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author: xiong bingqi

dean of 21st century education research institute

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.

in addition, according to incomplete statistics, at the start of the 2024 school year, the number of new graduate students at many 985 universities has exceeded 10,000; at least 53 "double first-class" universities have more new graduate students than undergraduates.

in addition, the total number of graduate students in 2024 at wuhan university and tsinghua university is over 9,000; the total number of new graduate students at nanjing university, southwest university, central south university, tianjin university, tongji university, xiamen university, south china university of technology and beijing institute of technology is all over 8,000.

the topic of graduate student enrollment exceeding the number of undergraduate students has once again become a hot topic.

china's graduate education has expanded eightfold in 20 years

quality is the "lifeline" of doctoral education. at the brics governance seminar and humanities exchange forum held in the first half of this year, professor zhang zhongxiang, dean of the ma yinchu school of economics at tianjin university, suggested that we should not blindly expand the number of doctoral students to solve employment problems.

professor zhang zhongxiang pointed out that blindly expanding the number of doctoral students to solve the employment problem not only seriously affects the quality of doctoral student training, but also further exacerbates the degree of internal circulation. the unreasonable evaluation mechanism also makes it difficult for doctoral students and young scholars who are struggling to survive to settle down and produce real scientific research results that can only be achieved by sitting on the bench for many years.

according to the national statistical bulletin on education development released by the ministry of education, in 2000, higher education enrolled a total of 3.7676 million undergraduate and higher vocational (junior college) students, and 128,500 graduate students, including 25,100 doctoral students; by 2021, my country's ordinary undergraduate, vocational undergraduate, and higher vocational (junior college) programs enrolled a total of 10.0132 million students, and 1.1765 million graduate students, including 125,800 doctoral students.

according to this calculation, in the past 20 years, my country's undergraduate education has expanded by 1.66 times, graduate education has expanded by 8.16 times, and doctoral education has expanded by 4.01 times. it can be seen that graduate education is the stage of education with the largest expansion, and the expansion of doctoral education is second only to the expansion of master's education.

the question is, how much of the expansion of graduate and doctoral education is based on the development of graduate and doctoral education itself and on meeting society's demand for master's and doctoral talents?

judging from the development of graduate education over the past 20 years, the expansion of master's and doctoral education may have two major problems:meeting the demand for academic qualifications exceeds meeting the society's demand for talent, and using graduate education as a "reservoir" to solve the employment difficulties of undergraduate graduates.

the tendency of excessive expansion of postgraduate education has led to the devaluation of academic qualifications and the phenomenon of “high consumption of academic qualifications”.

factors driving the expansion of graduate student enrollment

first, my country's universities have an "internal need" to develop postgraduate education and improve the level of school education.

not only do 985 universities pursue the scale of graduate education that exceeds that of undergraduate education, and regard the development of graduate education as an important measure to "raise the level", but even local undergraduate colleges are also wholeheartedly pursuing the application for master's and doctoral programs, and equate offering master's and doctoral education with building a high-quality education system.

according to the "statistical overview of beijing's education development in the 2022-2023 academic year" recently released by the beijing municipal education commission, the number of full-time graduates from beijing universities in 2023 is expected to be about 296,000, including more than 160,000 postgraduates, 30,000 more than undergraduates.

this year, tsinghua university has less than 3,800 undergraduates and nearly 10,000 postgraduates. a similar situation has also occurred in shanghai, which has many key universities. tongji university will have about 4,400 undergraduate graduates and about 6,500 master and doctoral graduates in 2023; shanghai jiaotong university will have 3,928 undergraduate graduates in 2022, and the number of postgraduates is as high as 6,422. fudan university will have 15,651 freshmen in 2022, of which 74% are doctoral and master's students, and only 4,120 undergraduates, accounting for about 26%.

this is related to the educational level of universities in beijing and shanghai. from a national perspective, the number of graduate students is still far lower than the number of undergraduate graduates.

however, local undergraduate colleges are gradually becoming the "new force" in the development of graduate education.in recent years, many local undergraduate college leaders have called for the vigorous development of graduate education. the reason is that although the number of graduate students in my country is considerable, the number of registered graduate students per thousand is very low. the number of registered graduate students per thousand is the number of graduate students in school divided by the national population (unit: thousand people) of that year. it is an important indicator reflecting the scale of a country's graduate education.

in 2021, this figure in my country was 2.36 people, while in the united states it has remained above 9 people in recent years, in the united kingdom it is above 8 people, in canada it is around 7 people, and in south korea it is between 6 and 7 people.

the number of registered graduate students per thousand people in my country is far lower than that of developed countries. therefore, even if we calculate it based on 4 registered graduate students per thousand people, let alone 9, the number of graduate students in my country will increase to about 5.6 million, compared with 3.3324 million in 2021.

