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li yiling/text recently, the phenomenon of "inverted" undergraduate and graduate students in colleges and universities has attracted attention. the official wechat account of lanzhou university shows that in 2024, the total number of graduate students (including doctoral students) in the school will exceed the total number of undergraduate students for the first time. not only lanzhou university, but also peking university, tsinghua university, university of science and technology of china, university of chinese academy of sciences, fudan university, sichuan university, university of electronic science and technology of china and many other universities have experienced the phenomenon of "inverted" undergraduate and graduate students. in 2024, the university of science and technology of china will recruit 2024 undergraduates and about 10,000 graduate students (including doctoral students); the university of chinese academy of sciences will recruit 430 undergraduates and more than 10,000 master's students. data shows that the number of graduate students (including doctoral students) in the university of chinese academy of sciences has reached 37 times that of undergraduates.

the reason why the undergraduate and postgraduate education is said to be "inverted" is that postgraduate education is the highest level of higher education and is at the top of the higher education system. in the minds of many people, undergraduate education is the foundation and main body of colleges and universities, and the number of undergraduate students should be larger.

in detail, the "inverted" undergraduate and graduate enrollment is not a general fact. the basic situation of national education development in 2023 shows that the enrollment of ordinary undergraduates is 4.7816 million, and the enrollment of graduate students is 1.3017 million. the "inverted" is mainly in the "double first-class" construction universities, which belong to the key minority. the "double first-class" construction universities undertake the training tasks of more than 80% of the doctoral students and nearly 60% of the master's students in the country.

the question that people are concerned about is whether the "inverted" undergraduate and postgraduate education will lead to an oversupply of postgraduate students. in the human resources market, the situation of "scrambling for academic qualifications" is becoming more and more serious. positions that previously only required undergraduates or even junior college students now also require a postgraduate degree. is the phenomenon of academic qualifications depreciation caused by an oversupply of postgraduate students?

judging from the proportion of graduate students in the total population and the demand for high-quality and high-level talents in industrial transformation and upgrading, graduate students are far from being in excess. according to a sample survey by the national bureau of statistics, as of 2022, the proportion of people with master's and doctoral degrees in the country is less than 1%. in 2018, 13.1% of the adult population in the united states had a master's degree, a professional master's degree or a doctorate. after the gross enrollment rate of higher education exceeds 60% and has entered the stage of popularization, it is no longer difficult to go to college, and the public certainly has newer expectations for receiving higher-level and higher-level education.

whether there is a surplus of graduate students depends not only on the scale but also on the structure. in recent years, the expansion of graduate student enrollment in colleges and universities has shown a clear trend - focusing on basic disciplines and key areas of national emergency. data show that in 2023, the enrollment scale of master's students in science, engineering, agriculture and medicine will account for 60%, and the enrollment scale of doctoral students will account for more than 80%. graduate education is aimed at national strategic needs, and has trained a large number of high-level and scarce talents in a targeted manner, which has strongly supported the implementation of the national innovation strategy.lanzhou universityfor example, in the past three years, the university has continuously optimized the adjustment of disciplines and majors, and added a number of doctoral and master's programs such as materials and chemical engineering, energy and power, and biosafety. the graduate students recruited by these newly added disciplines and majors in line with national needs have become an important part of the expansion of the total number of graduate students. it can be said that the expansion of graduate students on the basis of continuously optimizing the professional discipline structure will not have a problem of oversupply. in the new roundtechnological revolutionagainst the backdrop of the accelerated evolution of the industrial revolution, it is also necessary to steadily expand the scale of postgraduate education.

another issue of public concern is how to ensure the quality of graduate education while steadily expanding enrollment. this concern is not groundless. with the continuous expansion of the number of graduate students, the teaching staff has been under tremendous pressure. in reality, it is not uncommon for one tutor to guide more than ten or even dozens of master and doctoral students. not only the teaching staff, but also the basic school conditions such as dormitories are often concerned. because the speed of building dormitories in colleges and universities cannot keep up with the speed of expanding enrollment, many colleges and universities no longer provide dormitories for graduate students. it can be seen that how to solve the problem of talent training quality is the prerequisite for expanding graduate enrollment.

in 2022, my country will have 3.65 million graduate students, ranking second in the world in total size. china has become a major country in graduate education, but the problem of being big but not strong still exists. to solve this problem, on the one hand, we need to optimize the discipline and major settings, continuously enhance the ability to respond quickly to economic and social development, and achieve a more efficient match between talent training and the needs of social and economic development. on the other hand, we need to change the talent training model, reverse the concept of emphasizing academic degrees over professional degrees, and solidly promote the classified development of academic degree and professional degree graduate education. in particular, we need to strengthen the cultivation of practical innovation capabilities of professional degree master's students, so that highly educated talents can demonstrate the high capabilities required by the market in economic development.

(the author is a senior media professional)