Research On The Power Boundaries Of Postgraduate Supervisors

Postgraduate education shoulders the important mission of high-level personnel training and innovation.The development of high-quality postgraduate education is the inevitable choice to reserve high-end talents,build a powerful country in higher education and enhance the comprehensive national strength.Since the reform and opening up for more than 40 years,the scale of postgraduate education in China has been expanding.The number of students enrolled has increased from 10700 in 1978 to 1.1 million in 2020.While postgraduate education has made great achievements,problems about the quality of postgraduate education also appear frequently.The tutor is the first responsible person of postgraduate education,and also the "gatekeeper" of postgraduate education quality.It is undeniable that in the process of postgraduate training,supervisors enjoy rights and usually show the "power" side,so we need to have a clear understanding of this.First of all,in order to have a clear understanding of supervisor’s power and supervisor’s right,this study analyzes it theoretically and in the text;then it makes a comparative analysis from seven dimensions,namely etymology analysis,concept category,main sources,main types,social functions,processing methods and emotional color,so as to clarify the differences and connections between the two.Secondly,through the interview and logical reasoning of postgraduate students,it is proposed that the power of postgraduate supervisors must abide by the legal boundary with compulsory provisions,the ethical boundary with moral constraints and the educational boundary full of growth expectation,and constructs an ideal model of supervisor’s power boundary.Thirdly,by collecting the news events about the contradiction between supervisors and postgraduate students in recent years,the author extracts four forms of expression in education and teaching activities,such as compulsory employment,distorted respect for teachers,academic sexual harassment and passive stocking.The main reasons are the influence of traditional teachers’ dignity,the erosion of academic capitalism,the lack of postgraduate training system and the lack of professional ethics of supervisors.Finally,this paper puts forward some measures to protect the power boundary of supervisors: reshape the "dignity of teachers" and establish a correct view of teachers and students;treat the supervisors well and reform the evaluation system;specify the supervisors power and optimize the personnel training system;strengthen the construction of teachers’ ethics and style,and improve the moral cultivation of supervisors.