Research On Professor-graduate Relationship In Engineering Graduate Education

The research focuses on analyze problems and figure out causes in the existing professor-graduate relationship and then propose some strategies to construct a sound relationship on a basis of a survey in the Engineering Education in Chongqing J University by means of questionnaire, interview and case study.In the research a relatively satisfactoring result was drawn out in the professor-graduate relationship in the graduate education in Chongqing J University, with which a majority of supervisors and graduates are content. However, a lack of mutual understanding and an obvious inequality still exist between them though graduates sincerely respect their mentors. In the relationship supervisors' awareness of responsibility, instruction ability and character are main factors influencing graduates' satisfaction, and graduates' initiative, study and research conditions, supervisor's character and academic level are factors influencing the relationship itself. And there are significant differences between professors and graduates in the status, satisfaction degree, professor-graduate-ratio, communication frequency and timing, attitudes towards and influences from supervisor-subsidizing.Four problems are detected in the supervisor-graduate relationship: imbalance in the status and benefit between the two parts, a more and more obvious differentiation of dependence and opposition among graduates towards their supervisors, a weakening personal communication, and a stronger utilitarian tendency. The problems owe to the following four causes. Changes in social environment take the first position in the four causing factors. The expansion in the graduate enrollment and an influence exerted from the modern market economy result in more and more difficulties for emotional and affective communication between professors and their graduates, and in a profit-oriented relationship between them. Another reason is the conflict in the attitudes towards the relationship. Many professors still stick to the traditional teacher-student pattern that provides authority to supervisors only. However, more and more graduates wish to have a bigger share of saying right of their study and life styles. They hold that as one of supervisors' duty is to serve for students, students should enjoy some corresponding rights. Therefore, a conflict comes to being in their non-compatible understanding on their relationship. The third reason remains on a lack of interaction between the two parts, which results in a hindrance in communication and an absence of affection. The last is the vacancy in management. It results in a missing in the regulation and guidance of graduates' morality, ethics and values, which increases the difficulty in their management. And the vacancy also brings a non-organized management on the part of professors, which does harm to the guaranteeing of graduates' rights and the management on them.In the final part the research proposes some strategies on the improvement for a sound professor-graduate relationship. Firstly, a coordination strategy is introduced to promote a mutual communication and an improvement in the relationship by way of mutual understanding, role adjustment and multi-channel interaction. Secondly, a collegiate management strategy is adopted to construct a favorable professor-graduate relationship by ways of a humanitarian education environment, interactive communicating model, an improvement of supervisor management and a construction of initiative model for a harmonious development in the relationship. Lastly, a social strategy is advocated, by which the society should improve the law system to provide supervisors and graduates with a legal base, offer a better material support for their research and study, and offer a spiritual support with a purified the social atmosphere.