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the expansion of postgraduate entrance examination enrollment does not necessarily provide a second chance to "change one's destiny". on the contrary, it further strengthens the weight of the first major examination - the college entrance examination.

written by qingliu

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 number of graduate students has exceeded that of undergraduate students.

it is not new that the number of graduate students exceeds that of undergraduate students.

in 2023, according to the "statistical overview of beijing's education development in the 2022-2023 academic year" released by the beijing municipal education commission, there are more than 160,000 graduate students, 30,000 more than undergraduates.

according to common sense, the number of people should naturally decrease as the educational level goes up, but now it is "inverted", which seems a bit unusual.

some people worry that the depreciation of academic qualifications will accelerate in the future, and “the streets will be full of graduate students.”

but the reality may be a little more complicated than this.

01

from the school level, it is a common phenomenon for schools to have a higher number of undergraduate and graduate students.

for example, tongji university will have about 4,400 undergraduate graduates and about 6,500 master's and doctoral graduates in 2023; shanghai international studies university will have about 3,200 graduates in 2023, of which about 1,700 will have master's and doctoral graduates; shanghai jiao tong university will have 3,928 undergraduate graduates in 2022, and the number of postgraduates will be as high as 6,422; east china normal university will have 3,485 full-time undergraduate graduates and 4,139 postgraduates in 2022; nanjing university will have a total of 9,563 graduates in 2022, of which only 33.01% will be undergraduates; among the graduates of xi'an jiaotong university in 2022, postgraduates account for 54.33%, and so on.

online,many people are worried that this inversion will further exacerbate the depreciation of academic qualifications.

"graduate education is becoming very cheap," "academic qualifications are becoming less and less valuable," and "the academic qualification threshold for employment is getting higher and higher." in the eyes of many netizens, the expansion of graduate enrollment seems to have little to do with scientific research, but it simply raises the academic qualification threshold for employment.

picture/tuchong creative

this is natural. even in terms of total number, the number of graduate students has exceeded one quarter of undergraduate students.for many employers, a postgraduate degree is already the basic resume threshold.

in july this year, a university security department required a master's degree or above for recruitment, which was called by netizens as "security guards must start with a master's degree." even though the school said that the position did not exceed the normal recruitment scope and the position was more technical.

but there is no doubt that this is not the first time such news has appeared, and the mismatch is difficult to cover up. a job that does not require much technical content is only open to graduates who have received more than six or seven years of higher education. graduates are basically equivalent to a stepping stone to the workplace.

02

from these inverted situations, these schools seem to have a common feature - these schools seem to be pretty good and can be called famous schools. lanzhou university mentioned at the beginning is also a "double first-class", "985" and "211".

according to the basic situation of national education development in 2023 released by the ministry of education: 4.7816 million undergraduate students were enrolled, and 1.3017 million graduate students were enrolled. the number of undergraduate students is still far higher than that of graduate students.

so,to be more precise, it is not that the undergraduate and postgraduate scores are inverted, but that the undergraduate and postgraduate scores of good schools are inverted.

the reason is understandable. universities at a higher level have more master's and doctoral programs, so they are more likely to recruit more graduate students.

therefore, many universities are quite happy to see this "inversion", for example, they believe that "this is an important step in building a high-level research university" and "it is an inevitable trend of social development."

picture/tuchong creative

with the increase in the number of graduate students in prestigious universities, a new phenomenon has also emerged - discrimination against first degree. it is not enough to be admitted to a prestigious university as a graduate student. it is not enough to have a bad undergraduate school either. after all, there are more graduate students than undergraduates in those prestigious universities.

this has also led to a lot of news, such as "masters from prestigious universities were rejected because their undergraduate schools were not 211 or 985." undergraduate degrees have become a kind of "origin." a bad "origin" is, as one student said, like a stain.

the ministry of education once denied the concept of "first degree" in a public response, and public opinion also called for an end to this distinction, but there is really no way to prevent employers from doing this - employers will just take a look at the undergraduate school and reject the resume, so what way is there to intervene?

from this perspective,the expansion of postgraduate entrance examination enrollment does not necessarily provide a second chance to "change one's destiny". on the contrary, it further strengthens the weight of the first major examination - the college entrance examination.this is also the reason why the college entrance examination season has attracted a huge amount of social attention over the past few years. there is no way around it. in the current era of emphasizing "first degree", the significance of the college entrance examination has been enhanced.

the expansion of graduate enrollment has given rise to more opportunities for success, but it does not necessarily mean that the hard work will pay off. the large-scale expansion of enrollment has given rise to "discrimination against first degree holders" and may have made many people's efforts to pass the graduate entrance exam seem like a waste of time.

