Since 1980 China formally established the degree system, part-time postgraduate education has also developed and gradually become an indispensable part of China's postgraduate education system. With the rapid development of China's social economy in recent years, the demand for high-level talents is also increasing, and the level requirements for high-level talents are also increasing. Therefore, postgraduate education is an important way to cultivate high-level talents in the new period, and developing postgraduate education is the only way to develop China's higher education. However, the development of postgraduate education in China is still lagging behind, and the scale of development still does not meet the requirements of social development. In 2000, the enrollment of all kinds of higher education in China was about 4.6 million, of which 2.2 million were enrolled in colleges and universities, while the enrollment of graduate students was only 6.5438+0.2 million, accounting for 2.6% and 5.4% respectively. What are the main reasons that hinder the development of postgraduate education in China? For a long time, China's postgraduate training mode is single, full-time education is limited by educational resources, and it is difficult to achieve leap-forward development in a short time, while part-time education is slow to develop, which is not a climate. At present, the proportion of part-time education in China is only 9% (some of which are not really part-time).
Developing part-time postgraduate education is a major reform measure needed by society and the general trend. This paper analyzes and expounds the main problems existing in part-time postgraduate education in China.
First, the development status and problems of part-time postgraduate education in China. The initial part-time postgraduate education in China is called "on-the-job personnel apply for a degree with the same academic ability as graduate students" (hereinafter referred to as equivalent academic ability). In order to ensure the quality of degree awarding, the early equivalent academic ability often adopts the same classroom as full-time graduate students, but this single training mode has a great influence on the on-the-job staff who do not leave their posts, which limits the development of part-time graduate students. At the same time, it is not easy for on-the-job staff to form a group consciousness with full-time students, which is not conducive to the improvement of postgraduate training quality.
Since 1986, the State Council Academic Degrees Office has successively promulgated a series of documents, such as Trial Measures for On-the-job Employees to Apply for Master's and Doctor's Degrees, Interim Provisions of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee on Granting Master's and Doctor's Degrees to On-the-job Employees with the Same Academic Degrees, and Detailed Implementation Rules of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee on Granting Master's and Doctor's Degrees to On-the-job Employees, which has opened up a new way for them to apply for Master's and Doctor's Degrees. Many postgraduate training institutions have organized some postgraduate courses to prepare for on-the-job employees to apply for degree courses. Postgraduate courses provide a place for on-the-job personnel to study postgraduate courses, and learning without leaving their posts in teaching has become one of the main ways for on-the-job personnel to obtain postgraduate degrees. By the end of 1998, 573 doctors and 2 1599 masters had obtained graduate degrees through this way. Although the postgraduate course does not belong to the formal postgraduate degree education, its existence solves the necessary curriculum education problem for on-the-job personnel to apply for postgraduate degree and becomes an important part of part-time postgraduate education. Postgraduate courses are popular with individual degree applicants and postgraduate training institutions in recent years because of their wide requirements for students' admission and great freedom of time selection. However, in order to gain students, individual units often associate taking postgraduate courses with obtaining a master's degree in the publicity before the start of classes, which leads to the quality of some postgraduate courses getting out of control in the unilateral pursuit of school profits. Since 1993, the State Council Academic Degrees Office has strengthened the management of postgraduate courses, and successively implemented some examination systems to control the quality of degree awarding from individual links. However, some unqualified degree applicants try their best to deal with these quality barriers through some non-standard means, and the phenomena of fabricating fake materials and cheating in exams are repeatedly prohibited, which leads to the trend that the quality of postgraduate courses is out of control, and the degree with the same academic qualifications is difficult to be universally recognized by the society.
