Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
In today's fast changing job market, should universities be extending programs or speeding them up?
With more programs lengthening in China, are we really raising the bar of education, or just costs?
We discuss who gains from extra years in school, and who ends up paying the price.
coming to you live from Beijing.
This is rantable. I'm He Yang for today's program I'm joined by you, Shun.
Hello there. Mm -hmm.
Hey, and also guess who's back on the show?
Josh Cotterell! Yay!
So happy to be back, guys.
So happy to be back.
And it's wonderful to be having you in the studio.
I know. Not through Internet.
You're really there in front of me.
Yeah, it's almost a catch phrase you know, Josh Cotterell on the line.
Yeah! And now we have you back in the studio the three of us in this very small room and well I'm not complaining and I'm actually very happy and I look forward to our discussion.
I'm sure we'll have some great conversations like the old times and I look forward to the fantastic chemistry that we have face to face.
Absolutely. And first on today's round table!
Four years used to mean a full College education that still holds true in most of China, except for a handful of specialized majors, such as veterinarian science or English with a second language.
But it's at the master's and PhD levels where we're seeing the real stretch. Many universities are quietly adding an extra year.
Compare that to the UK where three -year undergrads and one -year master's degrees remain standard. Or in the US, there's growing pressure to shorten graduate programs to reduce student debt and get young people into the workforce sooner.
So here's our big question today.
When universities stretch their programs, are they investing in quality or just buying time?
And what does that extra year actually cost students financially and mentally?
So of course let's start with Yuxuan about what's going on here in China.
Which universities have extended their program lengths?
Yeah, this is kind of a trend that is not that new right now.
According to data compiled by Chinese education information platform called RANK, between 2020 and 2024, more than 40 universities extended the length of study to five years.
For seven undergraduate majors, their English, Architecture, Urban and Rural Planning, Landscape architecture and veterinary medicine and so on.
And this kind of trend is also occurring at the graduate level.
One background is that China classifies its master's programs into two types.
One type is academic masters that focused on mostly theoretical research and professional masters, which is more like practice oriented.
And then many universities are now extending professional masters programs to three years and it was originally two years, so that is the trend, or I think a lot of universities are doing this kind of thing in recent years.
And Josh, you are from the UK and you read extensively about different countries as you're preparing for our show, so what is it like elsewhere outside of China when it comes to the extension of academic programs?
Well, it's actually already the norm in a lot of Western countries, especially for those degrees requiring high levels of specialization research or hands on practice.
In my own country in the United Kingdom, degrees in things like veterinary medicine, medicine and architecture already span five to six years.
And if you're going to a very elite institution like Oxford or Cambridge, that's very research heavy, then these degrees are often much longer, because they have these sort of tutorial based systems. And there's a lot of emphasis on things like deep inquiry, it's called independent thinking, things like sustained academic mentorship, and this model is for those complex subjects that are supposed to require more time.
I know that later probably we're going to talk about, Well, does that does the length equal quality in in this sense, right?
Does it actually help, but that's up for debate, which I think we're about to do.
So I've also found that in Europe, in countries such as Germany, there are a lot of what I call professional degree tracks.
So these include things like engineering, teaching and health care.
And they follow things like structured multiyear timelines.
So they embed things like apprenticeships, internships, practical things that actually allow you to enter the workforce.
So these are not undergraduate degrees, though, right?
Well in essence they would be equivalent to an undergraduate degree But in countries like Germany with things like engineering and teaching there's more of an emphasis on you actually Becoming employable and getting into the workforce.
So it it may not always have the same title I guess as Bachelor of Arts or something like this, right or Master of Science or an MA or whatever But I mean in my opinion it's equivalent to it.
Maybe even more valuable I guess that's up for today.
And it's pretty standard in the UK that the undergraduate degree is only three years.
Yes, a lot of the time.
So, I think we still need to look at the exceptions, and look at the norm, and that is three years in the UK, and in China usually it's four, but some of these degrees are now expanding to a fifth year, and people are questioning whether that is all that useful.
and it's really common increasingly common to see that in graduate studies level then universities are adding that extra year and why do you think universities are prolonging their programs is it to raise academic standards or what are they trying to do here yeah I think Josh have already has already mentioned some of the points and the situation internationally and Domestics are quite similar I would say, in the sense of for some reasons, these undergraduate programs are extending the length.
And one thing is that these curriculum complexity and breadth maybe require a lot of students to maybe spend more time on studying different subjects.
