Should law educational system change?
By Liu Li (China Daily)
Updated: 2006-10-10 07:14

This is not the job Zhou Long had in mind.

"When I was studying law in college, I never imagined that I would be selling pork after my graduation," said Zhou, 24, who works for a supermarket in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. He received his bachelor's degree from the Southwest University of Political Science & Law last year.

Zhuang Lei, 24, graduated from Xuzhou Normal University in Jiangsu Province this year with a bachelor's degree in law. Although she tried her best to find a job related to the law in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu, she is now a secretary at a small company in Suzhou.

Ministry of Education figures showed that last year China had more than 200,000 students studying for bachelor degrees in law at nearly 600 universities. About 66,000 working for their post-bachelor law degrees.

And according to a study by the All-China Youth Federation and Peking University, 62 per cent of this year's graduates with bachelor degrees in law failed to find jobs one of the lowest employment rates among the fields of study.

The situation has caused some people in the education and legal communities to call for a change in the way China trains its lawyers, prosecutors and judges.

For example, Zhu Chongshi, the president of Xiamen University in East China's Fujian Province, suggested that the school cancel the curriculum for a bachelor's degree in law.

"Because in reality people who hold bachelor's degrees are hardly ever engaged in law-related work after their graduation," he said.

Zhu says law professionals in China need higher degrees and cites the educational system used in the United States.

"Courses in law should be a basic requirement for undergraduate students, not an independent major in studies for a bachelor's degree," he said. "If students plan to become lawyers, judges or prosecutors, they should study law after holding a bachelor's degree in other majors."

One of the main issues is that China is producing too many law graduates with only bachelor's degrees, and many say the job market for them is simply too small. Another issue is that the legal community and educators from some of the more established law programmes believe many graduates from universities are not trained properly.

In fact, it is possible to pass the National Judicial Examination (NJE) to become a lawyer, a prosecutor or a judge in China with only a bachelor's degree. But even if it happens, the legal community is still unlikely to hire him or her without at least a master's degree.

Bachelor's degree holders can get a job, but these posts are mainly clerical positions at a law firm, a prosecutor's office or a court. To enter the legal profession in China, one generally needs to have earned at least a master's degree and to have passed the NJE to get the licence to practise law.

Another issue, that of unqualified holders of bachelor's degrees, is a delicate one. Many smaller institutions that are good at teaching other majors such as telecommunications and architecture have opened law departments in recent years with approval from the provincial or municipal government but not from the ministry.

"Figures on how law education programmes have developed so crazily in the past few years frighten me," wrote a law teacher at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, who identified himself only as "Tusheng Ageng" on his blog.

"Some teachers who have taught Chinese language and literature in the past have become judicial document teachers. If students are taught by these so-called law professors and teachers, how can we expect these graduates to become qualified lawyers, law teachers, judges or prosecutors?"

He criticized the schools for opening such new law departments, saying they were motivated by nothing more than money. He agreed with Zhu at Xiamen University, saying mere undergraduate degrees in law served no real purpose and should be eliminated.

An attempt to reach Tusheng Ageng for further discussion was unsuccessful.
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