A Social And Historical Study On The Reform Of Educational System Of Academic Master Degree In China

Since the changes of social environment and the increase of the scale of postgraduates with master degree in the last thirty years, the cultivation objectives and models of academic master graduates in China have changed correspondingly. One of the controversial issues is to shorten the time for people to get an academic master degree.Based on the research and practice at hand, this paper reviewed historically the process of the reform of educational system of academic master degree in China through literature research, cases analysis and expert interviews. Besides, this paper also analyzed the reasons of the reform in political, economical and social perspectives, according to the"social and historical paradigm"in the history of education.Generally speaking, the process of the reform can be divided into four different periods: exploration and formation, stable development, adjustment, and deepening reform. Because the number of PH.D candidates was very small, and people insisted on the principle of"quality comes first"in the initial stage of graduates education, the cultivation period of graduates was longer than most of other countries in the world, and academic graduates became the main type of graduates. As the developments of society, educational policy and system of graduate education, the plurality of social requirements becomes more obvious, the autonomy of higher educational institutions becomes more important to themselves and the problem of inadequate input of educational funding becomes more serious.Correspondingly, people began to pay more attention to educational system of academic master degree. Many universities reformed to shorten the period of cultivation for an academic master degree.This paper also analyzed the cases of the reform of educational system of academic master degree in Harbin Institute of Technology and Tsinghua University, which involved the contents, process and results of the reforms, in order to contribute to the today's reform of educational system of academic master degree and the higher education in China.