A Brief Introduction to the Postgraduate Education in HIT

Founded in 1920, Harbin Institute of Technology was one of the first universities that started the postgraduate education. Early in the 1950s, led by the National Department of Higher Education, HIT began to enroll postgraduates, aiming at training teachers for other universities and preparing talented people for going abroad. After China resumed the national postgraduate enrollment in 1978 and implemented the academic degree system in 1981, the postgraduate education witnessed rapid development in HIT.

 

Founded in September, 1984, the Postgraduate School of Harbin Institute of Technology was one of the postgraduate schools approved by the State Council as a trial run; it was also one of the first experimental units in China to allow the in-service people to apply for the doctor's and master's degrees with the same record of formal schooling, to train people for MBA, and to examine and approve doctoral supervisors in its own way. Now, focusing on science and engineering, combining science and engineering with management and liberal arts, and setting the multi-disciplinary framework for the education and training, the postgraduate school has developed into one of the China's important bases for training highly educated people with specialized knowledge. In the first national evaluation of postgraduate schools in 1995, the HIT postgraduate school became one of the best ten, and in 1999 won the title 'The Advanced Collective for the Management of the Academic Degrees and the Postgraduate Education'. 

 

To adapt to the needs of national economic development, the HIT postgraduate school, by consulting the advanced international mode and taking into consideration our own national situation, has initiated the exploration and reform of the two-year educational system for the postgraduates since 1994. Through the years of practice, the postgraduate school has accumulated rich experience and made satisfactory achievements, thus having boosted the nation-wide implementation of the two-year educational system in other universities. 

 

In recent years, the HIT postgraduate school has been continuing its research and reforms, and has established and perfected its management system for the postgraduate education by designing the scientific curriculums, renewing the teaching contents, reforming the teaching methods, screening the most qualified candidates for master study, recommending the excellent undergraduates directly for doctoral study, implementing the responsibility system of the supervisors for the postgraduate students, and exercising the quality control of the training of the postgraduate students for master's degrees. 

 

Up till now, HIT has 143 programs for master's students and 81 for doctoral students. The postgraduate school has 621 supervisors for doctoral students and 1474 supervisors for master's students. At present, the university enrolls 4,900 students for master's and doctor's degrees every year, including 940 doctoral students, and the total number of the postgraduates studying at the school has come up to more than 12,500. 

 

The postgraduate school has established wide relationship with the institutions of higher learning in 30 countries and regions to extensively conduct the academic exchange and the joint education of the postgraduates. At the same time, the postgraduate school actively push forward the globalization of the postgraduate education by enrolling the students for master's and doctor's degrees from many other countries, and the regions like Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.