Once the figure was published, it immediately touched people's sensitive nerves about "academic expansion".
Many netizens said that the domestic academic qualifications have seriously depreciated, "the volume is vast and the undergraduate course is worthless", "all take-away jobs will be master students and doctoral students in the future", "Now it is a society with a large number of students per capita" and so on.
So, is "everyone has a lot of knowledge" a common phenomenon? Is continuous learning an inevitable trend of social development?
It is not unusual for Beijing to "hang upside down"
In fact, from the data point of view, in 2020, Beijing expects that the number of graduate students will be more than that of undergraduates, but from the actual number of graduates, undergraduates still account for a relatively large proportion, which is because graduate students live in a considerable proportion of delayed graduation.
Therefore, as far as Beijing is concerned, it is not surprising that the number of graduate students exceeds that of undergraduates, 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.
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 there is a "surplus" of graduate students in China.
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.
In another important university, Shanghai, the number of graduate students is not equal to the number of undergraduate students, but the gap is narrowing: 202 1, and the number of undergraduate students is about 1.9 times that of graduate students, which is close to the ratio of Beijing 1.43; In contrast, there is still a gap of 4. 17 times between graduate students and undergraduate students in Guangzhou 202 1.
Double first-class key universities have a high proportion of graduate studies.
A very important reason why the number of master's and doctoral graduates in Beijing and Shanghai exceeds that of undergraduates is that the "double-class" key universities in these two places are relatively concentrated.
Take Shanghai as an example. 20021Among the nearly 30 universities in Shanghai, 8 universities have more graduate students than undergraduates, all of which are "double-class" universities. Among them, the total number of master's and doctoral graduates of Fudan University reached 6,829, which was 2. 12 times that of undergraduate graduates. The number of graduates from Jiaotong University and Tongji University is also 1.45 and 1.55 times that of undergraduates respectively.
This phenomenon has not appeared in these two years. After the resumption of diplomatic relations in Beiqing, the number of graduate students exceeded that of undergraduates 10 years ago.
For example, in 20 13, the number of graduate students in Tsinghua University was 1. 14 times that of undergraduates, but in 2022, the proportion rose to 1.5, and the growth rate of graduate students (35.57%) far exceeded that of undergraduates (3.2%). In 20 13 years, the number of graduate students in Fudan University is 1. 17 times that of undergraduates, and if doctoral graduates are added, the proportion will reach 1.67 times. Moreover, the gap between the two is widening year by year.
The number of graduate students in East China Normal University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine also exceeded that of undergraduates at 20 15, 20 17 and 20 18.
However, the double-non-universities still maintain the situation of undergraduate graduation. For example, in 2022, there were 2,493 undergraduate graduates and only 864 graduate students in north china university of technology.
This is because, compared with ordinary colleges and universities, key colleges and universities have more degree-awarding points, and at the same time, the number of students enrolled in a single awarding point is also more. This also leads to more convenience and stronger willingness of students in key universities to study in graduate schools.
For example, in the master's enrollment plan of Shanghai Jiaotong University in 2022, about 40% of the places are exam-free students. Among them, many majors, such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering, astronomy, Chinese language and literature, are only selected from the students who are exempt from the examination. Students who are not exempt from exams will also go abroad for postgraduate study. "Only when these two people fail will they choose to work in gap." Jony J, a senior majoring in economics at a key university in Shanghai, said that the environment made people naturally choose to continue their studies.
Beijing and Shanghai are two cities with the most concentrated educational resources in China, especially Beijing, where the number of 985, 2 1 1 colleges and universities accounts for 20.5% and 23.2% of the national total respectively, and the proportion of graduate students is naturally more advantageous.
Undeniably, even in non-universities, compared with undergraduates, the number of graduate students is growing rapidly, with an average growth rate of about 10.88% in the last five years.
The enrollment expansion of graduate students in China began at 1999. In order to realize the popularization development strategy of China's higher education, the Ministry of Education put forward in "Several Opinions on Strengthening and Improving Postgraduate Training" that postgraduate students should be trained with wide caliber and the proportion of applied postgraduate students should be expanded. Nationally, the number of graduate students registered in China has doubled in the past decade. Compared with 20 12, the number of graduate students enrolled in 2022 increased by 1 10.7%, reaching 1242500. However, undergraduate enrollment is relatively slow.
The ratio of doctoral students to students is much lower than that of developed countries in Europe and America.
From a global perspective, the increase in the number of highly educated people is an inevitable trend of economic and social development. In terms of relative scale, there is still a significant gap between China and European and American countries, and even with neighboring Japanese and Korean countries.
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. According to oecd statistics, in the past eight years, the number of undergraduate and graduate students in the United States has increased year by year. The number of graduate students in 20 18 exceeded 1 10,000, but both of them remained at around 1.9: 1, similar to the graduation situation in Shanghai in 20021year. Japan's ratio is extremely stable, and it has remained at around 1.7: 1 for eight years.
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.
"Talent shortage" in scientific research units
From the demand side of the job market, it is also difficult to draw the conclusion that the supply of graduate students exceeds demand. 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%.
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 "talent shortage" of employers and "employment difficulty" of graduates is also 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 key problems such as industrial development "stuck in the neck" 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 graduates' high-quality employment is still an important proposition to be solved urgently.