Recently, the Ministry of Education held a symposium on the promotion of postgraduate education and teaching reform in the new era in Shanghai. At present, China has cultivated more than 11 million graduate students, especially since the beginning of the new era, more than 600,000 doctors and more than 6.7 million masters have been sent to the main battlefield of economic and social development, providing a strong talent guarantee for socialist modernization. At present, China is a major country in postgraduate education after India. Postgraduate education has played an irreplaceable and important role in the cultivation of high-level talents, the output of high-level scientific research achievements, the construction of high-quality disciplines and majors, and the service of national strategic needs. Therefore, we need to deeply understand the extreme importance of running graduate education well, and solidly promote the construction of a strong country in graduate education.
Postgraduate education is a strategic highland and important place in the great power game. At present, the high-quality postgraduate education system has become an important platform for developed countries to attract outstanding talents from all over the world, and countries are competing to recruit leading talents in high-tech disciplines around the world with preferential treatment. At the same time, emerging countries have also joined the war for talent with great efforts, and the global war for talent has entered a white-hot battle. According to statistics, nearly 77% of the more than 170,000 STEM doctoral students who graduated in the United States between 2000 and 2015 stayed in the United States. In 2022, the U.S. also introduced policies to provide more lenient green card and H-1B visa programs for foreign Ph.D. graduates in science and engineering majors such as STEM. In order to attract the best talents in the world, the United Kingdom** implements the Global High Potential Talent Visa, Japan implements the "Asian Talent Fund Concept", and the European Union establishes a blue card system to maintain the global advantages of developed countries in the field of scientific and technological talents. Some countries have adopted the strategy of "breaking the chain and decoupling" and "small courtyards and high walls" in an attempt to hinder China's access to its core scientific and technological fields and to hinder normal international academic cooperation and talent exchanges. To build a strong country in graduate education, it is necessary to give full play to the main role of graduate education in cultivating top-notch innovative talents, gathering talents from all over the world, and ensuring that there are successors to the development of the cause of the party and the country from the strategic height and overall height of the construction of a strong country with talents in the new era, cultivate a large number of strategic scientific and technological talents, scientific and technological leading talents, young scientific and technological talents and high-level innovation teams with international standards, strive to take the road of independent training of talents, and make greater contributions to the realization of the second centenary goal.
Postgraduate education is an important engine for high-quality economic and social development. China's economy has shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development, and the people's growing needs for a better life have put forward higher requirements for material culture, democracy and rule of law, fairness and justice, and a safe environment. According to the United Nations International Standard Industrial Classification, China is a country with a complete industrial system and all the industrial categories in the United Nations Industrial Classification. However, China's manufacturing industry is still at the middle and low end of the global value chain, and many industries are facing the problem of insufficient number of engineers and low quality. According to the research report of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there are still many key materials in China's new material industry in a blank state, and the import dependence on high-end special chips and other fields is high. This urgently requires graduate education to take the initiative to undertake the important mission of cultivating top-notch innovative talents and scientific and technological innovation, vigorously improving China's independent innovation capabilities, especially key core technological innovation capabilities, firmly grasping the initiative of scientific and technological development in their own hands, and providing a strong scientific and technological guarantee for the high-quality development of China's economy and society. According to the needs of building a modern socialist country, graduate education should innovate the education paradigm and governance paradigm, integrate education and innovation through the science and education system, promote the development of first-class and practical teaching, continuously promote the iterative advancement of scientific research paradigm, technical research paradigm and application and promotion paradigm, enhance the systematic, holistic and collaborative nature of graduate education governance, and promote the high-quality economic and social development of China.
Graduate education is an important cornerstone of the rise of great powers and national rejuvenation. In 2022, China's GDP will exceed 120 trillion yuan, and it is in a historic leap stage from a middle- and high-income country to a high-income country, and at the same time, it is in a special development cycle of gradually decreasing demographic dividend and changes in the supply and demand situation of land and resources. As a result, we are hungry for high-level talent and high-quality postgraduate education more than at any time in history. As an important field for developing the primary productive forces of science and technology, cultivating talents as the first resource, and enhancing the first driving force for innovation, graduate education must become an important base for cultivating all kinds of high-quality talents, a cradle for gathering innovative high-level talents, and a source of knowledge discovery and scientific and technological innovation. From the perspective of the construction of the world's important talent centers and innovation highlands, postgraduate education has strongly supported regional innovation and development, and the three major international science and technology innovation centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou have all entered the top 30% of global science and technology innovation clusters. Therefore, we must continue to increase the independent training and introduction of high-level talents, continuously accumulate talent strength, stimulate the innovation vitality of all kinds of talents, and solidly promote the construction of a strong country in education. Through the restructuring of the graduate education system, structural optimization, and evaluation reform, we will continue to improve the ability and level of graduate education to serve the major strategic needs of the country.
The author is executive vice president of Lanzhou University of Arts and Sciences).
China Education Daily, December 14, 2023, 2nd edition
Author: Wang Dingming.