|
A book revealing several existing problems in China's current doctoral education was published by Zhou Guangli from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan on Aug. 24.
Research for the book, titled "Doctors' Quality Research in China," consisted of 1,400 valid questionnaires from respondents including doctoral candidates, doctoral supervisors, officials from doctor training units, and doctoral graduates.
Statistics show that 46 percent of doctoral supervisors are supervising seven students at the same time, and the most is 47 students at the same time. The majority believe they should supervise no more than six students at the same time. Zhou said that the students referred to in the research are doctoral students and do not include masters' program students.
The research also revealed that nearly 13 percent of doctoral students communicate with their tutors less than once a month, and 3 percent of them even have never communicated with their tutors.
In 2008, China's number of doctorates awarded overtook that of the United States and has become the largest doctorate-granting country. In 2009, there were about 246,000 doctoral candidates nationwide, and there are 62,000 doctoral candidates to be enrolled in 2010.
Zhou believes that the rapidly growing number of doctoral candidates in China signifies the great development of higher education. However, it may also lead to the decline of the educational level and academic quality of doctoral candidates. The quality of doctoral candidates has aroused attention among relevant national departments.
The research showed that 50 percent of employment units believe there is no progress in the training of doctorates in the past 10 years, and there is "even a trend of decline." Furthermore, 68 percent chose "ordinary" or "bad" when evaluating the newly-employed doctorates' innovation abilities.
Zhou said that the doctorate failure rate of foreign first-class universities may be as high as 40 percent, while China adopts the "stringent entry, lenient exit" policy. He added that without an elimination mechanism, there is no quality guarantee.
|
