Once the figure was published, it immediately touched people's sensitive nerves about "academic expansion". The topic of "a large number of graduate students will raise the employment threshold and accelerate the depreciation of academic qualifications" has aroused heated public discussion.
However, can we simply think that Beijing has exported too many graduate students, or that the scale of postgraduate training in China has expanded too fast?
It is not unusual for Beijing Benyan to "hang upside down"
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First of all, it should be clear that the situation in Beijing does not represent the whole country.
As the region with the most concentrated educational and scientific resources in China, the number of research universities and research institutes with the right to confer degrees in Beijing ranks first in China. According to the data released by the Ministry of Education in recent years, the enrollment of master students in Beijing accounts for nearly 10% of the country, and the enrollment of doctoral students accounts for more than 20% of the country. The proportion of graduate students and graduates in Beijing is also roughly in line with the above ratio.
It is no exaggeration to say that Shanghai, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Zhejiang and other coastal developed areas are unmatched in the above values. The number of students enrolled and graduates in some western provinces is not even as good as that of a top research university in Beijing. Therefore, as an educational highland, the phenomenon that the number of college graduates in Beijing is upside down does not mean that the number of graduate students in China is "surplus".
In fact, as early as 2020, the number of graduate students enrolled in Beijing has surpassed that of undergraduates, and there is a trend of widening the gap year by year. Therefore, as far as Beijing is concerned, it is not surprising that the number of graduate students exceeds that of undergraduates this year, but it is the general trend and has become a "foregone conclusion". This is also in line with Beijing's urban positioning and construction layout requirements as a national education and technology center.
So, from a national perspective, what is the situation?
Judging from the scale of postgraduate training, after more than 40 years of development, China has become a big country in postgraduate education in absolute scale. According to the calculation of the team of Beihang University Graduate Education Research Center, China's graduate education entered the initial stage of popularization in 20 19. However, in terms of relative scale, there is still a significant gap between China and European and American countries, and even compared with neighboring South Korea.
According to public data, in developed countries such as the United States, there are about 9 graduate students per 1,000 people, 6 in South Korea and only 2.2 in China. From this perspective, the scale of postgraduate training in China still needs to maintain steady growth.
It should also be pointed out that the proportion of doctoral and master's graduates in China is far lower than that in developed countries in Europe and America. According to the data released by the Ministry of Education, in the past 10 years, the proportion of doctoral and master's graduates in China has remained at around 10%, while that in the United States has remained at around 25%. Therefore, the scale of cultivating doctors among graduate students may need to be expanded.
From the demand side of the job market, it is also difficult to draw the conclusion that the supply of graduate students exceeds demand.
Taking enterprise demand as an example, in 2022, the R&D expenditure of enterprises in China accounted for 76.9% of the total social R&D expenditure. According to the data published in China Statistical Yearbook of Science and Technology, the scientific research and experimental development of China enterprises in 2020 (R&; D) The total number of employees is about 5.6 million, of which less than 420,000 have postgraduate degrees, accounting for 7.4%. The number of R & ampD personnel is only about 4 1 1,000, accounting for only 0.7%, which is far lower than that of developed countries in Europe and America.
It can be said that in China enterprises, graduate students, especially doctoral students, are R&; D the gap in the number of personnel is still large, but the supply side of talents is not strong. Take engineering, which is most closely related to industry, as an example. At present, only about 25% of engineering doctoral graduates in China are employed in various enterprises. As early as 1990, 59% of engineering doctoral graduates in the United States entered the enterprise sector for employment. By 2020, the proportion will reach 77%.
The "blowout" of high-level talents has "spillover effect"
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From the above analysis, we can see that the graduate employment market has great room for growth at both ends of supply and demand. However, in reality, the structural contradiction between employers' "lack of talents" and graduates' "difficulty in finding jobs" is very prominent. Among the graduates who have been employed, the problems of job mismatch, high academic qualifications, low job satisfaction, frequent job-hopping and high turnover rate are prominent.
Therefore, the anxiety of academic devaluation is not groundless, but to some extent reflects some outstanding shortcomings in the current postgraduate education in China. At present, the upgrading of industrial structure and the solution of the "bottleneck" of industrial development have put forward higher requirements for graduates' employment. How to improve the correlation between China's graduate education and the needs of social industries and promote the high-quality employment of graduate students is still an important proposition to be solved urgently.