For example, in Changchun University in northeastern part of China, English programs with a second language component like English, Spanish, and that necessitates more time for students to fully master the required skills, because when their main major is English, but they still need to spend more time on learning not only English literature or something like that, but also Spanish stuff.
Also, the animal medicine programs curriculum is very, very vast, incorporating basic sciences, animal science, medicine, pharmacy, public health, and animal husbandry, leading to numerous courses and high credit requirements.
And that is why these programs, they need to expand or extend the length of their program.
Yeah, and on that particular point it's kind of converging with the international practice for veterinary and medicine.
So that I can't understand.
And I suppose what got a lot of people talking initially was, what, you're extending an English major from four to five, and considering that nowadays AI tools are being so widely used in so many different aspects of our work and life and people sometimes even question is it even worthwhile to study a language anymore?
And some university out there is saying they want to turn four into five and people are paying for that extra year, then that just sounds like, what are you talking about?
That is bonkers! but thanks to Youxun you explained for us, you know, what exactly is going on over there.
Then what about for postgraduate programs mainly extending professional masters to three years and doctorate degrees to four years in China?
What do you think is the consideration of these universities in China to make this arrangement?
Well for a start there's an increase in research requirements and academic complexity so particularly for doctoral programs and the demands for things like There's a continuous demand for an increase in academic research and this also has become more complex as universities I assume try to remain competitive in this world of academic competition trying to make sure that you stay where you are in the university rankings I know that in my own country in the UK This is incredibly important and I'm sure that you have some friends who have gone and studied in the UK and that ranking is, maybe moving
from 100 or out of the top 200 can be huge for your reputation.
And so they have to remain competitive in this way.
Also extending the program can provide more time for students to engage in rigorous, meaningful research. This is the argument as well sometimes.
Meaningful research takes a lot of time, right, especially in medicine, it can take decades even, right.
So if this is the purpose of the university of the research institute which I think it should be, right, that's why they're there then this makes a lot of sense.
I think also there's an attempt to address the graduate, the highly delayed graduation rates, there is a 2023 survey that was conducted by the Doctoral Education Research Center at Peking University based on nearly 10 ,000 PhD graduates and this showed that many students who delayed graduation produced higher quality theses.
Especially in top universities.
And I think that this suggests that improving the quality of postgraduate education, you know, it requires more time.
Which makes a lot of sense, I guess.
There's also the argument that it can help to adapt the students to adapt to new job market demands.
The new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is reshaping the job market for sure, and so this arguably requires graduates with stronger sustainable development abilities transferable abilities and and such to have these skills and that I guess needs more time.
I don't know how much I agree with this.
I'm a bit skeptical myself if this is actually always the result.
I do see universities still as a bit of a business model, but I guess in China it seems quite positive actually, at least from these arguments in this study here.
Well, are extended programs preparing students for the real world or do you think they're shedding them from it?
Well, you know, if you get one extra year in school, then that's one more year you can prepare for the very competitive job market out there.
What do you think you know this move signifies in our society?
I think they're trying to provide more time and space or even opportunities for students to not only do all of these theoretical knowledge or have these theoretical knowledge but also have the chance to put them into practice because some of them are actually requiring students to even have more time to do the internship and maybe put more knowledge into like practice and they are having more diverse employer involvement, creating opportunities for employers and third -party institutions to participate more deeply in training and also integrating market information.
They introduce cutting -edge market information into curriculum design, which means they can help students to have a better understanding on the whole industry that they are going to develop, also promoting industry academia integration.
This is trying to facilitate closer ties between government, industry, research, academia, and also application.
One policy that I would like to mention is that these 2018 national standards for undergraduate professional teaching quality in veterinary medicine explicitly stated that the existing four -year programs should gradually transition to five years because this policy recognizes the complexity and practical needs of the field and requiring more time for students to develop necessary skills and knowledge, because actually in the plans that we, or in the whole changing or the trend that we mentioned before, veterinary medicine is the major that with the most university changing its academic program structure.
Here in China, we could see this as a really bright spot.
If you compare internationally, tuition fees are actually very affordable and I'm comparing with the US or the UK.
In the US these days, if you go to a pretty nice university, one year's tuition plus the living expenses could easily go above 60 ,000 U .S. dollars.
And that is close to uh, that is close, that goes easily beyond 500 ,000 yuan for a year.
And just think about that.
You, as a young person who needs four years education and you're taking out that loan.
So you have such a massive amount of debt, even before officially starting your first job.
