning that they're not only sitting in labs.
Yeah, it means they're researching real problems in the real world to forge real skills for themselves.
Another thing that I think is just.
It makes so much sense, but enterprises are helping in the creation of the curriculum too.
Companies, different companies.
They've contributed over 10000 real world problems to From the industrial world, from the industry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's an interesting choice.
Could you help us with these, please?
But anyway, they're giving real world problems to these students for their curriculum.
And that is a source for students research topics and their thesis when they come up.
That's quite interesting and very important, because when you're working in a lab, you imagine the kind of problems that are happening in real world.
Now you do not have to imagine.
You can choose from the 10,000 real world problems and find the one that you're interested to cure.
And what happened here is that, instead of only recognizing papers as the results of their academic study, of their final, let's say project, they can actually use the one of these problems and solve one of these problems.
For example, they can improve the industrial process.
They can improve just one equipment on the manufacturing line, just like a medical student, if you're really talented, you can invent a operation, an operation or a certain surgery skill.
It can be named after you.
This is happening in the engineering world as well.
You can invite a certain procedure that can improve efficiency or eliminate pollution.
And any of those results can be a result you hand up to your mentor, to your teachers, as a result of your three-year study, with one year in the factory.
Yeah, and I think it sort of makes sense.
You know, it's not just happening in engineering, for example in journalism.
We also have this mismatch of what we taught at universities with what we really see as journalists or editors in the real world.
And often the case, we see these I don't know how to describe that how this this this, This gap between what we think as journalists and editors are the gap are the problems or the hurdles that we have overall in the industry with what's been talked about in universities by professors.
And I think with this platform, basically for them to be able to communicate with each other.
It's not just about mentors like industry experts talking with students.
It's also about experts talking with professors.
So that professors have a better idea of, you know, what do you need as companies?
So how should I alter my research directions?
You know these professors.
They have like, big teams of researchers and young students to help with the research.
And that can mean more than just these 2000 postgraduates entering into the workplace.
Entering into the workplace and working in the field of their study.
Yes.
Which is also important.
I found information.
This is from the Washington Post.
Now, this is old.
It's from 2021.
So I'm not sure if these statistics have changed or not, but they're still quite shocking.
The numbers at that time suggested that as many as 75 percent of those with science technology, engineering and math degrees the STEM degrees in the United States were Did not work in their respective fields.
75, that is a mind blowingly high number, and when you consider the fact that wages, they say, have gone up in the fields and companies are constantly seeking qualified individuals, but still engineer degree holders at that time.
We're steadily getting pulled into other industries and career paths.
So the perhaps unseen benefit, or maybe unspoken benefit, of having industry experts collaborating and companies collaborating with the creation of the curriculum is that you're keeping these students on the course so that when they're done with their studies which is the point is to work in the industries that they've been trained on.
And the cool thing about this reform or this particular type of education mode is that while they're studying in their field, they can already make progress.
We see the first 2000 postgraduates in engineering under this new reform have demonstrated already some outcomes.
We see, they produced over 2500 innovative results, including more than 300 engineering practice outcomes and 800 intellectual property rights, most of which have already been commercialized.
And we see this one particular case in the east china university of science and technology and this young engineer, i think his name is yen.
Well, this master, he is a young engineer.
He is called Yanshan Iwa.
He has already got or researched out a flue gas purification system and he helped design it, and it's already being used, being deployed at a thermal power plant in Lianyungang, with projected annual reduction of more than 4200 tons of nitrogen oxides.
So that's already happening.
They're not even graduated and they're already improving the industrial line.
They're already improving the manufacturing line in the companies.
And also, for example, in Tsinghua universities.
They are encouraging students have the channel to go to Yizhuang in Beijing to work closely with integrated circus companies.
So they can be part of the process from R&D to design of future semiconductor technologies.
That can be, I don't know, it can be not dreamed of like 10 years ago as a student in engineering.
