After six years of study, I passed the defense, but I couldn't get a doctorate certificate! Or be claimed millions!
The school's response: If the document is misunderstood, you can withdraw from the school and get a refund!
Recently, the same academic ability has caused a big controversy, and people have begun to question and examine whether the irregularity in the awarding of doctoral degrees with equal academic ability has become an industrial chain used by universities to generate income.
On June 25, a doctoral student of China Medical University with the same academic ability sent a request for help, saying, "Today, our school suddenly notified us that these graduate students with the same academic ability signed an automatic withdrawal agreement. This news was like a bolt from the blue, and it was completely unacceptable to us. There are about 1,800 students in our group, all of whom have passed the rigorous admissions examination, met the requirements of the admissions brochure, completed all the required courses, and even many students have completed the blind review and defense of their graduation theses. However, the school is now telling us that we cannot award a degree and asking us to withdraw from school. ”
On June 26, the media contacted Zhao, a person involved in the incident. Zhao said that his wife had been studying at the Doctoral School of China Medical University for 6 years, and when there were 7 days left before graduation on June 28, that is, on June 21, they suddenly received a notice from their doctoral supervisor that in order to obtain a doctoral certificate, they needed to obtain a provincial and ministerial science and technology progress award and publish high-quality articles.
Zhao said: "If you do not meet the above requirements or do not agree with the school's arrangement, you can apply for a voluntary refund and withdrawal. According to the statistics of doctoral students at the same university, there are about dozens of students who cannot graduate due to this problem, and it is too difficult to meet the graduation requirements in a short period of time. ”
Zhao also said: "First of all, when registering and studying, the relevant enrollment brochure does not clearly inform that the above conditions must be met when graduation; Secondly, although the duration of doctoral studies is 3 years, the vast majority of students need to spend more than 3 years to complete their studies, which consumes a lot of energy. Thirdly, many doctoral students are working in the Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, and the pressure of employment makes them forced to obey the school's arrangement. ”
Why are the terms of degree awarding conflicting, and the threshold for graduation suddenly raised when graduation is approaching?
On the morning of June 26, in response to this matter, the staff of the Degree Management Office of the Graduate School of China Medical University responded: "The reason for changing the graduation requirements is because the university misunderstood the documents of the Ministry of Education when recruiting doctors with the same academic qualifications. In March this year, the Ministry of Education issued a rectification requirement to us, and doctoral graduates with the same academic ability need to publish high-level papers or monographs, and there must be provincial and ministerial science and technology awards. At present, in accordance with the relevant regulations of the Ministry of Education, China Medical University needs to re-examine the qualifications of all students who are about to graduate, and they need to meet two basic conditions for graduation. ”
The staff member also said that considering the actual situation, there is no limit to the graduation time of relevant doctoral students, and when the requirements are met, they can submit an application for the award of a degree, and if they have any objections to the graduation conditions, they can voluntarily choose to withdraw and refund.
In response to the university's response, a doctoral student of the same academic ability said: "It is very painful, if these requirements are written in the admissions brochure when applying, we may not apply for the examination." Now the school asks us to write a refund application, what is this? Could it be that our youth in the past few years has been wasted in studying for a PhD? Who is to blame for this? ”
According to the refund application posted by the student, it reads: I have been aware of the relevant requirements of the Regulations of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council on Conferring Master's and Doctoral Degrees to Persons with Equivalent Academic Qualifications for Graduate Studies (Degree (1998) No. 54), and voluntarily give up the qualification to apply for a doctoral degree with equivalent academic qualifications. The applicant school will refund the relevant fees of _____ RMB paid for the application of the equivalent academic degree to my account. I have no further dispute with China Medical University regarding the application for a doctorate degree with equivalent academic qualifications, nor do I claim my rights against China Medical University in any way.
Why did you recruit these students in the first place, if they couldn't be awarded doctorates? Why not state the conditions for awarding a doctorate early on? After studying for so many years, who will accept it if students are to withdraw from school and refund their fees?