199 1 In order to meet the needs of economic construction and social development for senior professionals with different industry backgrounds, types and specifications, the State Council Academic Degrees Committee has successively approved the establishment of professional degrees such as MBA, Master of Architecture, Master of Law, Master of Education, Master of Engineering, Master of master of medicine, MPA, Master of Agricultural Extension and Master of Veterinary Medicine. The establishment of professional degrees has changed the situation that the types and specifications of degrees in China are single, and opened up the way for on-the-job personnel to receive formal postgraduate education, which is an important content in the reform of postgraduate education in China. Its appearance marks the upward shift of the level of higher vocational education in China, and also marks the beginning of the integration of postgraduate education into lifelong education in China. However, after several years' operation, professional degree postgraduate education has gradually moved closer to full-time postgraduate education in terms of entrance examination, curriculum, teaching methods, thesis requirements and student status management. All the on-the-job employees who are studying for professional degrees are basically studying off-the-job, so although the training objects of professional degrees are on-the-job, they still have not got rid of the full-time teaching and training mode.
From the development of 15, we can see that the problems existing in part-time postgraduate education are mainly manifested in scale, quality and operation mode. Scale includes school scale and professional coverage; There are two problems in quality: enrollment quality and teaching quality. Operation mode includes teaching mode and management mode.
Second, the social environment of developing non-state postgraduate education in China 2 1 century is the century of knowledge, and a series of new terms such as "knowledge economy", "lifelong learning" and "learning society" have become the daily vocabulary of ordinary people. The pace of the knowledge age is rapid, swift and unstoppable. Since 1980s, more than 5 million papers have been published every year in the world, and the annual growth rate of scientific knowledge has reached 12.5%, and the aging period of knowledge is 3-5 years. 80-90% of the knowledge needed in life depends on on-the-job learning. In this situation, great changes have taken place in the economic structure and social framework. Knowledge is the primary productive force and man is the primary factor of production. Scientific and technological innovation and expanding knowledge reproduction have become the lifeline of modern enterprises, and intellectual capital development and education investment have become the main theme of modern life.
Social changes require higher education to make corresponding adjustments. Zhang Baode, secretary-general of the University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, pointed out that there will be six major changes in higher education in the future:
1. The persistence of knowledge will be greatly reduced, and the education level will no longer be measured by academic qualifications, but will be replaced by the concept of "lifelong learning account"; 2. If there is no patent in education, the monopoly of university education will be completely disintegrated and education will become more and more global; 3. Learning can "enter" or "exit" more often. Everyone will go in and out of the education system many times according to his own needs in his life, instead of having a certain reading age. His academic qualifications may be recorded in the form of a passport and brought into the education system. 4. Learning is not just teaching. That is, students decide what teachers teach, especially school funds follow students, and the market dominates everything; The competition among educational institutions has intensified. There will be star professors and avant-garde universities; 6. There are fewer and fewer single degrees, and everything needs to be redefined.
The core of these six changes is lifelong education, and part-time education is the first step of lifelong education.
As far as China's graduate education itself is concerned, the basic conditions for developing part-time education have been met. According to the information provided by the Graduate Admissions Office of the Department of College Students of the Ministry of Education, the total number of graduate students enrolled in 200/kloc-0 is 460,225, including 200,000 fresh graduates, accounting for only 43.5%. From the perspective of enrollment majors, there are five majors with more than 10,000 applicants, among which the number of applicants for MBA and LLM degrees is 38,000 and 1.8 million respectively, ranking first and third respectively. It can be seen that the requirements of on-the-job personnel for postgraduate education are very urgent, and it also proves that part-time postgraduate education has broad market prospects.
Compared with the rapid development of society and the strong demand of social market, the development of part-time postgraduate education in China is very slow and lagging behind. Of the 530,000 graduate students trained in China, 90. 1% are scientific degrees and 9. 1% are professional degrees. Among them, the equivalent academic ability only accounts for 4.2%.
The small scale of part-time postgraduate education not only affects the development of part-time postgraduate education, but also hinders the overall development of postgraduate education in China. Why can't part-time postgraduate education develop? I think there are some important problems in the system and mechanism of postgraduate education in China.
Iii. Problems to be solved urgently in the development of part-time postgraduate education in China 1. Clarify the definition and connotation of part-time education. What is the definition of part-time education? Article 15 of China's Higher Education Law only stipulates that "higher education takes the form of full-time and part-time education", and there is no clear definition of part-time. The definition of part-time and full-time has always been an unresolved issue in the field of higher education in China, or it has always been a specious and ambiguous issue.