03

moreover, behind the "inverted" phenomenon, there are actually differences in training models and school levels.

the number of graduate students has increased significantly, and a large number of them are "professional masters". according to data from the ministry of education, in 2019, the proportion of professional master students in school accounted for more than 60% of master's students. tsinghua university has released data in 2023, and among the master's students, the proportion of academic masters and professional masters is 26% and 74% respectively.

from a general perspective, the training of professional masters is encouraged. but objectively speaking, professional masters are still often treated differently.

for example, not long ago, many universities announced that they would no longer provide dormitories to some graduate students due to dormitory shortage. judging from the policies of various schools, "some graduate students" are basically professional masters.

although in terms of training programs, in theory, some professional master's degrees are aimed at social candidates with work experience, their financial capabilities are theoretically stronger and they are more capable of renting their own houses.

however, in the context of the national postgraduate entrance examination, most professional master's students are full-time students, and their financial ability is not much different from that of academic master's students. this distinction made by the school has invisibly drawn a line between the two.

when applying for a job, there is also a contempt chain of "professional master's degrees are not as good as academic master's degrees", which has attracted media attention before. the ministry of education has also made a special statement that "the current concept of emphasizing academic degrees over professional degrees needs to be further reversed" and "academic master's degrees and professional master's degrees are equally important."

picture/tuchong creative

in addition, although the "inverted" phenomenon is currently concentrated in famous universities, it is hard to say whether it will not become popular in the future.

on july 31, the office of the academic degrees committee of the state council issued the "public notice of expert verification and evaluation results of newly added doctoral and master's degree authorizations", which added a total of 831 doctoral degree authorization points and 1,924 master's degree authorization points.

some media have found that most of the newly added master's and doctoral programs are concentrated in strong and famous schools in the non-traditional sense, and many "colleges" in various places are among them. some media even exaggeratedly said that in the future, there will be "weak master's degrees" everywhere.

to sum up, people can roughly see thatthere are more implications behind the inverted number of undergraduates and postgraduates, which may create more chains of contempt:

they are all master's degrees, but it depends on which school you are from; they are all master's degrees from famous universities, but it depends on which school you are from for undergraduate studies; these are all similar, but it depends on whether you are an academic master or a professional master...

04

from a common sense perspective, expanding graduate student enrollment will give more people the opportunity to receive higher education, which is certainly a good thing.

people also know that even if you have already obtained a master's degree, you still have to create so many chains of contempt and come up with so many things. it is really tiring and should not be like this.

higher education has its own logic, but education must be interpreted in the context of society as a whole. while higher education is advancing rapidly, if the job market cannot improve synchronously, it will inevitably lead to a negative squeeze.if higher academic qualifications do not necessarily bring employment advantages, it will exacerbate the internal circulation of education itself.

people must pursue better undergraduate schools, better graduate schools, better professional fields, more professional certificates, etc. in order to gain greater employment advantages.

moreover, people cannot ignore a more critical issue: academic inflation is not zero-cost. it requires time, money, and psychological pressure on students.

in order to study for a master's degree, people have to extend the years of education and postpone the time of entering the workplace; studying for a master's degree itself means a huge investment. like those masters who were kicked out of the dormitory, a master's degree is self-funded, and they have to pay additional living expenses; at the same time, students have to bear the pressure of exams, one, two, three and so on, which must be like a nightmare for some students.

picture/tuchong creative

this explains why, on the internet, few netizens seem to express much "excitement" about the news that the number of graduate and undergraduate students is "inverted". on the contrary, worry and anxiety seem to be the mainstream.the rising water level will eventually drag people into more intense competition, even if they are unwilling.

to change this perception, in addition to increasing the number of people, it is more important to make the investment in education "worth it" - after studying for a master's degree, there will be a return that is generally in line with expectations.

only then will some mainstream educational narratives gain greater recognition, and students who are busy getting a job or seeking employment will be in the mood to seriously understand the connotations of such mainstream discourses as “improving the quality of the population”, “improving the quality of education”, and “building a research-oriented university”.