Experiences and Reflections of Graduate Education Improvement: Challenges, Strategies and Prospects

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Experiences and Reflections of Graduate Education Improvement: Challenges, Strategies and Prospects
Chair: Zhanjun WANG, Beijing Institute of Technology
Discussant: Gerry Postiglione, University of Hong Kong

Panel Summary
Since the implementation of China’s academic degree system in 1981, China has already transformed from a learner and follower to a global leader in graduate education. In the past ten years, more than 600,000 doctorates and 6.5 million master’s degrees from approximate 800 graduate education institutions went to all kinds of professions, and effectively promoted knowledge transfer, technological progress and industrial innovation and upgrading (Ministry of Education Press Conference, 2022). However, as a big system in graduate education, China still faces many challenges for further improvement from micro to macro levels. For example, there is a lot of room for improvement in policy making at the macro level (Wang, 2020), program mode at the meso level (Sui, 2022), curriculum teaching and graduate mental health at the micro level (Bao, 2022; Xia, 2019).
This panel on “Improving Graduate Education in China” aims to explore the realities and challenges of graduate education in China and explore the strategies to improving the system. There are a total of five topics together, including graduate education policy improvement, doctoral education improvement in engineering, graduate curriculum improvement, and improvement of doctoral mental health. The panel offers multi-faceted studies on the recent improvement of graduate education in China, reflecting on its experiences of improvement and providing global implications for building a more equitable, quality graduate education system.
Topic One: China is one of the largest graduate education systems in the world (NCES, 2021; MHRD, 2021; ME, 2021). In recent years, China’s graduate education policy development has drawn much attention from researchers around the world. To promote the diversity and comprehensiveness of graduate education policy study, this presentation focuses on the evolution and process of China’s graduate education policy since the 21st century from multiperspectives of rational and critical theories. It compares nationwide policies of graduate education between the U.S. and China, with literature review and empirical data to reflect on their experiences of policy improvement. This study aims to provide global implications for graduate education decision makers and implementers.
Topic Two: Doctoral education is conventionally a focus in training high-level talent in the field of engineering technology. China’s doctoral education in engineering started relatively late and faces many challenges in the future. This paper compares the structural characteristics of doctoral education in engineering (or industrial doctoral education), and commonalities and differences of doctoral education in engineering among different countries in terms of training goals , curriculum structure, teaching approaches, dissertation standards, industry-university relations and organizational innovations. In particular, this presentation analyzes the development of China’s doctoral education in engineering, key achievements, and challenges.
Topic Three: Curriculum and teaching are essentials of quality assurance in graduate education. For a long period, traditional curriculum theories such as subject-centered, student-centered and society-centered, as well as the traditional teaching theories such as behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and postmodernism have impacted pervasively on graduate curriculum and teaching. This paper applies post-modernist curriculum theory and teaching theory, surveys research universities in China and Britain as cases in terms of teaching objectives, process, methods and evaluation, and examines the commonalities and differences of improving strategies and effects of curriculum and teaching for doctoral education programs. It also critically analyzes the status quo and challenges of curriculum and teaching.
Topic Four: In the process of popularizing higher education, the number of doctoral candidates is increasing. As an important category of human resources, doctoral students face various challenges such as academic training, employment pressure, marriage, and/or parenting, which lead to many mental problems and even dropouts. Therefore, the emotional and mental health of doctoral students has drawn increasing attention from researchers and other stakeholders. This paper employs the datasets of the China Graduate Education Quality Survey and establishes an analytic system including various key factors to explore the impactful mechanism of doctoral students’ mental health. It proposes several important suggestions for improving the mental health of doctoral students.
Topic Five: Universities worldwide are rapidly adjusting to the changes brought about through internationalization and neoliberalism (Anderson, 2015). This paper explores internationalization policy from a comparative case study of two graduate programs in the field of education by navigating the program setting, internationalization policies, curriculum, and student experience. The comparative case study offers an example of how different internationalization policies are employed for a deeper understanding of the emerging systems. It fills the gap in scholarship by investigating comparative case studies in Canadian and Chinese graduate education.
In conclusion, this panel focuses on graduate education in China, with comparisons with such other systems as those in the United States, Canada and the UK, shedding light on global implications for policy actions. Improvement science is employed to serve as the overarching analytic framework to understanding institutional changes regarding curriculum, pedagogy, and students’ learning experience, etc. Additionally, researchers provide individual reflections in addition to tailored suggestions to institutional improvement for graduate education around the globe.

Sub Unit

• Educational Improvement SIG

Chair

• Zhanjun WANG, Beijing Institute of Technology

Individual Presentations

• More Equitable Graduate Education with Higher Quality: A Comparative Case Analysis of China and the U.S. - Zhanjun WANG, Beijing Institute of Technology; Yonghong Ma, Beihang University; Jun Li, Western University

• From Loose Coupling to Coevolution: A Multi-Case Study of Engineering Doctoral Programs - Weifeng QIAO, Institute of Education, Tsinghua University

• Improvement for Curriculum and Teaching for Doctoral Program in Education: A Comparative Analysis of Research Universities in China and the UK - Lang Chang; Zehui Zhang, Beijing Institute of Technology

• Social Support, Academic Integration and Doctoral Students' Mental Health - wenqin shen, Graduate School of Education, Peking University; Haotian Xu; Jiayi Lyu, Peking Univeristy

• Comparative Case Studies of Graduate Education Responding to Internationalization Policies - Tian Liu, Western University, Faculty of Education

Discussant

• Gerard A Postiglione, Gerard A Postiglione