As more and more people in China attend graduate schools, experts are raising questions about the quality of the education students receive, and some view the outlook as relatively bleak unless major changes are made.
　　
　　At the National Association for the Study of Higher Education’s 2005 annual meeting in November at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Xuhui campus), a task force led by Yang Jie, Vice Director of the Institute of Higher Education at the university, released a report analyzing the teaching, research and social services quality of 71 graduate schools directly under the Ministry of Education.
　　The report found that the quality of graduate education at China’s key universities is fairly low, and described the future of higher education in the country as “vague.”
　　“The question of graduate education today becomes more serious and it’s time for concerned departments and institutions to pay enough attention to such a problem,” Yang said.省略, the pace of enrollment grew steadily from 2000 to 2004, with the rate of increase among doctoral students averaging 19.5 percent a year, and the number of master’s degree candidates rising 23.1 percent.
　　The burden on professors has also been increasing rapidly. While the number of undergraduate students per professor rose 28.6 percent from 2000 to 2004, that ratio doubled for graduate students. On average, each professor advised an average of 7.7 master’s degree students in 2004, compared to 3.8 students in 2000.省略 showed.
　　Lu Wenbin, an associate professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Beijing Language and Culture University, said, “Today’s graduate education has embarked on a different path from the past. Not only students and supervisors, but also training methods, have fallen into a troublesome situation.”
　　
　　Decline in student quality
　　
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　　Fierce social competition forces graduate students to focus more on their own future. “Today’s graduate students, including those in science and engineering, have become more practical. What they really care about is money,” said Ren Jiyu, a philosopher. “This has led to the absence of their interests and ideal to knowledge, which is an important reason for the absence of outstanding people in recent years, I think.”
　　Lu said that like others in his generation, when he was attending graduate school more than 10 years ago, he was passionate about it and hoped to apply all of his energy to his research job. At that time, almost all graduate students were capable of guiding undergraduates, but he said most of today’s graduate students lack the spirit to do academic research. They often put more time into social activities, doing part-time jobs and studying foreign languages, but neglect their own field of study, and some cannot even complete the assignments they receive from their advisers, according to Lu.
　　Chen Lin, a graduate student at Peking University, said she is taking graduate courses in order to find a good job in the future. “At present, Beijing is full of undergraduate students. It’s difficult for those who only have a bachelor’s degree to find satisfying jobs,” she told Beijing Review. “Graduate students have more spare time, so we can do part-time jobs to earn enough money to live on, on the one hand, and take part in more social activities to accumulate social experience, on the other hand.”
　　Lu said problems in undergraduate education have also lowered the quality of graduate students. Originally, one of the aims of undergraduate education was to give students a certain capability to do academic research. However, employment pressures have made undergraduates focus on passing various tests and obtaining certificates while neglecting to cultivate research capabilities, thus leading to a lack of a qualified pool of graduate students.
　　Lu thinks the variety of sources of graduate education directly influences the quality of the students. Currently, there are many part-time and semi-part-time graduate programs. Some students in such classes have no junior college or undergraduate experience, so they have no capacity to do academic research and do not qualify for graduate education, he said.
　　
　　Elite consciousness
　　
　　Recalling his own experience, Lu said that in the past advisers to graduate students were mostly the elite of academia, experts in their field who had an outstanding capability for academic research and made major contributions in their area. Today, however, higher education institutions are not strict about the qualifications of their advisers, so some have no ability to direct graduate students and are unqualified to do so.
　　He said China’s higher education institutions and students lack an elite consciousness. “In China, undergraduate and graduate students should be social elites and China’s higher education should be a kind of elite education,” he said. Society has lowered its requirements for undergraduate and graduate students in China, he said, and the fickleness of higher education leads to a lack of elite students and professors.
　　The pressure of social competition has an influence on professors as well. Many of them have to spend a lot of time obtaining professional credentials and doing research, leaving them little time to supervise students.
　　“Because many advisers are always busy with their own activities, their students can only meet them once a week or even just once a month,” said Gu Haibing, a professor at Renmin University of China.
　　Xu Baowen, a professor at Southeast University, said that while the number of advisers has increased substantially in recent years, their quality has not improved, with many having no experience and ability in guiding graduate students.
　　Lu also contended that the “moral” level of advisers is declining. Some are irresponsible, paying more attention to gaining fame, he contended, while the plagiarizing of others’ articles also occurs from time to time.
　　Among higher education institutions, the phenomenon of graduate students, especially those in science and engineering, working for their advisers is quite prevalent. Completing the tasks assigned by advisers often uses up a lot of the students’ energy, putting unnecessary pressure on them.
　　“Graduate students are just cheap laborers,” said Li Shuang, who graduated from a science and engineering university in Beijing. He said it took half a year to complete a project given to him by his supervisor and he even worked on it through the night several times. “I had mixed feelings at the time because I understood that the project bore no relationship to my specialty, but I had to work on it,” Li said.
　　Lu said higher education institutions must act to resolve these problems, strictly examining advisers’ experience, academic achievements and character, and removing those found to be unqualified. Advisers need to communicate more with their students and tighten their management of them.

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