Doctoral education in China

Doctorate holders represent a crucial human resource for research and innovation. As a site for the production of new knowledge and new knowledge making practices, doctoral education has recently become ‘a matter of increasing interest and concern’ in many parts of the world (Lee & Green, 1995, p. 2), as a consequence of educational reforms. In China, postgraduate education is a borrowed concept from overseas (Wu, 2009). The Chinese system of academic degrees and postgraduate education was only formally established in the early 1980s. Their growth, however, has been by leaps and bounds. The Chinese doctoral education system has swiftly become one of the largest in the world. Within this fast growing period, there has been no shortage of twists and turns, as well as costs and benefits, from institutional arrangement, administration and procedure, protocol and policy, finance and governance, to supervisory practice, and learning experience. While there has been an increasing body of literature within China on doctoral education, few studies have appeared in English. Recent exceptions are by Peter S Li, Liming Li and Li Zong (2007) and Yandong Zhao and Dasheng Deng (2011), respectively on the educational aspirations and occupational orientation of Chinese doctoral students. Aiming to delineate a detailed picture of the current practices of China’s doctoral education, this article covers its stages of developments; disciplinary, institutional and regional distributions; thesis quality; supervisory practices; and the employment of doctorate holders.