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the number of graduate students in many universities exceeds that of undergraduate students. is this an inevitable result of educational development, or is it to ease employment pressure?

lanzhou university recently announced that in 2024, the total number of graduate students will exceed the total number of undergraduate students for the first time. in recent years, the scale of graduate student enrollment at lanzhou university has been expanding year by year, and in 2019, the number of graduate students enrolled has exceeded that of undergraduate students. this has attracted public attention.

last year, the topic of "beijing's master's and doctoral graduates surpass undergraduates for the first time" was a hot search on multiple social platforms. according to the "statistical overview of beijing's education development in the 2022-2023 academic year" released by the beijing municipal education commission, the number of full-time graduates from beijing's universities in 2023 is expected to be about 296,000, including more than 160,000 postgraduates, 30,000 more than undergraduates.

it is undeniable that the expansion of the enrollment and training scale of masters and doctors in my country has provided a large number of highly educated talents for the social and economic development of my country. at the same time, some issues worthy of attention have also emerged, such as the devaluation of graduate education, "high consumption of education", "high education and low employment" and so on.

according to relevant surveys, 80% of chinese parents expect their children to "study as a graduate student". at the same time, local undergraduate colleges in my country all have the need to offer graduate education to improve the level and quality of education. therefore, whether from the perspective of graduate school entrance examination demand or school operation, expanding graduate education is currently "welcome".

however, in recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about whether my country needs to pursue large-scale development in the development of graduate education. how many graduate students does my country really need? can further expanding the scale of graduate education guarantee the quality of graduate education?

in fact, if the quality of graduate education cannot be guaranteed, and the one-sided pursuit of expanding the scale of graduate education is undoubted, it will further stimulate the "college entrance examination" and academic involution, which is not conducive to cultivating innovative talents. lanzhou university is a 985 university and a research university, but there are also many ordinary universities that have greatly increased the scale of graduate enrollment in recent years. does this really conform to their educational positioning?

it is worth noting that as graduate education continues to expand, my country's postgraduate entrance examination has shown a tendency to "college entrance examination-like". for example, the number of applicants for the postgraduate entrance examination has soared from 1.649 million in 2015 to 4.38 million in 2024. the trend of "university postgraduate entrance examination" and "college entrance examination-like" for undergraduate graduates is obvious. of course, this is also related to the substantial increase in the scale of graduate student enrollment during the same period. according to data released by the ministry of education, my country's graduate enrollment has more than doubled from 645,100 in 2015 to 1.3017 million in 2023. however, the proportion of enrollment expansion is far lower than the proportion of the increase in the number of postgraduate entrance examination candidates.

obviously, if the scale of graduate student enrollment is further expanded, it is likely to intensify the "college entrance examination" of the graduate entrance examination, and many undergraduate graduates will set studying for a master's degree as their goal. many local undergraduate colleges organize undergraduate teaching around the graduate entrance examination, and the teaching of non-graduate entrance examination subjects is marginalized, which leads to incomplete undergraduate education. some science and engineering students have not even done experiments during their undergraduate studies. a large number of students are forced into the competition for the graduate entrance examination, which will result in some students who have passed the graduate entrance examination but have low overall quality and lack basic academic ability; and students who fail the graduate entrance examination will find it difficult to find employment in the job market due to their lack of employment competitiveness.

to further develop graduate education, we must put an end to the bubble of graduate education and the involution of academic qualifications, and reverse the trend of "examination-oriented graduate school entrance examination". for schools, it is necessary to promote all undergraduate colleges to provide students with complete and quality undergraduate education. for graduate entrance examinations, it is advisable to gradually promote the application review system, where students apply to the recruiting universities based on their undergraduate academic performance and the results of the unified test, and the universities will independently make admissions based on the undergraduate academic performance, academic potential and comprehensive qualities of the applicants.

graduate training units must pay attention to training quality. with the continuous expansion of graduate enrollment, it is not uncommon for a tutor to supervise dozens of masters and doctors at the same time. in actual graduate teaching and training, it is difficult for every student to receive the academic training that a graduate student should have. this has led to many students passing the two or three years of study, resulting in a bubble in graduate education.

in fact, postgraduate education is a "transitional education" in the overall education. the so-called "transitional education" is either a transition to doctoral education to prepare for doctoral studies, or a transition to job hunting to conduct professional training. the former is to cultivate academic talents, while the latter is to cultivate applied talents. however, how to form the training characteristics of master's education still requires further exploration by universities.

in addition, in the training of academic masters and doctoral students, influenced by the "academic qualifications only" and "paper only" evaluation, many universities assess and evaluate students based on the publication of papers, which is not conducive to the cultivation of innovative talents. many students are required to quickly produce paper results before receiving systematic academic training, which gives rise to academic misconduct such as quick success and instant benefits, as well as fraud.

only by strictly controlling the quality of training and ensuring that every graduate student is genuine can we eliminate the water in graduate training and promote employers to change their employment orientation and attach importance to assessing the core capabilities and qualities of talents.

written by xiong bingqi (education scholar)

editor/ zha zhiyuan

proofreading/ yang li