A Research On The Development History Of Our Country's Postgraduate Education (1902～1998)

The postgraduate education development of our country goes through a course from quantitative changing to qualitative changing. There are some very significant incidents in its development course, which indicates the improvement of our postgraduate education. According to these incidents, the author will divide the developmental history, from 1902 to 1998, of our country' s postgraduate education into six periods. At the same time, the author expounds and analyses the main achievements and the special features of every development period.The first period: Gestating period (from 1902 to 1916). In this period, the significant thing is that the postgraduate education level had emerged in our country' s educational system. The postgraduate education had its formal character. The second period: Primary foundation period (from 1917 to 1934). In this period, the symbol thing is that Beijing University set up three research institutes in 1917, which were Arts, Science and Law. The postgraduate education had not only formal character but also essential content. Since then, the postgraduate education had come on the China educational history' s stage and played a more and more important role in economic and political field, and so on.The third period: Primary regularization period (from 1935 to 1949). In this period, then the symbol thing is that Nanjing Kuomintang Government promulgated Degree Granting Act on April 22th, 1935. From then on, on one hand, the government began to legislate acts or statutes to channel off the development of postgraduate education; on the other hand, the universities and colleges that cultivated postgraduates established correlative regulations. These measures created condition for the development of postgraduate education. However, the scale of our national postgraduate was not very large and there were only 232 students who were granted master's degree for the influence of politics, economy and war.