Research on the Realistic Dilemma and Cracking Path of High-Quality Development of College Counselors in the New Era

: Counselors are the backbone of ideological and political education for college students, and they are the organizers, implementers and guides of daily ideological and political education and management of students in higher education. Counselors should strive to become the life tutor of students' growth and success and the intimate friend of healthy life. Promoting the high-quality development of college counselors in the new era is an important institutional arrangement for colleges and universities to implement the fundamental task of establishing moral education, and it plays a role of institutional support for continuously improving the professional level and career ability of the college counselor team in the new era, and ensuring that the counselors have the conditions for work, a platform for officers, a guarantee of treatment, and a space for development.


Introduction
Counselors are the backbone of ideological and political education for college students, and are the organizers, implementers, and guides of daily ideological and political education and management work for students in higher education institutions, which is related to the effectiveness of the fundamental task of establishing moral education in colleges and universities, and the glorious mission of cultivating socialist builders and successors who are all-rounded in morality, intellectuality, physicality, and aesthetics.The Party and the government attach great importance to ideological and political work, and their concern for counselors as an ideological and political workforce further promotes the high-quality development of the counselor team.At this stage, there are still many contradictions in the high-quality development of counselors, such as the mismatch between the external orientation and the real situation of counselors.By analyzing the dilemma of the development of college counselors in the new era, exploring the breakthrough in the construction of college counselor teams in the new era, and cultivating a batch of newcomers of the times who have ideals, dare to bear responsibility, and are able to endure hardship and struggle, we can provide high-quality talent guarantee for the construction of a strong country and the national rejuvenation of the great cause.

Important guarantee for the implementation of the fundamental task of establishing moral education.
In October 2022, Xi president emphasized in his report at the opening ceremony of the 20th Party Congress that we should do a good job of education to the satisfaction of the people, comprehensively implement the Party's education policy, implement the fundamental task of establishing morality and educating people, and cultivate socialist builders and successors who are all-rounded in morality, intelligence, physical fitness and aesthetics.[1] Xi president, in his many visits to colleges and universities and his replies to teachers and students, has emphasized adherence to the fundamental task of establishing morality and nurturing people.This provides a basic guideline for the majority of ideological and political workers in colleges and universities, especially college counselors, to deeply grasp and consciously implement the fundamental task of establishing moral integrity.Colleges and universities should train college students to become moral and talented, all-round development talents.College counselors have an important leading role in the political thinking and value shaping of college students.Therefore, this puts forward higher requirements for the high-quality development of college counselors in the new era.Whether the counselor team can be built well and whether the role of counselors can be played well directly affects the quality of talent cultivation work in colleges and universities."The new era of college counselors should not only have a firm political position and correct political standpoint, but also have the initiative to use ideological and political education methods to cultivate students consciously, and even more importantly, have the educational concept of putting virtue first and casting souls to educate people."[2] To meet the above requirements for the construction of the counselor team, to truly implement the fundamental task of establishing moral education, and to promote the high-quality development of college counselors is an important guarantee.All of these documents provide guidance for the construction of college counselor teams.Therefore, promoting the high-quality development of college counselors is an important part of building a complete, efficient and targeted ideological and political work system in colleges and universities.[3]

