Keywords: World Trade Organization postgraduate education services
Joining the WTO is the dream of 65.438+0.2 billion China people, and now the dust has settled. While rejoicing, we should have more rational thinking, analyze the influence of China's entry into WTO on education, put forward corresponding countermeasures, carry forward the positive and favorable aspects, and restrain the influence scope and intensity of the negative and unfavorable aspects, so as to achieve the goal of promoting the healthy and rapid development of education. There are many studies on WTO and higher education, but there are few studies on the influence of joining WTO on graduate education. Postgraduate education is an "incubator" for innovative talents. Therefore, this paper discusses the influence of China's entry into WTO on postgraduate education.
Ring has important theoretical and practical significance.
First, the influence of China's entry into WTO on graduate education.
From the scope of concessions, trade in services mainly includes market access and national treatment. There are four modes of service trade: cross-border delivery, consumption abroad, commercial presence and movement of natural persons. In terms of service trade commitments, China government has made horizontal and specific commitments to four possible service trade modes in various service trade sectors, mainly from two aspects: market access and national treatment. The same is true of postgraduate education service trade. China's entry into WTO has a direct impact on postgraduate education, including specific commitments, horizontal commitments and other educational service trade.
Indirect impact of industry commitment.
immediate impact
According to the agreement reached with WTO countries, the government of China has made the following commitments in the field of postgraduate education (since the government of China has not made any special commitment to the trade of postgraduate education services, the commitment to higher education is regarded as applicable to postgraduate education):
1. Cross-border supply: providing services from the territory of one member to any other member (such services do not constitute the flow of people, materials or funds, but are realized through telecommunications, post and telecommunications and computer networks, such as audio-visual and financial information). In education, it mainly provides distance education courses and education and training services. Our government has not made any commitment to cross-border delivery, and can decide the scale and scope of opening up independently, which is completely free from the constraints of WTO agreements. The positive impact of this is to enrich the domestic postgraduate education resources; It also brings challenges to the emerging online education in China, and at the same time, the ideological education content abroad may also take the opportunity to influence our graduate ideological education.
2. Foreign consumption. The so-called consumption abroad refers to providing services to service consumers of any other member within the territory of one member (such as receiving foreign tourists, providing tourist services and providing medical services to foreign patients). In education, it mainly means that citizens of one country go to another country to study and accept foreign students. We have not imposed any restrictions on postgraduate education in consumption abroad, which means that our country has opened a "convenient door" for transnational postgraduate study. With the reform and opening-up, especially in recent years, more and more China students have gone abroad and become the world's largest exporter of international students. According to the survey, most international students in China are studying for graduate degrees. After China's entry into WTO, the relaxation of conditions may trigger a new upsurge of studying abroad. For domestic graduate education institutions, while facing the pressure of decreasing the number and quality of domestic graduate students, they also have the opportunity to go abroad, attract outstanding foreign students, strengthen international exchanges, enhance international visibility and create foreign exchange. And a large number of students go abroad to study and emigrate, which means a huge loss of national educational resources. Overseas students returning to China to make contributions will promote the economic development of China.
3. Commercial presence. Commercial presence means that a service provider of a member provides services through commercial presence in the territory of any other member (it means that enterprises and economic entities of one country are allowed to set up business and provide services in another country, including investing in joint ventures, cooperative enterprises and wholly-owned enterprises. This is the most important form of service trade). With regard to postgraduate education, the attitude of our government is to "allow Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools" in the form of running schools, and to encourage "foreign parties can obtain majority shares" in the ownership of running schools. Are wholly foreign-owned schools allowed? "According to the regulations on educational services after China's accession to the WTO and the regulations on Sino-foreign cooperation in running schools, overseas organizations and individuals are not allowed to set up separate schools and other educational institutions to recruit China citizens in China." Not only that, we also need to "... reserve the right to set government prices for services such as education."