Mr. Liu, another recent graduate of the school, revealed that he received a notice from the school a week before the graduation ceremony after attending the oral defense, asking him to sign the withdrawal application, confidentiality agreement and other documents.
Mr. Liu said: "My thesis has also passed the college review, proofreading, and the unified blind review of the Ministry of Education. In order to study for a Ph.D., I also signed a full-time production agreement with the unit, if I can't get the doctorate certificate, I need to pay three times the salary and social security benefits in the past few years, plus the scientific research investment unit in recent years can not reimburse me, the amount is nearly one million yuan. For the whole family, it is an unbearable pain. ”
On the morning of June 27, the Liaoning Provincial Department of Education intervened in the matter, and the staff of the relevant department responded that the Provincial Department of Education had launched an investigation into the matter. At present, the Provincial Department of Education and China Medical University have set up a special working group to verify and deal with this matter and interpret relevant policies for students. The staff member also said that the "Regulations of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council on Conferring Master's and Doctoral Degrees to Personnel with the Equivalent Academic Qualifications for Graduate Students" issued in 1998 have strict provisions on qualification examination.
What is a Ph.D. with equivalent academic qualifications?
The provincial and ministerial science and technology progress award is a difficult task to complete
First of all, why can't these students be awarded doctorates? The university's explanation was that it had misunderstood the policy and found that these equivalent doctoral students were not eligible for a doctorate.
So, we have to first understand what is a doctorate with the same academic ability, and what is the difference between a doctorate in the unified examination.
At present, many colleges and universities admit students with the same academic ability, and students can enter without examination. This is exactly what is needed for working people who have been working for many years and have long forgotten what they have learned, so they are not suitable for the entrance exams, so they can choose to study in the same way as the academic qualifications.
Although the same academic ability is exempted from the entrance examination, there are also corresponding academic requirements for applicants. For example, a master's degree requires a bachelor's degree and a bachelor's degree for at least 3 years, while a master's degree is usually required for at least 5 years. In addition, some colleges and universities will require the major to have similar basic knowledge, basic skills and qualities as the applied major, especially for medical majors, and there are more regulations on the consistency of majors.
For doctors with the same academic ability, after graduation, a single certificate is issued, that is, a degree certificate, and no academic certificate is given, and only the doctoral degree of the unified examination will have a double certificate. In addition, with the further standardization of the Ministry of Education for the same academic ability of the doctoral degree in recent years, the same academic ability has belonged to the training mode of "wide entry and strict exit", which is very simple to enter, but even more difficult to graduate, which is more than the requirements of the unified examination for double degree doctors.
For example, in 2023, China University of Petroleum (East China) mentioned in the recruitment brief for doctoral students with equivalent academic ability that "the courses specified in the doctoral training plan of the applied discipline should be studied in the form of accompanying graduate students".
Due to the university's misunderstanding of the policy, China Medical University is temporarily unable to award doctoral degrees to students to graduate, so what is this policy?
According to the Regulations of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council on Conferring Master's and Doctoral Degrees to Personnel with the Academic Qualifications of Graduate Students issued by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council in 1998, the second item of Article 9 of the qualification examination clearly states that applicants should make outstanding achievements in the fields of teaching, scientific research and specialized technology, independently publish high-level academic papers or high-level monographs in the subject field for which they apply for a degree, and their scientific research achievements have been awarded at or above the national or provincial or ministerial level.
God, I really can't figure it out, there are not many words about the qualification examination for the same academic ability, why did the school misunderstand it? Today, let's look at it word by word, we must be clear and clear, and say a doorway.
In the second item of the qualification examination, the conjunctions of high-level academic papers and high-level monographs are "or", that is, only one of the two needs to be satisfied. However, the latter scientific research achievements have won awards at or above the national or provincial and ministerial levels, and the previous one is in a "parallel" relationship, which is a scientific research condition that must be met.
If China Medical University really understands the last half of the sentence as "or", hasn't it been discovered before? There are tens of thousands of people in colleges and universities, and no one understands this sentence? If "juxtaposition" was also understood as "or" in the past, then should the doctoral degrees awarded by the university to doctoral students with the same academic ability who have graduated a few years ago be withdrawn?
