Wang Chuanyi! Deputy Director of the Research Centre for Education Strategic and National Planning at Tsinghua University and a contributor to the ‘Transformation of Doctoral Education in China and Russia’ project! reflected on the initial efforts to develop scientific training in post-war China! paying particular attention to the expansion of postgraduate education in the 1970s! including the establishment of a regulatory framework. The second part of his report focused on the changes initiated in the late 1990s and still ongoing today.
Wang Chuanyi simulation highlighted China’s
intensified efforts to combat academic misconduct and the establishment of a ‘five-mode’ quality assurance system based on cooperation among universities! government norway phone number library agencies! professional associations! industry! and civil society institutions.
Concluding his presentation! the researcher stated that by 2030–2035! China aims to secure global leadership in doctoral education by increasing the proportion of postgraduate perceive our service as something more students within the overall student population! focusing on priority areas in science! technology! and medicine! and developing an integrated model of cooperation between the state! universities! industry! and science to train strategically important personnel.
Nikolay Rybakov! Associate
Professor at the Centre for Research in Science and Postgraduate Education Development! Lobachevsky University (Nizhny Novgorod)! spoke about the impact of the 2013–2015 reforms of postgraduate education and dissertation councils in Russia on PhD thesis defences.
As part of this reform! postgraduate studies were formally classified as a level of education. A large educational component was introduced! and the defence of the sault data candidate dissertation was removed from the standard curriculum. Graduates instead defended a qualifying project that did not result in the awarding of a degree! and took a qualification exam that assessed their teaching competencies. Simultaneously! the requirements for awarding academic degrees were significantly tightened.
As a result! from 2013 to 2021! admissions to postgraduate programmes in Russia fell by 28%! the total number of postgraduates dropped by 32%! the number of graduates declined by 59%! and the proportion of graduates who completed their studies with a successful dissertation defence fell by 61%. The social sciences and humanities were hit harder than the natural sciences.
Nikita Smirnov! Junior Research Fellow at the HSE Centre of Sociology of Higher Education! presented findings from a study on the effectiveness of grant support for doctoral students under the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) programme in 2019–2020.