In refuting the reports that postgraduate study in China has been downgraded to undergraduate level, Yang Yuliang, director of the Academic Degree Commission of the State Council, said recently that such opinion is "mistaken". However, he warned that the government should be alert to the phenomenon that postgraduate students now devote too much attention to efforts for passing the entrance examination instead of cultivating a more rational structure of their knowledge, the China Youth Daily reported.

 

Previously, some media publicized a report headlined Postgraduate study has been downgraded to undergraduate level. The report questioned such trend by asking "Shouldn't postgraduates devote more efforts to conducting researches?"

 

Speaking recently at an opening ceremony held for the Postgraduate Education and Innovation Forum in Hebei, Yang said that the point made by these reports is "inaccurate."

 

"The training of postgraduates is, in essence, very different from the training of undergraduates. While the latter focuses on the learning of the basic knowledge, the former actually aims at cultivating students' innovative spirit," he said.

 

In 1982, China recruited only 11,000 postgraduates. By 2006, however, the number has risen to 344,000, about 30 times more than the figure in 1982. Some educationists are concerned about the expansion in postgraduate students enrollment, fearing that the quality of postgraduate students might become inferior. A few educationists even say that the quality of postgraduates nowadays has been actually downgraded to the level of undergraduates.

 

However, Yang, who is also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that the expanding enrollment of postgraduate students and the problem of these students being downgraded are two different concepts. Currently, postgraduate education has not declined to undergraduate level.

 

He said that the government should be alert to the phenomenon that undergraduate students currently only pay attention to passing the postgraduate entrance examination. In order to pass the entrance examination, Yang said, many schools teach their students only those courses that are related with the examination, to the neglect of the necessary knowledge in many basic fields. As a result, some students might pass the postgraduate entrance examination with high marks, but their knowledge structure is irrational so that many postgraduate students do not have the knowledge in many basic fields.

 

(Chinanews.cn November 29, 2006)