In western advanced countries, the definition of full-time and part-time is based on the annual credit value, that is, the annual credit value is less than 12 credits for part-time. Due to the weak concept of credit system in colleges and universities in China, the definitions of full-time and part-time are different from those in western countries, and they are divided according to students' social identity. It is generally believed that part-time education refers to the education of working people, so many people naturally equate part-time education with adult education. This idea is one-sided. It is true that the target of part-time training is basically on-the-job personnel. However, if this characterization is used as the definition basis, it will often cover up the essential characteristics of things, and it will also lead to people's misunderstanding of concepts and distortion of connotations. The essence of part-time education lies in the two-way choice of educational content and learning time between schools and students, so as to increase students' freedom of learning and achieve the effect of educational expansion. If we think that part-time education is adult education, it will lead to the development of part-time postgraduate education only paying attention to the educational object and ignoring more essential things.
At present, the graduate students of on-the-job personnel in our country are basically studying full-time, and the school applies a system of full-time postgraduate training to their education methods, management models and assessment standards, so the on-the-job personnel in school are essentially receiving full-time education. These phenomena are caused by our unclear understanding of the definition and connotation of part-time. The vague concept leads to the deviation of our educational concept, so we can't start with the reform and development of part-time postgraduate education.
Therefore, a clear definition and orientation of part-time education is the premise of developing part-time postgraduate education.
2. Correct understanding of the role and status of part-time education Many people think that part-time education is a cultural remedial education or vocational training for people who have no chance or ability to receive higher education before. This idea has a great market in the society, which seriously hinders the development of part-time education, especially part-time academic qualifications and degree education.
What is the root of this thought? I think this is a closed and imprisoned habitual thinking formed by the traditional school education system. The traditional school education system is a one-way closed education system, that is, a one-way phased system from primary school to middle school to universities and graduate students. Every link in the middle can't be omitted or overstepped. After graduating from high school, it is natural to enter the undergraduate stage. If you enter the postgraduate stage after graduation, it is not directional training, and you are not allowed to choose a lower academic major again. For example, it is difficult for people to accept and understand the behavior of graduate students to re-select undergraduate majors. Under the traditional thought, ordinary colleges and universities are considered as places for pre-service education, while part-time education belongs to the category of post-service continuing education. Continuing education is easily linked with vocational training courses, staff universities, adult colleges and other institutions, so part-time education has a low reputation and credibility in society.
Part-time postgraduate education should reflect the characteristics of a learning society and the concept of continuing education in the new era, that is, multi-point entry and diversified education. In the era of knowledge economy, knowledge has complex hierarchical structure, profound content, rapid renewal and closer connection with society, so the concept of pluralistic education will surely become the mainstream in the 2 1 century, and full-time education cannot meet the requirements of pluralistic education because of its rigid system and mechanism. The concept of diversified education can be realized through part-time education, and people can go back to school to study and charge many times at any time in their lives. In the future when higher education is about to be popularized, the demand for part-time postgraduate education will be more urgent.
Changing ideas and correctly understanding part-time education are the backing of the development of part-time postgraduate education.
3. Integration of full-time and part-time in the system In China's current education system, there are two forms: full-time and part-time. At the same time, the two forms of education are managed in a two-track way, which is different from enrollment, curriculum, academic system, assessment, student management, specialty setting, department establishment and even diploma. The difference between full-time and part-time education lies not only in the form of training, but also in their own complete management system, which occupies a piece in the whole national education system and is inviolable and independent of each other. This is because in the primary stage of the development of part-time higher education in China, considering that employees have been out of school for a long time and their knowledge level is low, it will be difficult to pass the strict and correct entrance examination if they choose like fresh graduates. Therefore, in order to ensure that on-the-job personnel can receive higher education, the adult college entrance examination is adopted, that is, on-the-job personnel do not take elective examinations in ordinary colleges and universities, but organize another examination, which is easier than the formal college entrance examination. Due to the differences in population examination and foundation, colleges and universities are worried that on-the-job personnel can't set up separate classes for them on the basis of ordinary classes after entering school, and at the same time, they have designed new training programs for them, so they are different from ordinary classes in terms of curriculum, teaching arrangement and academic system. Under the planned economy system, the enrollment, training and the number of graduates in China's higher education are strictly regulated by the state, and there is basically no elimination mechanism in colleges and universities. In this case, the gap between part-time and full-time teaching quality is becoming more and more obvious, which leads to the emergence of two diplomas, and finally divides the full-time and part-time systems.
