Fierce competition leads to bizarre college shortcut

Shaoyang University in Shaoyang, Hunan province, has recently disclosed it plans to spend 18 million yuan ($2.67 million), in the form of research subsidies, housing allowances, and other support measures, to employ 23 doctoral degree holders from Adamson University of the Philippines.

All of the 23 obtained doctorates in pedagogy from the university, and they all studied the university's degree program from August 2019 to December 2021. Except for one of them, who is labeled by Shaoyang University as a candidate from outside the school, all of the rest used to be teachers at Shaoyang University before undertaking their two years of "overseas" studies.

Notably, the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange of the Ministry of Education warns Chinese nationals that Adamson University, which is ranked below 600 among the universities in Asia, has opened low-quality short-term online degree courses exclusively for the Chinese market during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the center suggests Chinese students have second thoughts before applying to this university.

Shaoyang University said that given the difficulty of quickly increasing the proportion of doctoral degree holders in its teaching staff, one of the compulsory requirements set by the Ministry of Education for colleges to be qualified to apply for the right to confer master's degrees and also upgrade from a college to a university, it had no choice but to adopt this controversial plan.

Although calling itself Shaoyang University in English on its official website, the literal translation of its Chinese name, which is strictly approved by the authorities and reflects its level in the country's higher education system, should be Shaoyang College.

Becoming a university or being granted the right to confer master's and doctoral degrees means a remarkable increase in government funding, the main reliable source of income for institutions of higher learning on the Chinese mainland.

The competition for common colleges is becoming increasingly fierce, and that is driving more colleges like the one in Shaoyang to take unusual means to raise their profiles. The polarization of the job market in the country is tilting more jobs to graduates from prestigious universities and vocational schools, so the graduates from less prestigious colleges are facing a dilemma of not being competitive enough to compete for better white-collar jobs while not having the necessary skills or techniques to apply for the blue-collar posts.

So although the practice of Shaoyang University appears bizarre, it is customized to fit the system with the purpose of raising the school's profile and income.

Despite this, it is a practice that should not be encouraged as the doctoral degrees the teachers obtained in such a short time presumably through online courses might not bring about substantial progress in teaching and research at the university they work for.