These are very serious and serious problems! Should the doctorate degrees of equivalent academic ability awarded in previous years be withdrawn? Strictly speaking, there is no provincial and ministerial science and technology award, it is to be withdrawn!
In the past, they turned a blind eye, but this year, after these students participated in the defense, the education department has tightened the review, and suddenly said that "their scientific research achievements have won awards at the national or provincial level or above" This half sentence is juxtaposed with the previous content, how can this be remedied?
In fact, the provincial and ministerial science and technology progress award is said to be "even promoted to a high level, and even some doctoral supervisors" are difficult to get this award. It would be nice to go directly to be a doctoral supervisor.
Who is responsible for the consequences?
Can I still study for a PhD with the same academic qualifications?
The "Degree Law" will be implemented next year, and the awarding of degrees will be more stringent!
After the incident, accusations came one after another on the Internet.
A master's tutor at a university in Jiangsu said on the Internet: "Students who are affected can go to the court to sue for rights protection, which is very bad to study in detail!" Judging from the policy of the State Council, these students will not be able to get a doctorate certificate. The requirements for applying for a doctorate with the same academic ability are stricter than those of the unified examination for doctors, and the unified examination only needs a thesis, and will not require provincial and ministerial scientific research awards, because the same academic ability does not need to take the exam, the price is that the scientific research requirements are higher, especially for academic doctoral degrees, there is no provincial and ministerial award, that is simply not awarded a doctorate, this year the Ministry of Education is very tight, a check, all the problems have come out. But what's wrong with the student? The poor boy bears everything after all. ”
A netizen in Sichuan said: "We must increase the qualification review for applying for a degree with the same academic ability, many colleges and universities regard the same academic ability as a tool to generate income and collect money, and they will not be strict at all. Not now, starting next year, the "Degree Law" will officially come into effect, raising the degree awarding to the level of the law, and the degree awarding will only become stricter and stricter in the future! ”
In any case, in this case, these doctoral students have been hurt a lot, because the school has a wrong understanding of the policy, and does not clearly explain the conditions for awarding doctoral degrees in advance, resulting in these students going to study in a daze, wasting several years in vain, and thinking that they have taken advantage of the loss, who will bear the consequences of this kind of consequence?
In the next step, we hope that the Provincial Department of Education can give specific results.
In addition, after this incident, many people came to ask: Can I still study for a master's degree or a doctorate with the same academic qualifications?
You can definitely read it, but it will be more and more difficult to graduate.
At the beginning, in order to promote socialist modernization, a series of measures were formulated to confer doctoral degrees on personnel with the same academic ability as doctoral students. To put it simply, although there is no "academic qualification" for doctoral students, there is also an opportunity to award doctoral degrees to those who already have the same level of "academic ability" as graduate doctoral students. However, the management of the same academic ability is not strict, which has given many people loopholes.
The good news is that this lax situation is about to change. Recently, the ninth meeting of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress voted to pass the "Academic Degrees Law of the People's Republic of China", which will come into force on January 1, 2025. This is the first comprehensive revision of the legal system of academic degrees in mainland China since the implementation of the Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Academic Degrees on January 1, 1981.
The content of the Academic Degrees Law states that degrees should be awarded strictly and prudently, and in any of the following circumstances, the degree-awarding institution shall not award degrees or revoke degrees by resolution of the Academic Degree Evaluation Committee:
(1) The dissertation or practical results are found to have academic misconduct such as ghostwriting, plagiarism, or forgery;
(2) Stealing or fraudulently using the identity of others, substituting for the admission qualifications obtained by others, or using other illegal means to obtain enrollment qualifications or graduation certificates;
(3) Other serious violations of the law that should not be awarded a degree during the study period.
It can be seen that in the future, it will be more difficult to apply for a doctorate with the same academic ability, and if the scientific research results do not meet the standards, you will definitely not get a doctorate.
Article transferred from: Metz Medicine