Discipline-based Graduate Education Quality Assurance System In The Chinese Academy Of Sciences

As a modern education system, graduate education was first developed in Germany in the 19th century. After World War II, developed countries started establishing their graduate education and degree-conferring systems one after another. In the 1960's, when the graduate education systems peaked in developed countries, such as the United States, it entered a booming period in China. With the continuous increase of graduate students, how to ensure the steady improvement of the quality of graduate education becomes a worldwide concern. Different measures have been taken to establish the Graduate Education Quality Assurance System (GEQAS) in different countries.Starting with a review of the evolution of GEQASs in the world, this dissertation summarizes that the general trend of GEQAS is to establish discipline-based quality assurance system coupled with internal and external assurance mechanisms. Using the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), an educational institution undergoing its own structural changes, and the Library and Information Science (LIS), one of CAS' many disciplines, as examples, it then explores pertinent issues of the quality assurance for the discipline-based graduate education in CAS from both institutional and disciplinary directions. This dissertation includes the following three parts.Part one is composed of Chapters 1 and 2. This part defines some concepts related to the quality of higher and graduate education, analyzes the historical evolution of GEQAS, which evolved from se If-evident to quality assurance, and finally to total quality management, and then clarifies that GEQAS is the outcome of mutual actions of the internal and external assurance mechanisms.Part two is Chapter 3. Started with the external assessment mechanisms, this part summarizes the general trend of external assessment, that is, discipline-based assurance mechanism, of GEQASs in the United States, Britain, Japan and China. Then it discusses the general situation of graduate education at LIS, pointing out that the focuses for the external quality assurance at LIS are the instructors, the students and the program design.Part three, consisting of Chapters 4, 5 and 6, is the core of the dissertation. This part focuses on the graduate education in CAS, which is undergoing institutional transforming, presents the theory of quality factor, and explores the change ofGEQAS in CAS after the institutional transforming. Based on the detailed survey and statistical analysis of the key factors and the current situation of GEQAS in CAS, this dissertation, taking LIS as an example, investigates the key quality factors one by one, from the instructors, the advisors, the students to the course plan and the degree thesis under the assumption of self-monitoring. From the perspective of institutional innovation, this dissertation conceives a triple-level, discipline-based GEQAS. The triple-level includes the Academic Degree Evaluation Committee of CAS, the Sub-committee of First-level Disciplines, and the Academic Degree Evaluation Committee of each specific institute of CAS. At the end, this dissertation describes the mutually dependent relationship between objective systems and process systems, discusses the effectiveness of the assessment mechanisms, and points out the issues for future research.