Is China producing too many PhDs?
Zhu Liu1 & Yong Geng
Nature Volume: 474, Page: 450 Date published: (23 June 2011) DOI: doi:10.1038/474450b Published online 22 June 2011
China produced an estimated 117,000 PhD graduates in 2010 — more than any other nation, and a tenfold increase on 1999 figures (see go.nature.com/xbdqm9; in Chinese). It looks set to fulfil the government’s goal of becoming a leader in higher education — except that the quantity of PhDs awarded has diluted their quality.This boom has overburdened the country’s education infrastructure. Standards are compromised by a lack of proper quality control and of elimination mechanisms for trainee PhDs (Nature 472, 276–279; 2011).
Employment opportunities for home-grown PhDs are dwindling. Universities and research institutes want to recruit Chinese people with foreign PhDs, and corporations prefer graduates with a master’s degree because they cost less. Given the global excess of PhDs (Nature 472, 280–282; 2011), China must remodel its education system and introduce rigorous elimination mechanisms in PhD training.