And one thing that these engineering students are really welcoming, they're happy, they're applauding about, is the fact that they are looking at a possibility of choosing the outcome of their study.
Because previously, we have a five onlys.
I don't think it's a term or a jargon.
Well, it's more like a jargon.
It's what students or in the academia world would refer to as.
Yeah, the five onlys, basically meaning referring to that opportunity.
We are judging talents only by the number of papers published, their titles and awards held, or their academic degrees or their professional ranks or the number of prizes they won.
But the current system are encouraging quality over quantity.
They are rewarding true value, real-world impact, and practical solutions.
So if that was the old way...
Then that means that that what do they call it, the publish or perish?
Yes.
Where you have to put out a certain number of papers in some journals or whatever.
And we talked about that before.
I forget the topic on that particular episode of Roundtable.
But at that time we were talking about the pressure that it puts on the masters or doctoral candidates because they just have to focus all their time and energy on publishing as opposed to working on practical things.
So with these kind of going the five onlys you call them, with these going by the wayside, perhaps that publish or perish concept will disappear too.
It sounds really good, but we're only looking at the first batch of...
2000 engineering graduates.
If we want to expand it to the national level, to the national scale, if we want to use this kind of model to nurture more talent in this field, in all kinds of fields, any challenges we need to overcome, any potential problems we need to at least think about Well.
I think standards are the big one, because right now we are only seeing this reform being carried out in a limited number of institutions and universities, and most of them are pretty prestigious ones like Tsinghua University or East Science and Technology Universities.
But when it comes to a national system, when universities and colleges of different levels of different capacities come on board, what would be the standard?
The certification standard that can be used for quality control, for better communication between universities and enterprises can be a big challenge here.
Yeah, if you were able to establish national standards, regardless of the quality of the university.
You know, some universities will have better reputations than others, but if you can set a national standard, that will extend to the companies too, because they can feel comfortable Hiring from a number of different outlets, as opposed to everybody has to come from one university, like that kind of potential.
Yes, and that is why the country is working on releasing the certification standards for the training of outstanding engineers and they're trying to launch pilot Acceleration or the pilot zone for national colleges of outstanding engineers in different places, and that at the same time we see this I think it's this September at the Second International Conference on the Training of Outstanding Engineers six Chinese universities have signed agreements with eight universities from six different countries, including Spain Brazil Indonesia, to jointly establish six overseas colleges of outstanding engineers.
So it's not only China now.
We are trying to see if we can upgrade it not only to a national level but to an international level.
And Roundtable is here to witness all that progress.
You're listening to Roundtable coming up next, Motivational Monday.
Motivational.
Motivational Mondays from Neil Holland, Steve Hatherly, and Fei Fei.
So, is there anything we want to say to motivate our listeners, each and every one of us?
I usually try to tie my Motivational Monday to one of the subjects we discussed earlier on in the program.
And it was very challenging to find anything motivating related to mercury or thermometers.
So I found something related to engineering.
Have you ever heard this before?
Engineer your life?
It's a concept where you apply the same systematic problem solving principles that engineers do, like analysis and design and iteration, to intentionally build and or improve on your personal and or your professional life.
So what it means is.
Instead of just saying like, oh, I need to lose weight.
I really should go to the gym because I'm not I'm not feeling a lot of energy these days.
Well, the engineer your life.
Look at that, or how to apply.
That would be to number one define the problem or the goal.
I want more energy.
I don't have enough.
Do the research and analyze the data.
So the data comes from you, right?
So what time do you go to bed at night?
What are your pre bed habits?
What do you eat in the morning for lunch?
What time do you get tired in the afternoons?
Then, once you write all that stuff down, then you look for changes that you can make.
Okay, I usually have three cups of coffee in the afternoon.
That's too much.
Let me try to cut back two.
I usually have some candy in the afternoon.
Let me switch that to fruits and nuts.
Those little types of analytical changes.
And then they say make those changes for two weeks and make notes about the changes that you see in your energy levels and how you're feeling.
