Abstract
China’s emergence as a global economic and political power is in part due to the country’s renewed involvement with, and commitment to, graduate higher education (Harris, 2005). Graduate education in China is viewed as the means of producing the essential scientists, engineers and skilled workforce needed to sustain the country’s rapid industrial growth and economic development. But how does China’s graduate education system compare with North American graduate higher education and what can each learn from the other? This paper examines the trends and patterns in Master’s level graduate education programs in China and Canada based on enrolment data gathered from 1999 to 2005. Initial comparisons of the data find that Master’s level enrolments in China are growing faster than in Canada; enrolment pattern distributions for both countries are unbalanced geographically and from a disciplinary perspective the highest number of Master’s level enrolments in Canada were in the business and management disciplines while in China the greatest Master’s level enrolments were in engineering. The comparisons provided by this study help identify some of the trends and challenges of graduate education at both the national and the regional levels of both countries.
Highlights
Graduate higher education takes different forms from one country to the but increasingly there are areas of commonality as well as difference (Altbach, 1991)
The enrolment data for both Canada and China during this period can be used to generate trend lines that suggest that there is likely to be between a 20% to 30% increase in total university enrolment in Canada by the year 2015 (AUCC, 2000) with relatively small gains in graduate education and possibly reduced demand in some discipline areas such as education
Comparing the enrolment data of Master’s level programs in Canada and China makes it possible to establish specific trends and patterns that are useful in understanding the particular issues and forces that graduate education in these two jurisdictions will have to deal with in the short and long term
Summary
Graduate higher education takes different forms from one country to the but increasingly there are areas of commonality as well as difference (Altbach, 1991). The modern system of higher education in China, which is barely more than a hundred years old, involves a two-fold governance structure that puts the central government in direct charge of the administration of graduate programs, and empowers the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities with the responsibility for the local operation and the day-to- day administration of universities and colleges. In both Canada and China high level administrators such as the president or vice president are in charge of graduate education in special graduate studies departments or units. The following section compares the enrolment figures for Master’s level programs in Canada and China from 1999 through 2005 and presents findings drawn from an analysis of those data
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