An important link to accelerate the transformation of counselors' roles and responsibilities
The changes in the positioning, object and environment of college counselors' work require strengthening the high-quality development of college counselors and accelerating the transformation of the roles and responsibilities of college counselors.It is in the historical context of the increasing convergence of education, science and technology, and talent construction that the nurturing duties, management duties, psychological relief and career guidance duties possessed by college counselors have shown unprecedented intermingling and complementarity.From the perspective of role attributes, college counselors have to assume the roles of teachers, administrators and students' life coaches at the same time.As teachers, college counsellors shoulder important responsibilities such as ideological and political education and value leadership.As administrators, college counsellors have to ensure the safety of students' lives and properties in the process of managing and serving students' daily affairs, and play a role in the critical period of shaping students' worldviews, outlooks on life and values.As life mentors, college counsellors become an important bridge connecting school, family and society in the early adulthood of students, and have to play an important role in students' political stance and career choices.In terms of responsibilities, from the viewpoint of "auxiliary", the counselor team should be a good assistant to the party committee of the school, and actively assist the party committee of the university to carry out student work; they should be a good assistant to the teachers in teaching, carry out the construction of academic style, and form a synergy with the professional teachers in educating the students; they should be a good assistant to the students in learning, and guide the students to correctly understand the characteristics and importance of university learning, and clarify the development trend of majors, and to understand the importance of the university learning.To be a good assistant for students' study, guide students to correctly recognize the characteristics and importance of university study, clarify the development trend of the profession, and lay the foundation for students' independent study and development.From the perspective of "guidance", college counselors need to provide students with political leadership, ideological guidance, psychological guidance, learning counseling, behavioral instruction, employment guidance, etc., and become all-around educators.From the point of view of "staff", the college counselor team should consciously integrate ideological and political education into the new journey of Chinese modernization, and strive to become the constructor, quality inspector and service provider for the comprehensive completion of the socialist modernization of the country, guiding students to establish a lofty ideal, and consciously integrating the realization of personal value into the realization of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

The existence of fuzzy phenomenon of professional identity
For a long time, "college counselor" has not developed into a stable and mature profession with a complete system.In the "Dictionary of Occupational Classification of the People's Republic of China" formulated by the relevant vocational certification authority of the national labor and social security department, there is no single "college counselor" position, only a general one.", only generally included in the "college teachers" ranks.Although the Ministry of Education has revised the Regulations on the Construction of Counsellors in Colleges and Universities, further clarifying the requirements and responsibilities of college and university counsellors, their staffing and selection, their development and training, and their management and assessment, the Regulations stipulate that college and university counsellors are an important part of the teaching and management teams.It stipulates that college counsellors are an important part of the teaching and management teams of colleges and universities, and that they have the dual status of teachers and cadres, but compared with full-time teachers and management cadres in colleges and universities, the professional boundaries of college and university counsellors are not clear enough, and the "dual status" sometimes results in the embarrassing situation of not being recognised by either side.Therefore, the college counsellors of their own "nanny", "firefighter" and other miscellaneous trivial duties positioning, as well as their own career "young people's work", "due to be transferred", "limited space for development" and other occupational cognition, these perceptions have a direct impact on the college counsellors of the professional identity and self-identity, and to a certain extent, caused by college counsellors, self-efficacy declined, the deterioration of occupational stability.

The Weaknesses in professionalism
As a component of college teachers, the first link in the comprehensive development of counselors is the development of professionalism, so as to tap the intrinsic value of the work and stimulate the endogenous power of the work.Therefore, "counselors must have a deep theoretical background and theoretical literacy, and be able to use the latest theoretical achievements to guide work practice" [5].However, the current high-quality development of counselors still exists some phenomena that need great attention.In addition, the special nature of the selection and recruitment of college counsellors has created the development dilemma of "easy to learn but difficult to master".In concrete reality, there is no strict professional restriction on the selection and appointment of some college counsellors, resulting in low professional thresholds and professional barriers to entry into the position, and because the functions stipulated in the ideological leadership and professional standards for college counsellors involve a number of disciplinary fields, resulting in the fear that college counsellors may be replaced at any time [6].At the same time, counselors have diversified and complex disciplinary backgrounds, which is an advantage, but some counselors who do not specialize in Marxist theory, sociology, pedagogy, psychology and other disciplines often need to "start from scratch" in terms of professionalism and accumulation of professional research, which leads to a relative lack of research ability on issues related to ideological and political education.Lacking confidence in professional growth, their knowledge and skills are stretched to the limit when solving students' ideological and cognitive problems.On the one hand, due to the limited opportunities to study for higher degrees, some counselors have not upgraded their academic qualifications in a timely manner, lacked systematic continuing education and training, and had no fixed platform for professional research, so they were uncertain about the flow of work in different teaching faculties and occupational functions, which resulted in the lack of clarity in the professional belonging of counselors, affecting the professional development of counselors.On the other hand, subjectively and objectively there are promotion bottlenecks.The reason for this is that subjectively, due to the professional development and professional growth of counselors through the counselor to achieve expert transformation of the few counselors, counselor groups for this road can go through the lack of professional self-confidence, professional selfconfidence; objectively speaking, due to the limitations of the total number of establishments, the number of cadres and the number of titles in most schools, resulting in fierce competition for counsellors' positions and grades, the "double identity" and "double line promotion" are facing a real dilemma, which leads to counsellors' career confusion.