Then go back to your list, make more changes.
So you're looking at your life from an engineer's set of eyes, and but that's what it means to engineer your life.
That's an energy exercise example, but that could apply to anything.
Yeah, it sounds really interesting.
And in this day and age, you can easily use AI to design those things for you.
You can even ask it to ask you questions about your life.
Make sure your plan is comprehensive, and you can ask it to make adjustments to your daily routine as a way to slowly gradually, improve yourself.
AI is not always useful.
Uh, i try already.
No, do you remember?
Was it last friday?
I said like oh, i'm gonna go swimming every day.
Oh yeah yeah, i haven't done that once.
And i said to ai okay, so here's what i'm doing.
Here's my age, here's my height, here's my weight, here's my goal.
I'm going to the gym in the evening.
I want to go swimming in the morning.
Do you know what ai said?
Do not do it.
Oh, that seems like a lot like my buddy from university saying like no, don't do that, that's gonna cost you way more energy.
Interesting, but yeah, you're right, if you have put down, put your foot down, decided to do it, make a plan.
Ask AI to adjust that plan for you, make the plan better, more feasible in a way.
And I think it's fun because today, my Motivational Monday, also has something to do with improve your life in different ways, improve yourself in different ways.
I got this from a podcast i am recently listening.
It's from april mason.
She is an international speaker, best-selling author of the book identity switch and a frequent podcast guest, and she's talking about something you know.
You've all heard of the theory that you should listen to or notice the signal your body is giving you.
That is to say that if you feel very resisting to a certain scenario or to a certain action,
It must be, because something about it is wrong, and you might not notice it just yet, but your body has already noticed it.
And she's agreeing with that.
For example, She's agreeing with that theory, but she's saying instead of your body giving you signal, it is your body that probably is traumatized by your past experience giving you that example or giving you that signal.
Like like what?
Like she talked about meeting or dating two men because they're in dating stage.
And one man was very nice and tender and very gentle to her.
But she's just not feeling anything to that man.
But the other man was staying aloof.
Sometimes he replies to her call.
Sometimes he just digitally ghosted for a while, but she is very much attracted to that second man.
And then after a while she realizes because her past three boyfriends are the same pattern with man B.
That is not nice, not gentleman enough, not stable, not ready to make commitments.
So instead of choosing the wrong man the fourth time, she decided to try to Be with the first man for a while and see, maybe he's a good fit.
And it turns out after a while, after she intentionally trained her body to understand what is a healthy relationship, for a while she feels about the man positively.
Differently than before.
Differently than before.
It's the same thing.
Did she go back to the first nice guy that she broke up with?
Yes.
No, no, no.
She didn't broke up with him.
She just...
She was curious to know why she doesn't feel anything about the first man.
And that is not only for the dating world.
It's the same thing.
When an opportunity shows up, your entire body is rejecting that opportunity, telling yourself no no no no, no.
It's too much for you.
You cannot do it.
Do not follow that.
Try to accept it.
Try to see whether or not you can complete that project.
You can stand in the stage with the spotlight on you, but give a public speech without fainting.
After a while, your body would know what is actually good for you, instead of staying in the same loop, staying in the same traumatized feeling that's rejecting the good things that's supposed to be happening to you.
So for Steve, maybe swimming every day could be an option.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Do not take the AI advice.
Oh, can you be my new AI?
Fay-I.
Oh, Fay-I.
That's a nice name.
Trademark.
Don't steal that.
And that is why they say that once you choose who you want to be, your decisions begin to align with that identity.
And that is quite important.
So make sure you make the shift when you choose from your healed identity instead of your trauma.
That is my motivational Monday.
Hopefully it can be inspiring to all of you listening.
And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's topics.
Leave us a comment or send us an email to roundtablepodcast at qq.com.
Until next time, keep the conversations going and the ideas flowing.
I'm Yuhong Lin with Steve and Fei Fei.
Thank you for listening.
Bye-bye.