As can be seen from the commitment, commercial existence provides a good opportunity for foreign graduate education to "seize the beach" in China. It is undoubtedly a great event for educators who want to enroll graduate students. As far as going to school is concerned, you can receive a higher quality education with more choices and less investment. It can also reduce the pressure of China's graduate education for the "single-plank bridge", let more people have the opportunity to receive graduate education, and stimulate the demand for graduate education. Judging from the employment of graduates, after China's entry into WTO, a large number of foreign companies have entered China, and graduates have more employment choices. For domestic graduate education institutions, it is mixed. First of all, foreign educational institutions can learn from foreign experience, attract overseas funds and high-quality educational resources, and improve the overall quality and level of postgraduate education; It can also make domestic graduate education institutions increase the sense of urgency of competition, concentrate their efforts, optimize resources and improve the quality and efficiency of education; The competition between domestic and foreign educational institutions is conducive to the marketization and industrialization of education. Domestic graduate education and training institutions can also give full play to their own advantages and open up foreign graduate education and training markets. However, on the negative side, China's postgraduate education resources, especially high-quality education resources, are still in short supply, while foreign postgraduate education and training institutions are very attractive and compete directly with existing domestic education and training institutions. Powerful foreign famous schools will take away a group of good students and teachers, which will pose a great challenge to the survival and development of domestic graduate education institutions. From the perspective of personnel training, after China's entry into WTO, domestic graduate education institutions will be impacted by the advantages of foreign education institutions in teaching quality, teaching methods, teaching concepts, teacher construction and specialty setting. Another "pain" of domestic graduate education institutions is that more profits should be divided up by foreign institutions; Moreover, allowing more foreign educational institutions to participate in domestic postgraduate education will make our task of maintaining socialist ideology and opposing westernization and differentiation more arduous, which also puts forward higher and more urgent requirements for postgraduate education in China.
4. Mobility. According to the interpretation of the WTO agreement, the services provided by a service provider of a member through the presence of natural persons in any other member (such as doctors, professors and artists from one country going to another country to engage in individual services, unlike immigrants). For education, it mainly means that citizens of one country go to another country to engage in professional teaching and training. In the field of postgraduate education, the Chinese government welcomes "foreign personal education service providers invited or employed by China schools and other educational institutions to provide education services in China". However, the service provider must have a bachelor's degree or above, have a corresponding title or certificate, and have more than 2 years of professional work experience. This undoubtedly facilitates the exchange of excellent teacher resources between China and foreign countries. This is beneficial to both graduate educators and graduate education institutions. Graduate students can have more excellent teachers to choose from, which will alleviate the situation that there is nowhere to find famous teachers in graduate education institutions and the supply of some professional excellent teachers is in short supply. But it has a certain impact on the domestic graduate teacher market. Foreign churches rob some teachers of their "rice bowls", especially foreign language teachers. On the other hand, the participation of foreign teachers will promote domestic teachers to learn from them and optimize the overall level of domestic teachers. Similarly, excellent teachers in China have more opportunities to spread our advanced technology abroad and serve other countries.
(2) Indirect influence
As an important part of the innovation system of higher education, graduate education is closely related to all walks of life. They will indirectly affect the development of postgraduate education from all aspects, mainly from the level commitment of service trade, the commitment of other educational services and the commitment of other industries.
1, horizontal commitment. Horizontal commitment refers to the service commitment applicable to all service trade sectors. Because postgraduate education is closely related to service trade, the commitment of our government to other service trade will certainly have different degrees of influence on postgraduate education from different aspects. If China allows foreign investors to invest in the domestic service industry in the form of sole proprietorship and joint venture, it will compete fiercely with the domestic service industry because of its mature management and operation experience. On the one hand, improve the level and quality of China's service industry, so that teachers and students in graduate education units can enjoy high-quality services; On the other hand, it will also make some service workers unemployed, which will impact the whole labor market and make the already severe employment situation of graduates even more tense.
2. Commitments of other industries. After China's entry into WTO, we are almost open to the whole industry, but different industries have different forms and degrees of openness. In addition, the development degree of domestic related industries is very different, and compared with foreign countries, the advantages and disadvantages are different. Therefore, the impact of China's entry into WTO on domestic industries is different. According to the analysis, "after China's entry into WTO, China's advantageous industries such as textiles, clothing, light industry, household appliances, handicrafts and construction will have more development opportunities;" Agriculture and automobile, chemical industry, machinery, telecommunications, medicine and other industries will be greatly affected. "Because higher education, including postgraduate education, is closely related to the development of the above-mentioned industries in the national economy, the impact of China's accession to the WTO on these industries will inevitably indirectly affect postgraduate education. For example, after China's entry into WTO, the domestic animal and plant quarantine standards need to be gradually in line with international standards, and we need to update equipment and train personnel, which will consume considerable manpower, material resources and financial resources. The postgraduate education department will play an important role in updating agricultural equipment, cultivating and training high-quality agricultural talents, cultivating new varieties of agricultural products, improving the efficiency and benefit of agricultural production, and enhancing the comparative advantages of agricultural products.
More importantly, China's entry into WTO will force the adjustment of the original economic structure and industrial structure, which will lead to the adjustment of the graduate education system. In the process of integrating China's economic system with the world, the old education system, non-standard school-running behavior, backward education concept and management mode will be continuously improved, and the school-running subjects will be more diversified. The direct involvement of some effective operating mechanisms in the world will inject vitality into the reform of school-running system and management system. In addition, after China's accession to the WTO, a large number of large foreign companies and their localized operations will greatly increase the demand for high-tech talents who understand the rules of world trade and high-level talents in finance, management, trade and law, and these talents will be in short supply. This structural contradiction of employment and the characteristics of talent flow will affect the development of graduate education and graduate employment. The internationalization of China's economy and trade also requires more high-level talents to have cross-cultural and cross-industry abilities. These new situations pose new challenges to the training structure of postgraduate education.