Identity identification of the existence of diversified phenomena
Counselors of teachers, cadres dual identity is largely determined by the counselor profession of professionalism and the dual attributes of the official nature of the counselor, and the nature of the counselor career change constraints on the identity of the counselor to determine the different weight of the two official nature and professionalism to form the counselor's legal identity of the different types, such as in the appointment mode of existence of the career preparation, personnel agency, temporary employment system, contract system, labor dispatch and so on.The ambiguity in the identification of the identity will affect the counselors' professional cognition and performance of their duties, leading them to express confusion and doubt about in what capacity they should perform their duties such as ideological guidance, and the different appointment methods not only cause a certain degree of confusion in the management, but also undermine the stability of the counselor team as well as the continuity of the counselor team.In 2020, the Ministry of Education and other eight departments issued the Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of the Ideological and Political Work System in Colleges and Universities, which clearly stipulates that full-time counselors shall not be employed in the form of labor dispatch or personnel agency.College counselors began to fully adopt the form of career employment, the historical legacy of the problem is gradually resolved, but for some of the non-career counselors, the impact of the past establishment, treatment, resulting in the obstruction of their realistic development, resulting in their ideological fluctuations, but also a certain degree of frustration with their work enthusiasm, which in turn affects the effectiveness of their work.Therefore, only by effectively guaranteeing the recruitment treatment of college counselors, can we solve the problem of college counselor identification and fully stimulate their work enthusiasm.

Define the selection and appointment standards of counselors
The Regulations on the Construction of Counselor Teams in Ordinary Colleges and Universities (Decree No. 43 of the Ministry of Education) and other regulations stipulate that "colleges and universities should refer to the treatment and guarantee of full-time teachers' appointment, and establish a personnel employment relationship with full-time counselors".And this cannot be targeted to confirm whether the candidates meet the basic requirements of knowledge and skills needed to engage in the counselor career.To this end, one should be based on the core competencies of the counselor positions and recruitment positions in the counselor team as a whole, to further refine the set selection and recruitment conditions, to create a counselor team "reservoir".For example, in principle, to set the candidate discipline requirements, clear Marxist theory, education, psychology and other related disciplines can only apply for students, according to the vacant positions belonging to the school, faculty (department) counselor team's existing professional structure, to further rationalize the setting of professional requirements, the formation of team members complementary effect.Secondly, in the assessment and selection process, we should strengthen the political leadership, adhere to the "combination of specialization and specialization" principle of configuration, according to the 1:200 ratio of teachers and students equipped with deep feelings, strong ability, quality of counselors.Ideological and political education is a sentimental education, college counsellors should be a "sentimental" educators, we should strive to adhere to the professional sentiment, to do the work of belonging to the profession have faith, learn to give themselves "to the negative to enhance the ability", we should strive to have a "broad-minded world, deep sense of family and country, enterprising sense of career, warm care for the students, and strive for the ideals of the strong heart".Counselors are students' intimate friends and life tutors, which requires counselors to have strong professional competence.Counselors should strive to improve their professional competence including the four competence indicators of professional learning ability, education and teaching ability, collaborative communication ability, and emotional support ability; they should continuously enhance the counselors' internal driving mechanism by constructing a mission-oriented internal driving mechanism, a coordinated external incentive mechanism, and a process-oriented long-term cultivation mechanism.Counselors should develop comprehensive qualities on the basis of solidly practicing their work skills.Counselors must consolidate the professional quality of moral education, and always maintain the endogenous motivation of lifelong learning; they should constantly improve their political awareness, professional skills and parenting level.