According to "Opinions on Accelerating the Reform and Development of Postgraduate Education in the New Era" issued by the Ministry of Education in 2020, China will initially build a strong postgraduate education country with China characteristics in 2035. How to improve the quality while increasing and take the road of connotative growth is the key to solve the above problems in the process of postgraduate education reform and development.
In this context, looking back at the training of high-level talents in Beijing, there are more places to explore.
As the capital of China and the region with the most concentrated educational resources, the graduate students trained in Beijing not only serve the construction and development of this city, but also train and transport talents for the whole country.
According to the research data of the Degree and Postgraduate Education Development Center of the Ministry of Education, although Beijing has always been a popular place for doctoral graduates to find jobs, it is also constantly sending talents to other regions. In the past five years, more than half of Beijing's doctoral graduates have moved to other parts of China.
If there is no continuous supply of talents, local economic and social development will become a cook without rice. In the past, it was often rare for doctoral graduates to work in the west, and some provinces would give doctoral graduates from prestigious schools "super-standard" treatment. This is not only because it was really difficult to attract and retain talents in underdeveloped areas at that time, but also because the number of doctors was too small, and most of them stayed in first-tier cities with more opportunities, which led to "rare things are precious".
However, nowadays, the number of graduate students has greatly increased, and talents have begun to flow to the whole country after being "saturated" in first-tier cities, which has undoubtedly injected vitality into local economic and social development, and economic and social development will further enhance the training ability and attractiveness of talents. As a result, the orderly flow of talents resonates with economic development, forming a virtuous circle.
Postgraduate education and serving economic and social development are a chess game. It is undoubtedly narrow-minded and one-sided to focus only on how many graduate students Beijing has trained and exported, but not on how many graduate students it has trained for the whole country. From this perspective, the "blowout" of high-level talents in developed areas has a "spillover effect" on the central and western regions.
"Fudge" is not sustainable.
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For the central and western regions, the talent overflow in developed regions is both an opportunity and a challenge. How to "retain" and "make good use of" after "bringing in" is a key problem that needs to be considered and solved in the new round of regional "talent competition" in the central and western regions.
In recent years, in order to enhance their attractiveness, some regions and cities in the central and western regions have successively introduced a series of preferential policies for talents, raising prices and taking them as the key to retaining talents. As a "material basis", if the household registration, children's enrollment, treatment, welfare and other factors are not in place, it will undoubtedly lead to the dissatisfaction of imported personnel. And perfect health care factors can only play a role in eliminating dissatisfaction, but can not achieve deep-seated incentives. Incentive factors corresponding to health care factors are the key to retain talents.
These motivational factors include whether the job itself is challenging and valuable, whether the career development path is clear and growing, and whether you can gain a sense of identity and accomplishment from the job. Therefore, in attracting people and employing people, the central and western regions should not only "use their brains" on medical care factors, but also "work hard" on incentive factors.
However, the reality is that many local units not only lack incentive mechanism, but also fail to make a commitment to health care factors. For example, some local colleges and universities mentioned the benefits such as settling-in allowance when introducing doctors, but the talents did not materialize after they were in place, and these "foreign" doctors also lacked opportunities and channels for equal dialogue with colleges and universities and striving for rights and interests.
For another example, the so-called "talent introduction" in some colleges and universities is not a real demand, but an "attractive" "show". So-called youth talent forums are held to publicize their desire and sincerity for talents. However, in the subsequent introduction process, the bottom line of candidates was tested by constantly lowering the treatment, which eventually led to the disappointment of doctoral graduates and even missed the original employment opportunities.
The adverse social impact caused by the above situation has led to the subsequent graduates' strong distrust of relevant universities and even regions. Fame is the best business card, and such a "flickering" way of introducing talents is unsustainable.
In short, with the increasing number and proportion of graduate students in China, on the one hand, local governments should build characteristic industries according to regional resource endowments, forming a "real demand" for talent introduction and use and a "real platform" for talent training and development; On the other hand, it is also necessary to standardize the procedures and methods of talent introduction and use, avoid all kinds of chaos at present, and provide institutional guarantee for "attracting, retaining and using well".