3. Other educational service trade commitments. As an important part of the education system, postgraduate education is closely related to primary, secondary and undergraduate education. Because we have made specific commitments in primary, secondary and undergraduate education services, we are allowed to provide foreign education services for us. The advanced technology, excellent teachers, rich experience and high-quality management brought by foreign education will certainly help to improve the overall quality and level of education in China, so as to transport more excellent students for graduate education and promote the development of graduate education in China.
In a word, joining WTO has both direct and indirect effects on graduate education; There are both positive and negative aspects. The unity of positive and negative contradictions can be transformed into each other. This depends not only on commitment, but also on our own understanding and preparation. If the conditions are favorable to the positive, the positive influence will be enhanced; On the contrary, the negative impact will rise. Therefore, we should not indulge in the joy of course, think rationally, proceed from long-term interests, and strive to create conditions conducive to the transformation to positive influence and expand the positive influence on graduate education. Therefore, we must study and take scientific and reasonable countermeasures.
Second, the countermeasures
Through analysis, we know that the influence of China's entry into WTO on postgraduate education is multifaceted, multi-level, different and bidirectional. Whether in the service industry or other industries. Therefore, in addition to the scientific decision-making of education, which is a key department, efforts from all sides and the cooperation of all departments are needed to form a joint force, so as to better improve the quality and level of postgraduate education and promote its healthy and rapid development.
(A) change ideas and strengthen service awareness.
Most countries regard providing education as a service, and engaging in economic activities related to education is called education industry. Under the guidance of this concept, it has created a flexible education system and a vibrant education industry under the guidance of market economy, and formed a high-quality education level in developed countries such as Europe and America. Postgraduate education is no exception. However, there is still a heated debate in China about whether education is an industry or not. Our educational leaders and management cadres should accept advanced ideas as soon as possible and be in line with international standards. Facts have proved that the quality and level of our postgraduate education are not high, the socialization of our educational logistics can not be completed, and the educational industry can not form economies of scale, which is closely related to the backward educational concept. Up to now, many leaders and teachers have not formed the concept that education is service, service for students and service for society, and they are not responsible for students and teachers, but only for superiors, which leads to the conservative management and teaching of postgraduate education and the lack of innovative spirit and ability, which is an important reason for the low overall level of postgraduate education. Thought leads action, and advanced thought is the key to seize opportunities and catch up. Therefore, after China's entry into WTO, we should dare to take the initiative to "bring it" and have the courage to "change our minds".
(2) Deepen reform and improve the quality of education.
After China's entry into WTO, postgraduate education should not only compete with foreign countries, but also undertake the important task of cultivating first-class innovative talents and improving China's comprehensive national strength. However, China's current education system was formed under the long-term planned economy system, and the educational concept, operation mechanism, management system, teaching content and methods are still relatively old. The main disadvantages of the postgraduate education system are: (1) insufficient investment and serious waste of educational resources coexist; (2) The educational investment channel is single, lacking social participation; (3) The school lacks autonomy in running a school, and the number of students enrolled and the distribution of graduates are mainly based on the national plan, which limits the right of the school to run a school independently; (4) Lack of competition mechanism in internal management; (5) The single subject of running a school inhibits the enthusiasm of local and social schools. In the management of graduate students, many colleges and universities do not have a scientific and reasonable mechanism. Many graduate students work part-time, and what's more, they work part-time or full-time. Some university graduate students have not published an article after studying for three years, and even borrowed other people's articles for publication. This situation has seriously affected the quality of postgraduate education. It is also necessary to strengthen the construction of tutors, who are the main force in cultivating graduate students. Tutors' academic views, academic level and academic style will directly affect the cultivation of graduate students. At present, the main problem lies in ignoring the evaluation of teaching and training quality, which makes many graduate tutors have low requirements for graduate students, insufficient guidance and lax control, thus reducing the training quality. Joining WTO provides us with convenient conditions for introducing excellent graduate tutors and learning advanced foreign experience and systems. We should seize this favorable opportunity, reform curriculum, teaching materials, teaching mode and examination evaluation system, focus on cultivating graduate students' innovative spirit and ability, and pay attention to improving their practical application ability. The government should also simplify administration and decentralize power, do not interfere with the disciplines, specialty settings, enrollment scale, student status management and other matters within the responsibilities of graduate education units, increase investment in graduate education, and gradually introduce the market competition mechanism to make graduate education more suitable for the requirements of the socialist market economy.
(3) Adjust the structure and strengthen the discipline construction.
