The report slams flaws in the system, reporting that some professors have to supervise up to 47 doctoral candidates simultaneously.
Based on 1,392 questionnaires, the book, China Doctor Quality Survey, by Zhou Guangli, a professor at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, shows that China's doctoral supervisors are heavily loaded, with 46 percent of the respondents supervising seven doctoral candidates at the same time.
Around 13 percent of the doctoral candidates in the survey contact their supervisor no more than once a month, and 3 percent of them said they never communicate with their supervisors, the book said.
China overtook the US to become the top doctor al-degree producer in 2008, with more than 50,000 doctoral degrees conferred that year in China, the book reported, citing an earlier report.
In 2009 there were a total of 246,300 doctoral candidates in China, and the country planned to enroll 62,000 more this year, the Ministry of Education said.
But, the number of qualified professors falls short of the growing enrollment of doctoral candidates, Zhou said, rainsing concerns over the problem that quantity is not being matched with quality.
"Reckless expansion will definitely lead to a decline of academic performance and quality given the limited education resources," Geng Shen, a researcher with the Beijing Academy of Educational Sciences, told the Global Times.
Meanwhile, students are complaining of being treated as "cheap labor" for their teachers, with 60 percent of them claiming they shouldered more than half of their teachers' work in Zhou's survey.
A 32-year-old male doctoral candidate surnamed Yu at Tongji University spends about nine hours a day helping his tutor with experiments and personal jobs, for which he receives about 200 to 300 yuan ($29 to $44) monthly.
Ruan Shouhua, a professor with the College of Education Administration at Beijing Normal University, said that some professors take up too many part-time jobs off campus, therefore they neglect their role in guiding their students to do their doctoral research.
The performance of Chinesedoctoral holders, however, has hardly satisfied their employers, with 68 percent of employers giving them "average" or "bad" marks, the survey said.
There is a prevailing stereotype in China against female doctoral candidates or degree holders, with many people calling them "the third gender."
"It is partly because colleges do not encourage female students to get married or bear a child during their study period," Ruan said, adding that some female doctors also hold high and unrealistic expectations for finding partners.
There is also a trend that an increasing number of government officials are seeking doctoral degrees for further pro-motions, and some universities take advantage of this by recruiting them. The universities are able to use official resources to boost the universities' influence, Ruan said.
A public servant surnamed Zhou in Beijing felt it was in his best interest to treat his doctoral supervisors to dinner and increase his personal relationships with them.
"I don't have survival concerns at present, but I believe a doctoral degree can help me get promoted in the future," Zhou told the Global Times.
It's a systematic flaw that government often bases promotions purely on a candidate's educational background, which causes a growing number of officials to chase a higher level of education, Geng said.
"Some officials can not fulfill the academic tasks while working, inevitably leaing to academic corruptions including the use of cash or power to avoid doing necessary work to obtain the degree," he said.
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