comment: the number of undergraduate and graduate students is "inverted", the key lies in the quality of education
2024-09-19
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lanzhou university recently announced that the total number of graduate students will exceed the total number of undergraduate students for the first time in 2024. in recent years, the scale of graduate student enrollment at lanzhou university has been expanding year by year, and in 2019 the annual number of graduate students has exceeded that of undergraduates.
this news has attracted considerable attention online: there are more graduate students than undergraduates, isn’t this an inversion? common sense suggests that the higher the level of higher education, the fewer students there should be, but now the opposite is true, which has also made many people curious.
people cannot simply understand the "inverted" undergraduate and postgraduate enrollment as that there are now more postgraduates than undergraduates. from a national perspective, undergraduate enrollment is still the majority. according to the basic situation of national education development in 2023 released by the ministry of education: ordinary undergraduate enrollment is 4.7816 million, and postgraduate enrollment is 1.3017 million. this "inverted" actually only exists in some research universities.
in recent years, the number of graduate students enrolled by research universities has generally experienced rapid growth. in addition to lanzhou university, according to media reports, tongji university, shanghai jiaotong university, sun yat-sen university, nanjing university, etc., have all experienced the phenomenon of "upside down" between undergraduate and master's degrees. it can also be seen from this list that most of these schools are famous schools and are also recognized research universities. they have more master's and doctoral programs, so they are naturally likely to enroll more graduate students.
encouraging schools to develop into research universities is also the direction of current education reform. not long ago, the office of the academic degrees committee of the state council issued the "announcement of the results of the expert review and evaluation of new doctoral and master's degree authorizations", adding 831 doctoral degree authorization points and 1,924 master's degree authorization points across the country, a total of 2,755 new authorization points.
objectively speaking, encouraging more schools to recruit more graduate students will help improve the quality and level of education, and expand the possibility for everyone to receive higher education, which has positive significance for improving the overall population quality and education quality.
it should be noted that there are also many voices of concern on the internet - with the rapid expansion of graduate student enrollment, can the quality of education be guaranteed? can the teaching staff, hardware and other supporting facilities keep up? these concerns are not completely unnecessary. if too much emphasis is placed on quantity and quality is ignored, the postgraduate training of universities will be out of touch with social needs and the academic qualifications will be "devalued", which may cause a series of problems.
therefore, the "inverted" number of undergraduate and graduate students itself is not a problem. the key is to continuously improve the quality of education so that graduate students can truly learn and achieve something, and can demonstrate full competitiveness in future job hunting and scientific research.
at present, there are many policies aimed at improving the quality of graduate education. not long ago, the media reported that the extension of graduate school length has become a trend, especially for professional master's programs, where many school lengths have been extended from 2 years to 3 years. one of the important purposes is to improve the quality of education so that students can acquire more solid knowledge and application capabilities.
in addition, many places have also begun to strengthen the assessment of graduate students. for example, beijing announced in 2021 that it would increase the intensity of random inspections of master's degree theses in the next three years to achieve full coverage of professional degree, part-time, equivalent academic qualifications, and international students. its focus is also to improve the overall quality of graduate education.
therefore, the situation of "inverted" undergraduate and master's degrees in some schools is normal from the perspective of the development trend of higher education itself. however, we must strengthen the screening and assessment in the process, so that graduate education can show sufficient value and gain wide recognition from the society, and truly realize the original intention of improving the overall cultural quality and academic level of the whole people.
zhang shiwei, special commentator of the paper
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