Summary

On the 28^th of December, China’s Academic Degrees and Graduate Education Development Centre (CDGDC) released the results of its National Discipline Evaluation, assessing the quality of 513 Chinese universities and research institutes in 95 disciplines at PhD and Master’s degree level. The results can give a useful insight into Chinese universities’ subject strengths. A full evaluation result in English translated by British Council China is available for download as attached. 

CDGDC, which is an organisation under Ministry of Education, assesses disciplines based on performance in four areas: teaching capacity, quality of talent development, research development, and reputation. It is based on a combination of public data, questionnaire feedback, and subjective assessment by experts.

Results separate institutions into one of nine bands – A+ to C- – in each discipline, as a single combined score. These are defined on a percentage basis – two per cent of institutions in each discipline are rated A+, three per cent are rated A, five per cent are rated A-, and the remaining six bands each account for 10 per cent of all participating universities. This means that the A+ to C- range accounts for 70 per cent of universities in the relevant subject area; those whose score was in the bottom 30 per cent are not listed in the results.

The National Discipline Evaluation has been carried out once every five years since 2002, making this the fourth such evaluation. It is also the largest such assessment, with the number of participating institutions increasing by almost a third compared with 2012. Involvement in the exercise is voluntary but a large proportion of Chinese universities take part, especially among the country’s more prestigious institutions – this year’s exercise had 94 per cent coverage among universities that issue doctoral degrees. However, not every university is assessed for each subject – the field with the largest number of institutions was business administration, in which 240 universities were rated A+ to C-, while the average across all disciplines was 78 institutions at A+ to C- grade.

Analysis by Kevin Prest

Although the discipline evaluation only looks at postgraduate programmes, it can act as a useful indicator of Chinese universities’ strengths in different subject areas. Although research performance plays a role, the assessment has been designed to place more weight on the quality of education provided to postgraduate students.

Assessment results can be useful to UK universities considering setting up partnerships in particular fields, with a strong score indicating that the university offers high-quality courses in that area even if it may not be as strong in terms of research output or the university’s overall international or domestic ranking.

Sources:

1. Evaluation result (in Chinese): http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/gzdt_gzdt/s5987/201712/P020171228506450281540.pdf

2. Q&A about the Evaluation (in Chinese): http://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s271/201712/t20171228_323245.html