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text｜peng pai (associate professor, institute of educational sciences, huazhong university of science and technology)

recently, the phenomenon of graduate student enrollment exceeding undergraduate enrollment in some universities has once again attracted public attention. this phenomenon has occurred in lanzhou university, a ministry-affiliated university, and guangdong university of technology, a local university.

in my opinion, the “reverse relationship between postgraduate and undergraduate” will become a trend in domestic universities, especially research-oriented universities, in terms of the number of admissions, the number of graduates, and the number of students on campus. currently, although only a few universities have more postgraduates than undergraduates, looking forward to 5 to 10 years later, the “reverse relationship between postgraduate and undergraduate” will become the norm.

in general, the "inverted enrollment of graduate students and undergraduate students" reflects the changes in the relative scale of graduate and undergraduate enrollment. in the expansion of higher education in my country, the expansion of undergraduate enrollment and the expansion of graduate enrollment were not completely synchronized, with the latter being about 4 years later than the former. although both expansions were needed to cope with changes in the economic situation and the labor market, the expansion of undergraduate enrollment was more concerned with the enrollment needs of high school graduates in the era of mass and universal higher education. this demand is relatively stable and highly predictable, and it is also easy to make technical adjustments to the scale of expansion through the setting of score lines.

in contrast, the expansion of graduate student enrollment is more concerned with the demand for high-level talents, such as the urgent demand for talents in professional disciplines. this demand is highly volatile and is often more closely related to the labor market demand for high-level talents. in other words, undergraduate enrollment should consider more "entry" demand, while graduate student enrollment should consider more "exit" demand.

in recent years, some domestic high-tech fields have had a more urgent need for self-cultivated high-level talents. therefore, research universities related to these science and engineering disciplines have been more prominent in expanding graduate enrollment, which has made the trend of "research-based inversion" more obvious. in addition, the current scale of graduate students in my country is still relatively small in international comparison and has huge room for development. by around 2032, when the population of higher education age begins to decline, "research-based inversion" will inevitably become the norm.

the ever-increasing academic requirements will gradually make the size of graduate students approach or even exceed the size of undergraduate students.

on the one hand, the general nature of undergraduate education is becoming stronger and stronger, while the professional nature is becoming weaker and weaker. the professional knowledge learned by undergraduates is often very basic and only "a little bit of knowledge", which makes it difficult to adapt to the increasingly high professional division of labor requirements of enterprises and institutions; while graduate education aims to cultivate high-level professional talents who can achieve knowledge innovation and practical innovation, so it is better adapted to the increasing demand for r&d and technical positions in enterprises. in the research of many r&d-intensive enterprises, the author found that the academic qualification threshold for recruitment in the r&d departments of these enterprises is graduate students.

on the other hand, some specific industries and specific positions will also increase their academic requirements for various reasons. for example, doctors, teachers, lawyers, corporate executives, etc. in the relevant documents recently issued in my country, it is required that the training of middle school teachers gradually focus on postgraduate level and implement a teacher academic improvement plan. in 2020, the proportion of postgraduate graduates among high school teachers nationwide was only 11.5%, and only 4.0% among junior high school teachers. this will generate a large demand for talents with postgraduate degrees. therefore, it is not surprising that some universities have "reversed postgraduate and undergraduate education". even some previously non-research universities will increase the enrollment of postgraduate students significantly.

it is worth noting that some popular views on the “reverse relationship between graduate students and undergraduates” need to be re-examined. for example, some people believe that the fact that graduate students outnumber undergraduate students is a characteristic of research universities, and that expanding the number of graduate students is the same as building a research university.

a previous study by the author found that when comparing 38 top chinese universities with 121 top american universities, the average number of graduate students in the former was far higher than that in the latter, while the average number of undergraduate students was relatively close. the proportion of graduate students in the former was, on average, 11 percentage points higher.

it can be said that the degree of "research-to-undergraduate ratio" in my country's top universities is far higher than that in the united states. this is a statistic from nearly 10 years ago, and it should be higher now. however, in terms of overall research strength, top american universities perform better than top chinese universities. therefore, the research-to-undergraduate ratio cannot be simply regarded as an indicator of a research-oriented university, nor can it be simply pursued as a goal.

in the above study, the ratio of doctoral to master's degrees awarded by top american universities is nearly double that of top chinese universities. therefore, if there is a quantitative evaluation index for research universities, the number of doctoral degrees awarded should be the best index at present.

as for specific universities, there are more factors that affect the ratio of postgraduates to undergraduates and the scale of postgraduate students. in particular, the mission and positioning of the university have a great impact on the scale of postgraduate students. for example, the california institute of technology, where mr. qian xuesen once studied, has a "small but fine" positioning, so the number of master's and doctoral students enrolled is far lower than the number of enrollments predicted by its resources. the proportion of postgraduate students at johns hopkins university in the united states is as high as 72%, which is closely related to its focus on high-end research in the medical field.

finally, what really deserves attention behind the "inverted relationship between graduate education and undergraduate education" is how to achieve high-quality development of graduate education. in the above study, the author found that the average r&d funding per graduate student in china's top universities is only one-third of that in the united states. however, r&d funding and the number of full-time teachers have a very strong predictive effect on the number of graduate students. therefore, increasing the investment in resources for graduate training, rather than just expanding the scale of enrollment, is of substantive significance for the high-quality development of graduate education.

for students who are about to study or plan to study for a master's degree, the undergraduate-to-graduate ratio of a university is certainly of some reference value, but what is more important is the academic level, strength and reputation for talent training of the graduate disciplines of the university of choice.