Recently, the Ministry of Education issued the "Opinions on Further Promoting the Development of the Classification of Academic Degree and Professional Degree Graduate Education" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), which is another major policy-oriented document on professional degree graduate education issued in recent years after the "Professional Degree Graduate Education Development Plan (2020-2025)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan") issued by the Academic Degree Committee and the Ministry of Education in 2020. On December 19, the Ministry of Education held a special press conference to further interpret the "Opinions", from the "Plan" to the "Opinions", the country in promoting the reform of graduate education, especially in the professional degree graduate education, the direction is clear, the pace is firm. More crucially, the Opinions set out the basic principles and overall objectives for the development of the classification of academic and professional degree graduate education.
According to the "2022 National Statistical Communiqué on the Development of Education" released by the Ministry of Education, in 2022, the number of graduate students enrolled in China reached 124250,000, an increase of 6600,000;365360,000 people, an increase of 32120,000 people, an increase of 964%。In May this year, the Chinese Academy of Education Sciences released the results of the calculation that China's current education power index ranked 23rd in the world, up 26 places from 2012, and is the fastest improving country.
How to steadily move from a "big country" to a "strong country" in graduate education, and how to cultivate outstanding top-notch innovative talents, the direction is becoming clearer and clearer. As a key part of cultivating top-notch innovative talents, graduate education is the core driving element of the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education, the strategy of strengthening the country with talents, and the strategy of innovation-driven development. Only by making contributions can we further improve the training quality of top-notch innovative talents, build a high-level talent training system with Chinese characteristics, and highlight the support and contribution of graduate education to high-quality development.
The Catalogue of Graduate Education Disciplines (2022) takes the adjustment of the discipline catalogue as the starting point, reaffirming the equal status and importance of academic degree and professional degree graduate education. The core change of the new version of the Discipline Catalogue is to change the presentation of the previous professional degree category catalogue in the form of a schedule of the discipline catalogue to the combined display of the first-level disciplines and professional degree categories with similar main knowledge bases into the corresponding discipline categories, which is a qualitative change that puts the training of two types of graduate students in an equally important position. Compared with the "equal status", the "Opinions" are more prominent in the differentiated requirements of the two types of graduate education, emphasizing the adherence to the problem-oriented, with the goal of improving the quality of independent training of top-notch innovative talents, and forming a classified training system for academic and practical innovative talents from the aspects of talent development orientation, quality evaluation system, enrollment conditions, training process, teacher requirements, graduation standards, etc., and finally promoting the construction of an educational power to make significant progress.
The classification of the two types of graduate students and their respective successes means that we should adhere to the problem-orientation, focus on the key issues restricting the development of the classification of the two types of graduate education, and put forward targeted policy measures to enhance the effectiveness of the reform. Promote as a whole, strengthen the cohesion and cooperation of the whole chain of talent training and reform measures in each link, and enhance the systematization of reform. The whole chain of graduate training means that any link off the chain will bring problems to graduate education, which will affect the quality of graduate training and the realization of the goal of graduate education reform. Taking the professional degree that the country should vigorously develop as an example, the direction of talent training is the starting point of the whole chain, that is, what kind of people we want to train students to become. There has been a long-standing prejudice in society, and there are also misunderstandings in graduate education, thinking that the training of professional degree graduates is to cultivate "blue-collar" talents with applied skills, which is "lowering the requirements" compared with academic degree graduates.
In this regard, the "Opinions" once again clarified the training orientation of professional degree graduate talents. The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Education said at the press conference that emphasizing the distinction between academic degrees and professional degrees does not mean that professional degree graduates are equated with a kind of skilled talent training, and cannot be understood as a professional degree is to reduce the requirements. The "Opinions" no longer emphasize "application" or "skills" for professional degree graduate education, but highlight "practice" and "innovation", from the enrollment requirements, training programs, textbook construction, degree **, tutor team and other links, all reflect the key examination of graduate students' innovation potential and ability to solve practical problems in the professional field, as well as the core considerations of responding to the development trend of the industry and reflecting the cutting-edge practice and innovation achievements in the field. Professional degree graduate students are not the same as the traditional applied talents who only have technical talents, but the emphasis on the integration of industry and education, school-enterprise joint training, and vocational qualification certification connection mechanism in the "Opinions" shows that after the pattern change of the classification and development of graduate education, the innovation and development of professional degree graduate education will also become an important breakthrough to further promote the development of refined classification of vocational education in China.
The changes in the world, the times, and history are unfolding in an unprecedented way, and the changes in a century are accelerating, and China is facing complex situations such as "challenges in development", "breakthroughs in suppression" and "games in opening up". The era of graduate education in China has arrived. For society as a whole, this is a change in the overall perception of graduate education. The release of the "Opinions" has opened up a new horizon for everyone's perception of talentsFor the entire higher education sector, in the face of the new issues of the times, it is necessary to have practical ways to solidly implement the direction pointed out by the state, answer the questions of the times of graduate education with high-quality answers, undertake the mission and task of "urgent national urgency, meet the needs of the country", and contribute to the development of Chinese-style modernization.
Author: Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Communication University of China