Give master's, doctoral students a break

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(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-04 08:24

The average cost of publishing a thesis in a media outlet is 500 yuan, and a person has to get at least three such papers published before he/she gets a doctoral degree. That entails an expense of at least 1,500 yuan. The education authorities should take steps to relieve students of this burden, says an article in the Beijing News. Excerpts:

One of the most ridiculous rules in the academic world is for a student to have a number of papers published before getting a master's or doctoral degree. Years ago Prof Deng Xiaomang resigned his tutorship for doctoral students at Wuhan University just to protest against the rule. But instead of changing, the rule became more rigid.

Now Yi Zhongtian, a famous scholar, has challenged this practice in his blog, which obviously has been welcomed by thousands of netizens.

Over the past decade, getting papers published has become a nightmare for most students.

About twice the number of postgraduate and doctoral students enroll in universities today compared to 10 years ago, but the number and volume of academic journals has remained almost the same. Taking advantage of the huge demand, academic journals have begun charging students for publishing their papers.

Why has such an unreasonable rule received the wholehearted support of universities? The reason is that the more papers students of a university publish, the greater will be its "achievement".

This way, the universities accord priority to their own benefits rather than shouldering their social responsibility. Since students' ability to conduct research does not depend on the number of papers they "buy" in academic journals, the rule is bound to harm their academic development.

While the education authorities have been appealing for easing the study load of primary and secondary school students, they should try to relieve the burden of postgraduate and doctoral students, too.

(China Daily 11/04/2009 page9)