Xiong Bingqi: Doctor's first country refuses "scrap copper rotten iron"

Source: Global Times

Georgetown University recently published a research report that china will greatly surpass the Number of Science and Engineering Doctors in the next five years, and in the long run, the U.S. economy and national security may be relatively weakened. Some American experts believe that this fact should sound the alarm for the United States.

As early as 2008, the education department announced that China had surpassed the United States to become the world's largest doctoral degree recipient. By 2020, China will enroll 1,106,600 graduate students and 3,139,600 graduate students. The number of doctoral students is also expanding, reaching more than 100,000 people every year. But quantity is not the same as quality. In 2010, the "China Doctoral Quality Survey" published by professors of the Faculty of Education and Science of Huazhong University of Science and Technology showed that 46% of doctoral supervisors supervised more than 7 doctoral students at the same time, and the highest was as high as 47. Nearly 13% of Doctoral students communicate with their supervisors less than once a month, and even 3% of Doctoral students report that they have not communicated with their supervisors. Under the influence of ideas such as quick success and short-term profit, "academic complex" and other ideas, there are "gold bachelor's degree, silver master's degree, scrap copper rotten iron is a doctor". In recent years, China's universities attach great importance to doctoral education and require strict quality control, but in general, the gap with doctoral education in universities in developed countries in Europe and the United States still exists. When European and American countries reflect on doctoral education, we cannot be satisfied with becoming the largest country in doctoral education, and we need to change from weight to quality.

In recent years, some colleges and universities have dismissed overdue doctorates, and public opinion has interpreted them as strict requirements. But in fact, only the doctoral students who have been unable to contact the school have long been dismissed. If China's universities usually have strict examinations, evaluations, and elimination based on examination and evaluation results, unqualified students will not be able to survive 8 years before being dismissed. On the contrary, if a student is still allowed to study for a doctorate in school for 8 years under the strict examination mechanism, it shows that he is not working hard himself, but "sharpening a sword in ten years". It generally takes three to five years to study for a doctorate in a European and American university, and there are many people who exceed this time. Pursuing a doctorate does not require "rushing to the deadline", but should attach great importance to quality.

The "Several Opinions on Further Strictly Regulating the Quality Management of Degree and Graduate Education" issued last year pointed out that the supervisor is the first responsible person for the training of graduate students, and it is necessary to strictly control the research work, writing and publication, academic level and academic standardization of dissertations. It is necessary to improve and implement the mechanism for the diversion and withdrawal of graduate students, and for graduate students who are not suitable for continuing to study for a degree, they should be triaged and withdrawn in accordance with the training plan as soon as possible. This requires improving the tutor system, clarifying the responsibilities of the tutor, and guiding the tutor to invest energy in the refined training of doctoral students.

There are still problems of "soil" and "foreign" in the training of doctoral students. The data show that 80.49% of the academicians of the "two academies" in China have studied abroad experience, 77.61% of the presidents of colleges and universities directly under the Ministry of Education, and 71.65% of the directors of the state key laboratories and teaching and research bases. However, some academics believe that there is also a problem of evaluating talents according to academic qualifications, and universities and scientific research institutions have given returnees more opportunities in talent training, use and promotion. After returnees take up more important educational management and academic management positions, they will continue to tend to pay attention to overseas academic qualifications in talent evaluation. Some master's students and doctoral students, for the sake of future prospects, will choose to go abroad to study for doctoral studies. In recent years, since the proportion of teachers with overseas doctoral degrees is an important indicator in school evaluations, some universities have also organized teachers to go to overseas universities to "quickly" doctorate. As higher education enters the era of popularization, it is necessary to shift from a society of academic qualifications to a society of ability, and when evaluating talents, it is necessary to break the theory of only famous schools and foreign academic qualifications, and attach importance to the ability of talents themselves. (The writer is president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute)