Chinese Doctoral Education Quality and Employment in the Context of Education Expansion

Like in many other Asian countries, doctoral education, as part of the World-Class University Project, has experienced rapid development in China, which is now number two in the world in terms of the number of doctoral degrees conferred (Shin, Postiglione & Ho, 2018). However, this development occurred in a relatively tight timeframe. China is a late starter in doctoral education, whose first cohort, at age 19, graduated only in 1983. In stark contrast, China’s neighbor Japan began its doctoral education as early as 1887 with the founding of the Imperial University in 1887 (Powell & Green, 2007). Even South Africa awarded its first doctoral degrees in 1899 (Herman, 2017).

In 1999, China implemented policies to rapidly expand its higher education sector, which was followed by explosive growth of doctoral recruitment. In 2015, China already recruited 74,400 doctoral students. This expansion of doctoral education allowed China to swiftly expand university faculties, while providing human resources for a burgeoning research system. But in the meantime, the quality of doctoral graduates and their employment became issues of widespread concern. Articles in this collection are efforts to study of the quality of Chinese doctoral graduates and their employment in the context of education expansion.

In 2008, given the extensive attention placed on the quality of doctoral education by academia and the society at large, the Ministry of Education commissioned a Peking University project team to examine the quality of doctoral education in China. The first article by Chen, Zhao, Shen and Cai was one of the results of that research project. They conducted a large scale questionnaire survey on doctoral students, doctoral supervisors and graduate education administrators, in order to analyze their views on the quality of doctoral education. According to the research results, the historical trends suggested the vast majority of supervisors and administrators did not find a downward trend in the quality of doctoral education. Generally, less than 10% of the respondents replied that the quality of doctoral education was on decline. But on another note, neither supervisors nor administrators were happy with the doctoral education as it stood. In particular, innovation capacity received the lowest appraisal. Only 29.7% of supervisors deemed doctoral students to have “relatively good” innovation capacity. The conclusions of that research were adopted by the government, and exerted significant policy impact. Since then, making doctoral students more innovative has been one of the key objectives of government policies.

After the Peking University team began its research on doctoral education quality in 2008 and published the results in 2011, the quality of doctoral graduates and the process of doctoral education have become popular topics in higher education research. The 2008 study was the first large scale questionnaire research in China. And this method has since been taken on by many scholars when analyzing issues in doctoral education. In 2012, the journal Academic Degrees and Graduate Education, and the Center for Graduate Education at Beijing Institute of Technology, initiated the Chinese Graduate Student Satisfaction Survey, which is still conducted annually. Based on this research, Li, Zhou and Huang use national time-series survey data to monitor the level of satisfaction by doctoral students and changes thereof. Between 2012 and 2016, doctoral students’ satisfaction on the following metrics are, in descending order, supervision, research training, curriculum and teaching, scholarship and subsidy system, administration and services, with a steady upward trend in the last three.

In the first half of 2016, a Tsinghua University education research team conducted a survey on the research experience of Chinese doctoral students at some institutions. The research drew reference from the UK’s Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES). Based on this study, Yuan and Li’s article analyzes the experience of Chinese doctoral students, especially their interaction with supervisors. The results show that, from the perspective of students, supervisors have far from met student expectations on encouraging academic aspirations, helping student entering the academic community, building self-identity and professional identity. This indicates that in the Chinese academic community, doctoral students are not given full membership. And compared with their American or European counterparts, they are given much fewer opportunities to attend academic conferences or deliver academic presentations, which is one of the challenges in the doctoral education in China.

Similar to Yuan and Li’s study, the fourth paper, by Luo et al., is also based on the 2016 survey. The authors surveyed doctoral students and graduates at six agriculture-related universities in China using the input-process-output development model (IPOD). A new insight from their research is that, by comparing fresh doctoral graduates with those having graduated 1–5 years ago, fresh doctoral graduates rate their overall education experience lower than do doctoral graduates, indicating that doctoral students’ recognition of their education does not decrease over time, but rather increases. Also similar to Yuan and Li, they argue that doctoral students want to have more opportunities to exchange academic information and communicate with their peers outside the university.

In the socialization process of doctoral students, student-supervisor relationship is the foremost factor. Shen, Gao and Zhao’s article analyzes Chinese doctoral students’ preferences and satisfaction with supervision systems, based on the 2008 Chinese doctoral education quality survey and data from interviews conducted in recent years. Their study shows that, in all disciplines, more than half of doctoral graduates prefer joint supervision. However, no significant difference is observed between satisfaction toward supervisors by graduates with a single supervisor and that of graduates from joint supervision, with the exception of in medical disciplines.

In the early days of the reform and opening up when scientific research professionals were in extreme shortage, graduate education, including Master’s level education, mainly served to supply talents to higher education institutions and research systems in China. According to employment statistics of graduate students from 30 universities between 1980 and 1987, in 1980 as much as 90% of stutdents went to universities and research institutions; the figure was still as high as 80% even in 1987. But as research universities saw their faculty teams gradually become crowded, employment for doctoral graduates diversified too, with more of them working in businesses or government agencies, etc. So in the context of employment diversification, what kinds of doctoral graduates prefer to work in universities? This question is analyzed in Zhao and Hong’s article. Diversification of doctoral employment is an international trend (Enders, 2002). Therefore, China’s case study may prove useful to others. Zhao and Hong’s analysis reveal that doctoral graduates who are female, or those with strong academic interests, or from families of lower social statuses, are relatively more willing to pursue careers in academic research.

Generally speaking, interest in doctoral education has only just been taken up in mainland China. Meanwhile, research on doctoral education in China in English language literature is emerging (e.g. Gu et al., 2011; Rhoads, Zheng, & Sun, 2017; Shen, Liu, & Chen, 2017; Yang, 2012), though still in very modest quantity. This collection of articles mainly aims to contribute empirical research methods such as questionnaire surveys, to analysis of doctoral education quality and employment in the context of education expansion. Doctoral students constitute the main source of faculty members, and are important contributors to university research. In higher education research, doctoral education and research training deserve more attention. We hope this collection of articles will further stimulate interest in Chinese doctoral education from the academia, and inspire more discussion and research.