Improve the training system of counselor team
Counselors have many responsibilities, involving a wide range of subject knowledge, the development of counselor training programs should have a systematic concept.First, we should strengthen the awareness of career planning for counselors, stimulate the development of the internal motivation of counselors, guide counselors to establish career aspirations, prompt counselors to take the initiative to learn, and enhance the counselor's professional ability; counselor team management should be in accordance with the work duties of the counselor, the standards of professional competence and the actual work situation, the establishment of the training system of stratification and classification, and to provide external support for the enhancement of the counselor's ability.Secondly, we should pay attention to the effect of training.Higher education counsellors work with a lot of top-to-bottom work, a lot of uncertainty, and a weak element of selfcontrol.Therefore, the training method can be set up for their total credit system, using the total requirements, stage and flexible arrangements, counselors can choose online or offline training according to their actual situation, choose the time period after work to participate in training, choose the weak links in the work to make up for the short board, and choose their own interest in the topic to strengthen the expertise.Thirdly, it is necessary to have a firm grasp of the characteristics and features of different training targets, and it is possible to choose to carry out a series of high-quality trainings using modes such as classroom lectures, small-group discussions, team quality development, and case counselling, so as to increase the quality and effectiveness of the relevant trainings and to mobilise the motivation and initiative of the trainers.Fourth, we should improve the training mechanism to provide protection for the orderly development of training.In specific work practice, it is necessary to clarify the requirements for annual training hours for college counsellors of different grades, gradually increase the number of quotas for college counsellors pursuing doctoral degree programmes on the job, establish a systematic platform, and form a mechanism for two-way selection of college counsellors for on-the-job training, so as to improve the effectiveness of theoretical learning and practical training for college counsellors.

Optimize the evaluation effectiveness of the counselor team
In order to consolidate the effectiveness of ideological and political work in colleges and universities, it is necessary to strengthen the process management in the construction of counselor teams and improve the guiding role of evaluation and assessment.To this end, we should take professionalization as the goal, adhere to the results-oriented, and in the specific assessment, we should further standardize the work scope of counselors, clarify the job responsibilities and work boundaries of counselors, increase the assessment of counselors' political quality, moral character, achievements in educating people, learning and innovation ability and other qualities needed in the new era, and improve the professionalism of the assessment subject and the scientificity of the assessment process.The assessment process should be more professional and more scientific.At the same time, it is necessary to strengthen the synergistic role of various departments in colleges and universities, to strengthen the communication and coordination between the academic work department, second-level colleges, the Youth League Committee, the Organization Department, the Personnel Office, the Academic Affairs Office and other departments, to form a synergy in the development of professionalization and vocationalization of the counsellors' team.We should strive to strengthen the fine management of the work of college counsellors, set reasonable standards and ratios in the dual promotion channels of college counsellors, and ensure a reasonable structure of the college counsellor team.Establish a spot-check system in the daily work of college counsellors to provide motivation for the promotion and development of college counsellors.Carry out regular surveys and researches for the college counsellor team, listen to the opinions and suggestions on the work of college counsellors and improve the professional identity of college counsellors.In addition, the evaluation and assessment should emphasize the orientation, should be based on the nine tasks of college counsellors, the evaluation and assessment of the content and standards, to strengthen the weight of education and service users, peers, to avoid the administrative leadership of the evaluation of college counsellors, "one word".To quantify the evaluation indicators of college counsellors at different levels, using the combination of goal and process, qualitative and quantitative, routine and special work to evaluate, against the requirements of national policies and documents, firmly grasp the correct direction of the construction of college counsellor team.It should also give full play to the incentive role of performance appraisal, pay attention to spiritual incentives and institutional incentives, and closely combine the appraisal results with performance interviews, performance improvement, salary payment, career promotion and training, so as to give full play to the positive incentive role of performance appraisal.