And that is a huge, huge financial pressure for American students in that sense.
And Josh, you can talk about the UK situation.
So I want to talk about cost. Here in China like, still for average families thinking that maybe you need to pay for one more year of education.
It's totally understandable to do a cost -benefit analysis and have some questions about that, despite the fact that maybe we're kind of lucky in comparison in China that it's not that much, but this is real money coming out of real people's pockets and not everybody's gonna be happy, and everybody's gonna consider is it really worth it for this kind of investment into education.
And in this sense, I think it's kind of interesting to make an international comparison.
And just imagine prolonging your studies in a British or American university.
I can't even imagine how unpopular this will be.
Josh will share your thoughts.
Yeah, well, there's quite a few things to unpack there, but I totally agree with you that a longer degree equals higher debt.
It's very simple, and this might be comparably more debt in the United Kingdom, where tuition fees are much higher than in China, but still, either way, it equals more debt, and the average debt for a graduate who begins their course in 2022, 23, in the UK, is 45 ,600 pounds upon completion of your undergraduate course.
So that's a lot higher than it used to be.
I remember when I started university, the tuition fees were actually tripled.
So somebody that I might meet in the student union bar, who was just in the year above me, was paying a third of what I was paying, you know, it was, and we didn't really think about it, it just happened.
But now that we've graduated, we're older like myself, it really is hitting us hard. We're in a huge amount of debt, many people are, and a lot of people are regretting it actually.
so I think it needs to be done very carefully.
It seems to me as though China is doing that more carefully and that there are better protective measures in place to say stopping suddenly a triple tripling of tuition fees, but I guess that remains to be seen.
But yeah, ultimately I think that quality doesn't equal duration, right?
It doesn't equal duration, you need so many things in place to make sure that this money, this time is worthwhile and things like better teaching models, industry collaboration, transparency for students I think as it becomes more expensive you know the students should really have more transparency about what they're paying for I think.
Even if you're studying something like that's maybe a bit less a bit more difficult to quantify in terms of grading like language right.
I mean can you put a level on fluency really you know how fluent should I be after five years of studying Spanish and English, right?
Is it all on me? Is it on the university?
It's pretty complicated, but clear learning outcomes outcomes I think are, um, are very important here.
And this extra year to me, it seems a bit vague right now, right.
I would be a bit suspicious myself.
I nearly did a sandwich course.
It's called a sandwich course in the UK, which is quite popular, where you do a year abroad or an internship or something like this.
and it was more expensive, but in my, you know, when I was 18, I thought this seemed really smart, but I'm really glad I didn't do it because I got into the job market quicker, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. Um, when you look at the China situation, we covered a lot of discussion on the extension of programs and apparently there are still others that are shortening their academic terms. What's the thinking behind that?
Since we're talking about the comparison of quality and duration, a lot of universities don't think that it is necessary or it is an equation of the length equals the quality, because the extensions aren't necessarily part of a uniform move to simply make everything longer, but rather indicate a shift towards a more diverse and customizable education system.
So, some universities are actually also exploring, you know, shortening academic terms or offering more flexible paths.
One example is Fuyao University of Science and Technology.
They're implementing an eight -year integrated bachelor's plus master's cross -docturate training model for its entire school and this approach aims to shorten the traditional sequential path of four years of Bachelors plus three years of Masters and plus four years of Doctoral and also Xian University of Architecture and Technology is also piloting reforms in its architecture program exploring new paths like 4 plus 1 plus n year of doctorate and four plus one plus two year of masters which aims to also shorten the training time through flexible academic term settings some professionals are saying
that there are no that kind of one -size -fits -all strategy for all of the students because or also for all of the majors because different majors require different time for studying also for internship or like inputting everything into practice and that is why you know different majors I think that is a lot of them different majors are like giving out different plans on this kind of situation see usually I am all for flexibility because we see that if you have a very rigid system and sometimes it becomes only a mechanism to sift out a lot of people and because in our country, we're nothing short,
but of population size.
So it becomes a way of using a fixed standard to sift out a whole bunch of people and then you get a small bunch of people and you think that they're the best, or they're the elites that should receive a certain type of education.
And then with this kind of system, yes, we have arrived in a society with a lot of great talent who after adequate training become the backbone of society, and then they progress.
Great. But once you enter flexibility, you're supposed to allow more of individuality, more of different diversity of talent to be chosen and to have an opportunity.
And that's supposed to be a great thing.