After China's entry into WTO, the structural contradiction of talents is a prominent problem. The analysis report of the Ministry of Personnel pointed out that "China's entry into WTO will cause a serious shortage of four key talents: high-level talents; High-tech talents (information, life, new materials, renewable energy, space, ocean, environmental protection, soft science); Senior financial and insurance talents. In addition, there is an obvious shortage of 10 talents in public management, international business, foreign languages, law, financial insurance, tourism psychological counseling, research and development, education, etc. " On the one hand, foreign institutions and enterprises need all kinds of graduate-level senior talents to explore China and the international market; On the other hand, we also urgently need all kinds of talents to exchange and cooperate with enterprises all over the world. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the existing postgraduate training structure, strengthen the discipline construction and development, adjust the curriculum and improve the postgraduate talent training structure. Starting from the future development of disciplines and social needs, planning and construction are carried out from the aspects of scientific research system, academic team and research conditions, so as to form the comprehensive strength of personnel training and scientific research.
(4) Strengthen cooperation and innovate training mode.
China's postgraduate education started late and its level is low, while the postgraduate education in developed countries such as Europe and America is more mature than ours, operating in a mature market economy environment, and has quite mature experience in recruiting international students, transforming scientific and technological achievements, developing finished educational products, and cultivating postgraduate students. Therefore, we should strengthen cooperation with them, learn from their strengths and learn from their experience. In recent years, domestic graduate education institutions have also actively explored foreign cooperation and achieved many positive results. In the process of internationalization, Shanghai Jiaotong University has explored the experience of cooperating with foreign universities and research institutions to train master's and doctoral students, which is worth learning and learning from. For example, the School of Mechanical Engineering and the University of Michigan jointly developed a teaching plan to train graduate students, and studied in China and the United States respectively in the first two years. Students who have completed their graduation thesis abroad can obtain master's degrees from two universities respectively if they pass the examination. Not only that, they have also established joint laboratories with more than 50 multinational enterprise groups and scientific research institutions, such as General Motors, to cultivate talents, work together to tackle key problems, and establish joint training centers and scientific research cooperation relations. It not only improves the quality of postgraduate education and training, but also enhances the international reputation of Jiaotong University. It has also brought a lot of funds to improve the ability of scientific research and running schools, and at the same time strengthened the ties between universities and enterprises.
All industries should deeply understand the importance of postgraduate education, increase support for postgraduate education, and close the relationship between them. Especially after China's entry into WTO, all industries must survive and develop in the global market. Therefore, according to their own characteristics and needs, various industries can increase their support for graduate education by donating, entrusting training, setting up scholarships, entrusting scientific research projects, providing internship bases for graduate students, and sending representatives to participate in major school affairs.
(5) Give full play to its advantages and explore the international market.
The international education market, especially postgraduate education, is a big "cake". Western developed countries have an advantage in the competition and seized most of the markets.
Field. A large number of well-educated college students go abroad to study every year. At present, only the rate of fresh graduates going abroad in Beijing is 14%. Although our graduate education level is not high, educational resources are in short supply, and we are at a disadvantage in the competition, we will try our best to occupy a place. On the one hand, we are committed to improving the quality of education; On the other hand, it is necessary to develop with characteristics to attract foreign students. On the basis of giving full play to the traditional advantages of China's language and culture and China's traditional medicine, we will open up new bright spots. We can also set up overseas graduate schools or branch schools abroad to recruit foreign college students for graduate studies. Shanghai Jiaotong University cooperated with Singapore University to recruit new MBA students and awarded China an MBA degree, which made China's postgraduate education go abroad and set an example for us. Its experience is worth learning and using for reference.
(6) Safeguarding sovereignty and strengthening ideological education.
Joining WTO will bring many new challenges to the ideological and political work of graduate students in China. First of all, with the increasingly open education after China's entry into WTO, more and more western educational institutions will enter China, which will inevitably bring adverse effects on political and cultural trends of thought. Secondly, the promise of cultural services will make western media enter China in different ways, especially some institutions and individuals with obvious ideological purposes, who will engage in illegal activities in a legal capacity under the slogan of grandiose. The task of maintaining socialist ideology in the field of education and opposing total westernization and differentiation will be even more arduous. It is more important to carry out ideological and political education for graduate students. Once it is corrupted by bad ideology and culture, it will be more dangerous and cause greater losses if it goes to the criminal road or even the opposite side of the country. Therefore, under the new situation, we should combine the characteristics of graduate students, carry out fruitful ideological and political education, strengthen patriotism, collectivism and socialist ideological education, vigorously carry forward the excellent culture and traditional virtues of the Chinese nation, enhance national pride and pride, and consciously resist the influence of foreign bad culture while learning and absorbing foreign advanced culture.