Increase the security of the counselor team
Firstly, the rules and regulations on counselors need to be adapted to the new situation and updated in a timely manner, as well as the need for local education departments and colleges and universities to introduce relevant supporting policies to solve the phenomenon of "two skins" in the theory and practice of the counselor team's working conditions , and the programmatic documents on the construction of the counselor team have been updated, which point out the direction of the high-quality development of the college and university counselor team in the new era, and provide a fundamental guideline.Secondly, the education department has inspected the realistic ratio of college counselors and teachers of ideological and political courses, and urged colleges and universities to match the number of counselors on duty in accordance with the regulations, so as to provide personnel protection for the team building of counselors.However, there are still a few colleges and universities in order to meet the inspection standards, the administrative staff to the counselor position, in this regard, the university management can set up a "look back" inspection mechanism, prompting the counselor team construction guarantee mechanism long-term.Thirdly, as a new layout arrangement for the construction of the Civics Programme in the new era, the "Great Civics Programme" fully reflects the concept of the Civics Programme in the new era, which renews the concept, broadens the horizons and expands the pattern, and opens up a new situation for the construction of the Civics Programme in the new era.The construction of "big ideology and politics course" promotes the innovation and adjustment of the pattern of parenting in the ideology and politics course in colleges and universities, which leads to a change in the role positioning of college counselors, and also provides career space for counselors after the double-line promotion, so that they do not have to leave the ideological and political workforce, no matter whether they are promoted from management positions or promoted by the teacher's job title, but can continue the high quality development of the counselors.The construction of "great ideological and political course" promotes the innovation and adjustment of the pattern of college ideological and political course education, which also led to a revolutionary change in the role of college counsellors, providing a wide career space for college counsellors after the double line of promotion.Let college counsellors, whether from the management position promotion, or from the professional and technical post promotion, we will not leave the ideological and political work of the nurturing team, but also to change the current backwardness of China's relevant policies and the implementation of the situation is not in place.The construction of "great ideological and political courses" promotes the innovation of the pattern of education in the ideological and political courses of colleges and universities, and will certainly promote the high-quality development of the professionalisation and specialisation of college counsellors under the guidance of new theories, and lay an important theoretical and practical foundation for cultivating more excellent counsellors who are professional, specialised and expert.
for the construction of ideological and political work system.In 2004, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council issued the Opinions on Further Strengthening and Improving the Ideological and Political Education of College Students, which is a programmatic document for the ideological and political work of colleges and universities, and lays a solid foundation for the high-quality development of college counselors.In the same year, the Ministry of Education issued the Provisions on the Construction of Counselor Teams in Ordinary Colleges and Universities, which provided a systematic and comprehensive guidance for the construction of counselor teams in colleges and universities.In 2014, the Ministry of Education issued the Occupational Competency Standards for Counselors in Colleges and Universities, which stipulated in detail the occupational requirements and competency standards for college and university counselors.In 2017, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the Opinions on Strengthening and Improving College and University Opinions on Ideological and Political Work in Colleges under New Circumstances", and in the same year, the Ministry of Education revised the "Regulations on the Construction of Counselor Teams in Ordinary Colleges and Universities", which further clarified the requirements and responsibilities of counselors in colleges and universities, their equipping and selecting and hiring, their development and training, and their management and assessment, etc.The training of counselors should be included in the overall planning of the training of the faculty and cadre in higher education institutions, which is also a guiding document for the construction of the counselor team now.In 2016, the National Conference on Ideological and Political Work in Colleges and Universities, the National Education Conference in 2018, and the Symposium for Teachers of Ideological and Political Theory Courses in Schools in 2019 all favorably promoted the construction of the college counselor team.In 2020, the Ministry of Education and eight other departments issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of the Ideological and Political Work System of Colleges and Universities".In 2021, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the State Council issued further guidance.In 2022, the Ministry of Education and ten other departments issued the "Work Program for Comprehensively Promoting the Construction of Great Ideological and Political Classes" and other documents.
. The Ministry of Education formulated the Occupational Competency Standards in 2014 to implement the spirit of the Counselor Training Plan for Colleges and Universities, and the Ministry of Education revised the Regulations on the Construction of Counselor Teams in Colleges and Universities in 2017 to further implement the spirit of the National Conference on Ideological and Political Work in Colleges and Universities and the Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and State Council on Strengthening and Improving the Ideological and Political Work of Colleges and Universities in New Situations.Opinions on the Work of Colleges and Universities, and the Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Ideological and Political Work in the New Era were issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council in 2021