Development Of Higher Education Cooperative Pharmacy And Pharmaceutical Industries

With China’s higher education shifting from elite education to mass education, more attention is paid to the quality of higher education, and the standards for evaluating its quality keep changing as well. The whole society have come to realize that in order to ensure the quality of higher education, more importance should be attached to examining whether the structure of higher education suits the development of economy apart from attaching importance to factors such as the effects of classroom teaching and the construction of teaching conditions etc. Higher pharmaceutical education is a part of higher education, whose quality depends on its adaptability to the pharmaceutical industry. Hence, the objects of this research paper are tow systems:one is the pharmaceutical industry, and the other is higher education. As for pharmaceutical industry, the research is on the characteristics of the needs of its various links for pharmaceutical talents. As for higher pharmaceutical education, the research is on the constitution of its structures, mainly including the level structure, hierarchical structure, regional structure, specialty structure, knowledge structure and employment structure; besides, the research is also on whether the students cultivated under such structures can adjust to the development of pharmaceutical industry in terms of number, level and knowledge system etc.As for the research on pharmaceutical industry, the focus is on the need of various links of the industry for pharmaceutical talents. The links can be classified in two ways:one is, according to the theory of industry chain, to classify pharmaceutical industry into four links of development of new drugs, manufacturing of drugs, circulation of drugs and pharmaceutical care; another is, according to the standards for industry classification by the National Bureau of Statistics, to classify it into three sub-industries of chemical drug manufacturing, TCM manufacturing and biochemical product manufacturing.Different links of pharmaceutical industry have different needs for pharmaceutical talents. Theoretically, the link of new drug development needs the high-leveled research talents, the links of drug manufacturing and circulation needs large numbers of technical and skilled talents and the link of pharmaceutical care needs the high-leveled service talents; while chemical drug manufacturing needs a lot more of various talents than TCM manufacturing and biochemical product manufacturing due to its large scale. The factors mentioned above may lead to the deviation of the need of various links of pharmaceutical industry for talents from theories, for example, the needs for high-leveled talents are not so strong as the links of new drug development and pharmaceutical care in China are not so advanced.As for higher pharmaceutical education, the focus is on the situations of various structures and whether the talents cultivated under such structures can adjust to the situation and development of pharmaceutical industry. The results of the research are as follows:(1) If the number of students in pharmaceutical universities and colleges is regarded as the scale index, and the output value of pharmaceutical industry is regarded as the scale index of the pharmaceutical industry, the development paces of the both in the past decade are almost the same. Thus, a conclusion can be drawn, i.e. the scale of higher pharmaceutical education basically adapts to the development of pharmaceutical industry though there are no major changes in the manufacturing mode of pharmaceutical industry or in the structure of investment.(2) The level structure of higher pharmaceutical education is divided into four level structures, i.e. research universities, teaching and research universities, teaching universities, and vocational and technical universities. At present, there are an excessive number of research universities and teaching and researching universities, while the number of vocational and technical universities is inadequate. Therefore, there are an excessive number of academic talents and inadequate number of technical talents and skilled talents, which means we can’t meet the needs of the development of the pharmaceutical industry.(3) The hierarchical structure of higher pharmaceutical education is divided into four levels, namely, doctoral candidates, postgraduates, undergraduates and vocational college students. At present, the scale of different hierarchies are undergraduates, postgraduates, doctoral candidates and vocational college students by descending order; and the increase rates of the scale are doctoral candidates, postgraduates, undergraduates from fast to slow. Consequently, the scale of doctoral candidates and postgraduates exceeds the need of the pharmaceutical industry.(4) The regional structure of higher pharmaceutical education is on the distribution of higher pharmaceutical education in different regions. The regions here not only refer to the provincial administrative units, but also the three economic zones of western region, middle region and eastern region in China. As the result of the research shows, the number and quality of universities in the eastern regions are by far larger and better than those in the western regions, and the middle region lies in between. However, if we compare the numbers of universities in the provincial administrative units with the value of output of pharmaceutical industry, the results are quite different.(5) The specialty structure of higher pharmaceutical education refers to the specialties in the field of higher pharmaceutical education as well as the scales of these specialties. As for the aspect of the structure of specialty constitution, there are suitable specialties in each field of pharmaceutical industry which can cultivate talents for them and meet the needs of the industry for talents. The problem at present is that the scale of specialties serving the TCM product manufacturing is larger that that serving the chemical drug manufacturing, which does not conform to the development of the industry. Besides, the specialty scale of clinical pharmacy which cultivates talents for pharmaceutical care is too small, which will hinder the wide spread of pharmaceutical care.(6) The course structure of higher pharmaceutical education refers to the way by which all the courses in the curriculum are combined, connected and related. This paper compares the old and new specialty programs of Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, and a conclusion was drawn that the teaching hours for both courses on chemistry and courses on engineering decrease in the new teaching programs while the teaching hours for both courses on life sciences and basic courses on medicine increase, which embodies the shift of knowledge structure from the model of "chemistry-pharmacy-engineering" to the model of "chemistry-biology-medicine-pharmacy".(7) The employment structure of higher pharmaceutical education refers to the comparison of numbers of graduate students from pharmaceutical universities employed in different places. This paper studies the employment structure of higher pharmaceutical education by levels:vocational college students and undergraduates are mainly employed in pharmaceutical enterprises, and such an employment structure is suitable for the need of the pharmaceutical industry; postgraduates are mostly employed in pharmaceutical industry in recent years and the scale is on the increase; while doctoral candidates mainly serve in colleges and universities, but the number of students working in pharmaceutical enterprises is on the increase. Such an employment structure indicates that the pharmaceutical industry is not attractive enough to the high-leveled talents and also embodies that there is a transition to a certain extent for the cultivation of high-leveled talents.