Study On Development Of Fujian’s Academic Degrees&Graduate Education Since The Establishment Of China’s Academic Degrees System From The Perspective Of The History Of Education

Since the establishment of the academic degree system in 1981,China has made significant progress and achieved fruitful results in the academic degrees&graduate education;especially after entering the 21st century,China’s academic degrees&graduate education has developed by leaps and bounds,although there are problems such as unreasonable structure and insufficient discipline construction.Currently,the academic degrees&graduate education is in its key development stage,and particularly new tasks and requirements have been raised to establish high-ranking professional reserve for the development of the Economic Zone of Western Taiwan Straits and that of Fujian.For educators,the current significant problem is how to reform Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education so as to achieve the transformation from development in quantity to improvement in quality.The paper extends its exploration of Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education development along the timeline starting at the establishment of China’s academic degree system,by employing various methods,mainly including the combination of macro elaboration and micro investigation,equal consideration of the system and the actual situations,and comparison,statistics and quantitative analysis,as well as investigation in colleges and universities.Thus,the paper presents a systematic and profound study on the developmental process and underlying rules of Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education during the last 30 more years,and experience and lessons that we have learned and could learn,as well as historic reflections.Main findings and conclusions in the paper are as follows.Firstly,the development history of Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education since the establishment of China’s academic degree system has the following several characteristics:(1)Fujian’s academic degrees&education has gone through three periods from recovery and rise(1981-1991)to stable growth(1992-2000)and further to rapid development(2001-2011);in terms of graduate training institutions and authorized degree-conferring institutions,although Fujian has already had such institutions since 1981,it takes 30 years to have only 13 training institutions with master programs and 8 training institutions with doctoral programs,indicating relatively slow development;besides,the corresponding discipline master/doctoral degrees are mainly conferred by some training institutions.This indicates imbalance of graduate education development in graduate training institutions in Fujian;furthermore,even though the professional degree education has been vigorously boosted,it fails to have a mature educational system and a high overall educational level.(2)In terms of graduate training scale and fund guarantee,the graduate education in Fujian is in rapid growth momentum and can be divided into three periods,including the newly establishment and rise period(1981-1991).the scale expansion and adjustment&reform period(1992-2004).and the deepening reform and connotative development(2005-2011);accordingly the graduate education funds are supported at the first totally by the national financial allocation and then gradually shared by the nation,society and individuals,or compensations are provided for graduate training.(3)In terms of faculty structure,the number of graduate supervisors is increasing year by year,but the ratio of graduate to supervisor also rises due to the expansion of enrollment;the population of graduate supervisors tends to be young and have senior professional titles,and the proportion of female graduate supervisors is gradually enlarging.Secondly,as found in field visits in 13 graduate training colleges and universities in Fujian,(1)the graduate education in Fujian is expanding in scale,but it is still relatively small when compared with that in other areas in China;comparatively engineering programs and institutions entitled to confer professional degrees are less developed.failing to meet diverse needs of social and economic development of Fujian.(2)Although the graduate education layout is perfecting,the internal imbalance of development remains;and the graduate training quality still requires further improvement as the training mode reform is persistently advancing.The causes may be dug out from the overall planning of graduate education at the provincial level,discipline development level and features,supervisor rank building,graduate cooperative education mechanism.graduate education funds guarantee and the like,which require further improvements.Thirdly,based on the analysis of the development characteristics of Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education and on the field visits in graduate training colleges and universities,the paper also combines the overview of graduate education home and abroad and therefore puts forward "five transformations" for the trend of Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education reform and development;that is,it tends to transform from scale expansion to parallel scale development and quality improvement,from closed schooling to open schooling,from dominant academic personnel training to equal importance of academic and application-oriented personnel training,from a single enrollment system to a diverse entrance examination and enrollment system,and from centralized united management to autonomous running by law.Fourthly,the PEST analysis shows that the current academic degrees&graduate education reform and development in Fujian is amid a favorable political,economic,sociocultural and technical environment.On the basis of the phenomenological analysis,the author encourages thinking and gives suggestion on a strategy for differential yet collaborative development and for international and guaranteed development in the academic degrees&graduate education.In brief,the paper frames the development of both academic degrees and graduate education in specific historical terms,basing itself on historical conditions and background,to probe into the process of Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education development in the three decades(1981-2011)since the establishment of China’s academic degree system,and then reveals the main characteristics of each of its development periods.Furthermore,based on the researches of historical materials and the field visits,the author puts forward the characteristics of the status quo of Fujian’s academic degrees&graduate education development,analyzes the main existing problems and the future development environment through PEST analysis,and gives a suggestion on strategic foresight and thinking about countermeasures.