The direct cause of the differentiation between full-time and part-time systems is the quality problem, which is rooted in the lack of competition mechanism in colleges and universities under the planned economy, which is embodied in the dual-track education system. Quality problems are getting worse and worse in the word-of-mouth of part-time higher education. In the end, it can only be avoided, which is very unfavorable to the development of part-time postgraduate education.
Combining full-time and part-time education to improve the quality of part-time education is the key to developing part-time postgraduate education.
4. Part-time education implements a complete credit system. Literally, part-time education is not a way of learning to receive education all day. That is to say, part-time education has less daily learning than full-time education, so it takes longer for part-time education to complete the same amount of learning tasks than full-time education. Coupled with the training target of part-time education, the on-the-job personnel have great uncertainty about the study time because of their work needs. Therefore, it is necessary to implement flexible academic system and carry out part-time postgraduate education, so that on-the-job personnel can study freely in a relatively relaxed period. However, the current academic system in Chinese universities is relatively rigid. Four years of undergraduate course and three years of postgraduate course have become the golden rule of colleges and universities, and it is difficult to make a breakthrough. Therefore, many on-the-job personnel can only study full-time, but actually receive full-time education.
Why is it so difficult to reform the flexible academic system? In addition to the problem of logistics facilities in colleges and universities, the failure to implement a complete credit system is also a key issue. The pace of credit system reform in colleges and universities in China is very slow. For a long time, the courses in colleges and universities have been mainly specialized courses, with a large proportion of compulsory courses and a fixed number of courses. Therefore, the current credit system simply sets a certain credit value for the original course, and does not incorporate the concept that students can freely choose the course content and study time. Therefore, the credit system reform in China is incomplete.
Without the support of a complete credit system, the flexible academic system is difficult to achieve and the reform of part-time postgraduate education cannot be further deepened. Therefore, a complete credit system is the basis for the development of part-time postgraduate education.
5. Incorporate part-time education into the regular school education system. For a long time, people regarded the campus as "holy land" and "pure land" and compared it to "ivory tower", and thought that schools should stay away from social noise and secular erosion. Although we often say that education should face the society and serve the society, traditional ideas hinder the pace of our reform, and we are always worried that schools will be corroded by the "bad atmosphere" of society. So, when the school starts, we hesitate and struggle. Our school is actually closed and divorced from social reality. Under the influence of these conservative ideas, we artificially and forcibly distinguish between school education represented by full-time education and social education represented by part-time. When colleges and universities intervene in social education, they do not regard part-time education as a part of formal school education, but delimit it and set up adult education colleges, online colleges and other institutions, which actually put part-time education outside the formal education system.
Some schools even regard part-time education as a "cash cow", focusing only on enrollment and making money, regardless of the quality of teaching. Because full-time and part-time are two systems, even if the quality of part-time is worse, it will not affect full-time, and part-time is often not considered in evaluation and statistics. Therefore, some schools don't pay attention to part-time education at all, turn a blind eye, let themselves drift and neglect management, which makes some bad study styles flood, such as cheating in group exams, which seriously damages the social reputation of part-time education. Therefore, only by bringing part-time education into the regular school system and letting part-time education affect or even impact full-time education will schools pay enough attention to it.
The reform of school internal management system is the guarantee for the development of part-time postgraduate education.
5-7 classes a week! ! ! It's simple. Weekend! ! Sometimes there are extra classes at the end of the school year! ! 90 minutes a day!