China pilots degree reform: Graduating through practical achievements in 5 fields

China will pilot the use of practical achievements for professional degree applications in five categories — translation, agriculture, clinical medicine, accounting and art — as part of a graduate education reform, according to a new policy issued on Monday.

The policy, issued by the Office of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee, builds on earlier trials for engineering master's and doctoral students. This graduation season, multiple universities expanded such pilots, with several master's and doctoral engineering students receiving degrees on the basis of practical achievements instead of traditional dissertations.

The reform remains at the trial and exploratory stage and will be advanced in batches.

The document stresses quality first and calls for better standards, mechanisms and procedures.

Under the plan, professional degree education steering committees will draft basic requirements for master's and doctoral categories, specifying the sources, forms, content structure, writing norms and evaluation elements of different types of practical achievements.

Degree-granting institutions will use them to tailor implementation rules and full-process guides covering topic demonstration, process guidance and evaluation.

The document sets strict standards for recognizing contributions: practical achievements must be independently completed by the student under supervisor guidance, or the student must have undertaken the core content as a principal completer. Institutions will also update degree conferral, supervisor selection and intellectual property rules to build whole-process quality assurance.

Industry participation will be strengthened, with clearer roles for industry mentors and mechanisms to avoid conflicts of interest and ensure fair evaluation. The document calls for closer sharing of resources, standards and mechanisms with industry in training, teaching, practical training, degree conferral and achievement transfer.

China's growing demand for high-level applied talent has driven a steady expansion of professional degree programs. Traditional thesis-only evaluation has been seen as too narrow to fully reflect professional degree students' practical innovation and contributions, according to a senior official from the Office of the State Council Academic Degrees Committee.

The Academic Degrees Law, promulgated in April 2024, for the first time legally allows graduate students to apply for degrees through either a thesis defense or a defense of prescribed practical achievements, setting new requirements for reforming degree conferral and evaluation.

In September 2024, basic requirements for engineering doctoral professional degree theses and practical achievements were released on a trial basis, with positive results, the official said.

More than 140 students in special engineering master's and doctoral pilot programs have since applied for degrees using practical achievements, providing fresh cases and replicable experience for the reform, the official added.