But in China, we're a big country with very complicated realities and it doesn't always go that way and I'll just briefly reference something that if you live in China then you've seen this on social media in recent, last month I suppose, a certain Mrs. Dong.
She became a licensed physician through a four plus four program and that's four years of non -medical undergraduate degree plus four years of medical training and this is very different.
It's one of those very flexible arrangements as opposed to what most doctors go through in this country and it's supposed to be seen as some kind of reform.
However, her academic background with an economics degree which isn't all that different from the American medical route, but she only received far less medical training as some of most of her peers in this country and then that whole situation blew up, backfired, and led many people in this country to question what is the standard supposed in this case, that would be the medical training in our country.
And we see that when an education or professional system introduces flexibility, or fast -track options, the intended goal is innovation or efficiency, but without robust, transparent oversight, such flexibility often becomes a loophole, a space where the privileged can engage in rent -seeking, benefiting themselves and those with connections.
And this has all led the public to believe that it might not be reform or at least is not successful reform, but it's about privilege masking as merit.
And I wonder if you guys have some thoughts about, you know, how to go about these reforms because a lot of people are gonna be affected and it's a very complex issue but I don't think we can rest on our laurels and just say oh the old system is something we can rely on because obviously it's not.
Yeah, and I was thinking it's it's as I said it's not a kind of you know one -size -fits -all kind of thing, universities must or they have to make sure that when they're making decisions and these decisions are based on their own educational goals and resources not simply just follow a trend or some like policies or professionals think they should do that kind of thing and also about this this issue on that kind of a loophole in education system I'm not like finding excuses for this incident but it seems that like globally from a global perspective there are a in a lot of like education systems. So that is of course
something that we need to improve in many ways and it's gonna be a long way for us to go as well.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for me, it's all about the end goal.
If the goal of this is to improve quality, and we've got to remember that universities, they're there not just to educate those students, but a lot of these universities are trying to develop research, They're trying to find cures for diseases.
They're trying to improve research into all sorts of different things.
And if that's the goal, then I think it's very positive.
But if it is something, you know, more economic, if it's because there is just this massive pressure to get a postgraduate degree to stand out on the job market because everybody has a bachelor's, then I think it needs to be done very carefully and cautiously, because I'm not sure what the end result of that is in 10 years time.
maybe everybody's doing a seven -year bachelor's degree, right?
When, where does it end, you know?
Yeah, I don't think it's gonna go that way.
I don't think so. Yeah.
I'm being dramatic.
I think it's just reassuring to say that and not leave people hanging.
So we have kind of agreed upon that an extended academic program itself does not automatically lead to better educational outcomes.
Before we go to the next topic, just some final thoughts about this.
What do you think are the key factors for the universities to consider and to let us know before prolonging the academic education time as well as the money that is asked of us?
Yeah, students also deserve a clear explanation when these policies were issued.
If the extra semester or year is left for students to find internships, or just write these theses on their own, without any structured teaching or practical training provided by the university, that's totally, that becomes meaningless.
They may question whether the extension truly benefits their education, or if it's driven by other interests.
and a well -planned structure for that extended year or years should be, I think, well -reformed to a lot of these students.
Mm -hmm. I think if you're in China, there might be a little bit of a humming noise in the background for some time when it comes to academics.
That is, we need better education.
The current standard is not always satisfactory.
So I think it's really good intentions that you want to improve the educational quality.
But is it through an extra year and how do you go about it?
That's the big problem here.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the main takeaway for me from all of this, what Yuxin said, I agree with totally.
Longer degrees, they really can be valuable.
Just like you said, Huyang, they can be extremely useful if they are developing the course or developing that area of research but it has to be time that time has to be really structured and it has to have purpose it has to have a lot of purpose and whether that's the case or not will really depend on the university I guess and the people organizing that course but I think it can be very useful otherwise it might just be a bit like you know doing the same thing but a bit longer and more slowly, and it costs more.
Why? Why? We don't need that in 2025 and onwards.
And also I think there's one thing I don't know if our universities can't equip our students with, just as importantly as all the things you just mentioned guys, it needs to cultivate the ability to adjust. In an era where industries are being reshaped by technology, shifting societal needs, and global uncertainty, the job market demands more than static skills.
It asks for future -proof readiness and the kind that allows graduates to adapt, upskill, and thrive in roles that may not even exist yet.
So maybe the issue isn't simply about longer programs, it's about rethinking higher education altogether.
The goal should be a system that's intentionally designed as a long -term investment in capability, adaptability, and real -world REVELANCE is my opinion.
