More Chinese students seek domestic master's, PhD degrees

More than 10 million students in China have obtained master's or doctoral degrees from domestic higher education institutions as of 2020, according to the Ministry of Education.

More than 3 million Chinese students will be pursuing their postgraduate studies this year at domestic universities or research institutes, skyrocketing from 629 in 1949 when the People's Republic of China was founded, it said.

In addition, enrollment to postgraduate studies has increased from 242 in 1949 to 10,700 in 1978, when the country adopted the reform and opening-up policy, and to more than 1.1 million this year, it said.

The number of Chinese students with doctoral degrees from domestic universities or research institutes surpassed that of South Korea in 1996, India in 2000, the United Kingdom and Japan in 2002 and Germany in 2005, the ministry said.

More than 90 percent of the 139 newly-elected academicians at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Chinese Academy of Sciences last year received postgraduate education domestically and almost 80 percent of the academicians obtained a master's degree or doctoral degree at domestic universities or research institutes, it said.

In 1990, only 19.6 percent of full-time teachers in China's colleges and universities had a master's or doctoral degree, while the number reached 64.1 percent last year, it said.

As of 2019, 52 countries and regions had signed agreements with China on mutual recognition of academic degrees and a total of 91,000 international students from 203 countries and regions are pursuing master's or doctoral degrees in China, it added.