The Trajectory of Chinese Doctoral Education and Scientific Research. Wanhua Ma. CSHE.12.07 (August 2007)

CSHE > News > The Trajectory of Chinese Doctoral Education and Scientific Research. Wanhua Ma. CSHE.12.07 (August 2007)

Dramatic enrollment expansion at the undergraduate level and institutional diversification are characteristics frequently used to describe major trends in China’s massive higher education system. A less understood phenomenon is the relatively new and rapid establishment of graduate level programs with implications for national economic development, explains Professor Wanhua Ma in a new CSHE affiliated study.

In 1978, she explains, there were only 405 higher learning institutions in China, including three-year vocational training colleges. There was virtually no graduate education and few Chinese within the country with advanced academic degrees. In 1983, for example, only 19 students received a Ph.D. degree from a Chinese university. .

As Chinese higher education began to rapidly expand at the undergraduate level, the need for qualified professors and researchers led China to open its borders to allow talented students to pursue their education abroad. Many Chinese students and scholars rushed to the United States and other developed countries for advanced knowledge and graduate education. .

As described in this study, the Chinese government launched the first of a number of reforms to encourage the development of graduate programs to change the face of China’s higher education system with substantial success. In 2005, total graduate student enrollment reached 364,800. In the same year, 27,700 students got Ph.D. degrees. .

Today there are 766 institutions offering master and Ph.D. degrees. These 766 institutions consist of 450 public universities and 316 research institutes. Currently, China’s Ph.D. enrollment is the third largest in the world after the United States and Germany. .

The quick development of the Ph.D. programs and large growth in number of students are part of a larger effort by the national government to increase China’s national economic competitiveness and to both retain talent and attract Chinese nationals with graduate degrees to return to a robust economy and growing universities and research centers. At the same time, notes Ma, Chinese graduate education is still in its developing stage, and it faces many challenges. There is a need to both increase enrollment and to significantly improve the quality of its faculty and academic programs with a focus on increasing the capacity of students capacity to pursue scientific research and their knowledge of other nations and cultures..

Wanhua Ma is a professor at Peking University and a recent Fulbright New Century Scholar..

For access to the study, see: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?s=1
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CONTACT: .
Wanhua Ma, Peking University.
hma@pku.edu.cn.
http://www.cies.org/NCS/2005_2006/ncs_wma.htm#biography.

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