Research On Postgraduate Educational Quality Assurance System In The United States

In the knowledge-based economy times, talented people have more and more deceive meaning in the competition of the comprehensive national strength. Postgraduate education is on the top level of the national educational system, which plays an irreplaceable role in cultivating high-quality talents. In recent years, postgraduate education has been developing rapidly, and the population of postgraduate students is increasing by 30% every year. Quality is the lifeline of postgraduate education, which is also the basic guarantee for the long-term development of postgraduate education. Therefore, establishing a scientific and standard postgraduate educational quality assurance system becomes a very important task at present. American postgraduate education possesses a very good social reputation because of its high quality, which has a close relation with its perfect quality assurance system. Thus, the study on the construction and characteristics of American postgraduate educational quality assurance system will do a great deal of good for the construction of our postgraduate educational assurance system.The postgraduate educational quality assurance system in the United States contains two parts, the external assurance system and the interior assurance system. The active subjects of the external assurance system are governments, social assessment organizations and academic accreditation organizations, and they guarantee the postgraduate education quality mainly depending on macro-control, evaluation and accreditation. The active subject of the interior assurance system is the college itself. It adopts a system of means to control the quality during the postgraduate education progress.This paper adopts a series of methodologies , including document analysis, case study and . comprehensive analysis, after reviewing historical course of the postgraduate educational assurance movements in the United States, it makes an analysis on the external assurance system and the interior assurance system and concludes their characteristics separately. Especially, this paper uses University of Pennsylvania as a case to explain the concrete problems. Based on referring to American experience and considering our country's specific situation, this paper summarizes its beneficial references and enlightenments for our reform and perfection of postgraduate educational assurance system.