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recently, the topic of "the number of graduate students exceeds the number of undergraduate students in college admissions, causing controversy" has become a hot search. on september 18, education blogger zhang xuefeng wrote that it is very common for 985 project universities, as research-oriented universities, to enroll more graduate students than undergraduates.

zhang xuefeng wrote: "there are three types of universities: research universities, teaching and research universities, and teaching universities. as research universities, it is very common for project 985 universities to have more graduate students than undergraduates. this is the case for tsinghua university, peking university, fudan university, and jiaotong university. as an important scientific research center in northwest china, it is normal for lanzhou university to recruit more graduate students! i support lanzhou university this time!"

image source: zhang xuefeng's personal social account

on september 12, lanzhou university issued a statement saying that in recent years, the scale of graduate student enrollment at lanzhou university has been expanding year by year. in 2019, the annual enrollment of graduate students exceeded that of undergraduates; in 2024, the total number of graduate students on campus exceeded the total number of undergraduates for the first time.

lanzhou university said: "the university believes that the total number of graduate students in comprehensive, research-oriented universities exceeds that of undergraduates, which is an important step in building a high-level research university."

this news quickly sparked heated discussions among netizens, with some netizens believing that it was a normal phenomenon for graduate student enrollment to exceed undergraduate enrollment, and that “all research universities are like this.”

some netizens also questioned this: "compared with undergraduates, postgraduates should be more outstanding and scarce talents. now the number of enrolled students exceeds that of undergraduates, which makes people wonder whether postgraduates have 'watered-down academic qualifications'."

in fact, it is not uncommon for graduate students to outnumber undergraduate students in universities. according to the paper, in early september this year, the news that the number of new graduate students at zhejiang university of technology exceeded that of new undergraduate students for the first time also attracted attention.

according to the big data of the 2024 freshmen released by zhejiang university of technology, the school admitted 5,342 undergraduates and 5,382 postgraduates, and the ratio of postgraduates to undergraduates exceeded 1:1 for the first time.

in 2023, zhejiang university of technology admitted 5,231 undergraduates and 5,214 postgraduates, with a postgraduate-to-undergraduate ratio of 1:1.003.

in the same year, the topic "the number of beijing master's and doctoral graduates exceeds that of undergraduates for the first time" was once a hot search on multiple social platforms. in this regard, the deputy director of the employment and entrepreneurship guidance center of a beijing university said that this change has both advantages and disadvantages. on the one hand, it reflects the high level of talent training in beijing universities and the high value of graduates' human resources; on the other hand, because postgraduates are relatively more competitive and have more room for choice, their employment progress has also slowed down relatively.

specifically, in some local colleges and universities, the phenomenon of "inverted" numbers of undergraduates and postgraduates is not uncommon. for example, sun yat-sen university has a total of 13,779 graduates in 2021, of which 49.24% are undergraduates, 42.43% are postgraduates, and 8.33% are doctoral students. nanjing university has a total of 9,563 graduates in 2022, of which only 33.01% are undergraduates. among the graduates of xi'an jiaotong university in 2022, postgraduates account for 54.33%. (according to upstream news)