Officials have reduced PhD's value

After using their qualifications to build their career, some high-ranking officials are now trying to take advantage of their administrative power to get doctoral degrees, making academics a flippant world, says an article in the China Youth Daily. Excerpts:

Ji Baocheng, president of Renmin University of China, recently said the great majority of doctoral degree-holders were working for the government, not research institutions.

There is nothing new about high-ranking officials using their power to get PhD diplomas. Some of them have got it without even attending a university.

Led by a strong belief that officialdom is the natural outlet for good scholars, officials compete with each other to get doctoral scholarships. Last year, more people earned doctoral degrees in China than in Great Britain or the United States. Yet the public welcomed the news only with suspicion.

The problem lies with people who are desperate to get degrees to further or consolidate their careers. Many of those who have received PhD diplomas in the past 25 years were not even qualified to do so.

The following example best illustrates the sorry state of affairs. A Southwest University insider recently disclosed that half of the Chongqing municipal government's county level officials were undergoing doctoral "training programs". And they will get their degrees after two years, when full-time doctoral scholars get them only after three.

Research faculties of universities should be like think tanks. But officials in China have reduced them to playing the role of puppets.

(China Daily 10/30/2009 page9)