A Study On The Development Scale Of The Doctoral Education In China

Doctoral education is both a really important source of top level innovation talents, and is of great significance for the construction of National Innovation System and the realization of innovation-oriented country strategies. Within the 30 years of reform and opening up, the scale of doctoral education in China has gone through the fluctuations and positive development stages, and then turned into the stable development and control scale development stages. However, the scale supply of doctoral education nowadays can no longer meet the increasing scientific research demand from the unit of doctoral education, the supply and demand contradiction for contest the admission quota is more and more acute. It is time to reconsider the question of the scale development of doctoral education in China.For the sake of grasping the question comprenhensively and accurately, this paper began with the logical start point of the doctoral education reform and development, review and analysis of the evolution and differentiation trend of the doctoral education goal from the perspective of history and international comparison, in order to clarify the development direction of doctoral education in China. On this basis, the paper then analyzed the demand for doctoral talents and the supporting conditions of doctoral education development, recongsidered the doctoral education quality question in the process of scale expansion, which is combined with the macro historical data and sampling survey data of the graduate school.The study found that, along with the doctoral education scale expanding and the doctoral graduate employment diversification, the global doctoral education have been aiming at not only cultivating faculty and researchers for the academia, but also cultivating top-level research talents and professionals for the industry. The doctoral education wordwide have increasingly served for the demand of high-level tatents in every field, and this trend have been coming true in China. Under the guidance of those targets, the current development speed of the scale of doctoral education can not meet the demand of high-level tatents for the rapid social and economic development. Neither the demand of the university faculty construction, the university level upgrading and the scientific research project progress within the academia, nor the demand of high-level research talents from the enterprise's autonomous innovation and development of strategic emerging industry within the industry. Since the doctoral level talent resources reserves is rather low, the current scale of doctoral education can not meet the demand of the international talent competition, especially under the background of the construction of an innovative country and the creation of the world first-class universities and first-class disciplines.Through more than a decade of stable development stage, the supporting conditions of doctoral education in China have been increasingly improved. The key performance indicators such as the faculty strength, the source of potential doctoral students, and the research funding input are all at record levels, which are essential and critical for the doctoral education quality, and lay a good foundation for the further progress of the scale of the doctoral education in China. With the transformation of knowledge production mode and the diversity of the doctoral graduate employment, it has been gradually formed the diversitified quality concept of doctoral education. However, it is the academic achievement oriented quality concept that play the dominant role in all the other quality concept. The questionnaire survey found that, most doctoral advisor did deem that the quality of the doctoral dissertations in their subject areas are improving, which demonstrated to some extent that the Chinese quality of doctoral education in the whole could be guaranteed in the process of the scale expansion.Therefore, the study hold that it is time to reenter into the moderate development stage for the Chinese doctoral education, and it is necessary to moderately relax controls and further expand the scale of doctoral education. Combining the changing trend of the disciplinary structure of the doctoral education, with the data analysis of the survey and the adjustment of industrial structure, the study explore and analyze the adjustment direction of disciplinary structure of doctoral education in China. It is time to moderately expand the size of the doctoral education in the field of medicine, economics and literature, and to moderately control the size of the doctoral education in the field of law, science and agronomy.