however, this only considers the "similarity" to graduate education in developed countries, but does not consider the quality assurance mechanism of graduate education.

as early as 2007, yang yuliang, then director of the state council academic degrees office and academician of the chinese academy of sciences, pointed out at a forum that the current life of doctoral students in my country is "undignified" and he advocated improving the living conditions of doctoral students.

according to academician yang yuliang, the monthly income of chinese doctoral students was about 1,000 to 1,200 yuan at that time, which was far from the 800 euros per person per month in france and 1,200 euros per person per month in germany. this situation directly led to many outstanding students from families with limited financial conditions to find jobs as soon as possible after graduating from their master's degree, or to apply for scholarships to study abroad. moreover, doctoral students also found it difficult to devote themselves to academic research due to the pressure of life.

compared with the income of phds more than 10 years ago, the current monthly income of many phds in my country has only increased by two or three hundred yuan. however, the per capita disposable income of urban residents in my country in 2021 was 47,412 yuan, more than double the per capita disposable income of urban residents in 2007, which was 13,786 yuan.

in other words, the current income of many phd students in my country has not reached the level of per capita disposable income of urban residents. this is related to the expansion of phd education, that is, there is no corresponding funding to guarantee the income of phd students.

although the ministry of education requires all universities to establish a mentor funding system, some mentors themselves lack project funding, so they have no money to support doctoral students. relatively speaking, phd students in science and engineering have a better life, but there are also problems such as students calling their mentors "bosses" and bosses assigning students to do private work unrelated to doctoral dissertations. in recent years, conflicts between mentors and students have frequently occurred, attracting public attention.

second, there is a practical need to allow more postgraduate students to "land" and alleviate the difficulty of finding employment for undergraduate graduates.

in 2023, the number of applicants for the postgraduate entrance examination in my country reached 4.77 million, while in 2015, the number of applicants was only 1.65 million. in just eight years, the number of applicants for the postgraduate entrance examination increased by 3.12 million, nearly doubling. in this regard, many postgraduate candidates complained that the admission rate was too low and the increase in the number of graduate students did not keep up with the pace of the increase in the number of applicants.

it has to be said that the "examination-oriented postgraduate entrance examination" teaching method adopted by local undergraduate colleges in my country is intensifying the enthusiasm for postgraduate entrance examinations and "forcing" the expansion of graduate student enrollment.

the survey shows that in some local undergraduate colleges, more than 90% of graduates have signed up for postgraduate entrance examinations, and some majors even have 100% of them. all students in these colleges mainly study postgraduate entrance examination courses, and even if they pass the postgraduate entrance examination with very high college entrance examination scores, their overall quality is also worrying because they have not received a complete undergraduate education.

students who fail the postgraduate entrance examination will have a hard time finding a job due to their lack of competitive ability. graduates from local undergraduate colleges have become the group with the most difficulty finding a job.

how to solve their employment problems? the "reliable" way is to expand graduate student enrollment. this seems to be a happy result. more students pass the postgraduate entrance examination, more families have their first graduate student, more undergraduate colleges have higher postgraduate entrance examination rates, and more undergraduate colleges have expanded graduate student enrollment...

but,can the quality of graduate education be guaranteed? what should be done after completing graduate studies? following the idea of ​​solving the employment difficulties of undergraduate graduates, the only way is to further expand the scale of doctoral enrollment. this will only lead to the employment dilemma of "high education and low employment".

a high-quality education system does not necessarily mean a high-degree education system

my country is building a high-quality higher education system. we must have a correct understanding of the high-quality higher education system. a high-quality education system is definitely not equal to a high-academic education system.

each university has its own positioning. for example, many liberal arts colleges in the united states do not develop graduate education at all and insist on providing first-class undergraduate education.

in addition, in developed countries in europe and america, master's education is not a high-level education, but a transitional education, which is the transition from undergraduate graduation to doctoral studies, and the transition from undergraduate graduation to entering the workplace. the former belongs to academic master's education, and the latter belongs to professional master's (course-based master's) education. professional master's education is vocational education.

the "college entrance examination-like" nature of the postgraduate entrance examination has attracted widespread attention in our society. to address this phenomenon, it is necessary to guide local undergraduate colleges to be content with the positioning of vocational education and train students with an employment-oriented approach, rather than training students with an advancement-to-higher education or academic qualifications, and to improve the school's level of education.

the model of higher education in the basic education stage in my country cannot be extended to undergraduate education and master's education. this will not only lead to a disconnect between the talent training structure and social needs, but also make it difficult to improve the quality of independent talent training and cultivate top-notch innovative talents.

this article is an original article specially commissioned by the phoenix news commentary department and only represents the author's views.

editor-in-chief｜xiao yi