By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
There is a dramatic difference between masters and doctoral defenses in the United States and in China. I am writing from China where these end-of-spring-semester graduate exams are beginning. I have observed and participated in these important exams that are the culmination of graduate student research and result in a masters thesis or doctoral dissertation.
First, I will describe the general American system for graduate exams. Each student candidate’s defense occurs on its own separate day and is announced within the department. All faculty and graduate students in that discipline attend; indeed their attendance is expected.
As departmental professors assemble in the room, we sit down randomly, often forcing the graduate students to sit around us and in the front row. The major professor introduces the candidate who then proceeds to present and defend his or her master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation. The student concludes with “Any questions?”
Now, this is an important difference between Western exams and Chinese exams. As professors, we hold back and are not the first to ask questions. Instead, we look to each side, over our glasses, with the expectation that there will be many student questions. And we anticipate that the easy questions will be asked first by the presenter’s classmates.
For instance, the candidate is asked about the major graphed conclusion where such-and-such result went up due to factor A. Couldn’t this have been due to another factor B, a student may ask. And the candidate should be able to explain the control they used that eliminated that reason. Only after the student questioning has stopped do the faculty begin questioning. But the students should continue to learn: “I wondered about that too; I should have asked that.” This defense is about discovering accurate science. It is not about embarrassing the degree candidates. After the public presentation and questioning is over, additional time is spent in closed session with just the student and committee members. But that public question time is an important part of graduate student critical thinking in science.
Chinese graduate defenses are quite different. On one day, a dozen masters or a half dozen doctoral defenses will be scheduled back-to-back. This reflects the larger production of science graduates at China’s universities. Along the front row is a set of red cards, each with the name of an examiner who will be in charge of asking questions in all defenses for that day. Members of any student’s graduate committee cannot participate in the questioning. One examiner on the red-card graduate panel must be from another university. And the degree is not awarded until the research is published in a science journal. These strategies ensure no special treatment is afforded to a student of a powerful professor.
Similar to the U.S., graduate students fill up the back of the room. But they will never ask a question. They see this as giving their classmate trouble and possibly “losing face.” This oral graduate exam is considered to be a continuation of the middle school leaving exam (zhong kao) and high school leaving exam (gao kao); it is nothing more than another test they must pass. There is no understanding that this event is one of the many places where we train our advanced students in thinking “real science.” I often speak overseas about the need to shift away from this memorization because “You won’t get a Nobel Prize for knowing textbook answers; you get Nobel Prizes for asking new questions that can be solved.”
At one exam, after the “red card” examining professors had asked all of their questions, their chairman stood up and turned around to ask the students if they had any questions for the candidate.
There was dead silence. This unusual request for questions from the students came from a professor who had spent 10 years in the United States and knew the value of student questioning. He had returned to China as one of the “Thousand talent” professors and remembered our system. However, this habit of questioning starts in our K–12 schools, where the teacher encourages questioning, not rote memorization.
And that worries me today. In these last few years in the U.S., after the defending candidate concludes and asks “Any questions?” and we wait for classmates to start asking questions, we are now seeing far fewer student questions—or none! As I talk with professor colleagues at other U.S. universities, they also relate a downturn in this newest generation of American students’ willingness to ask questions. Today’s graduate students are now the product of the No Child Left Behind disaster that ended much K–12 questioning, as our teachers scrambled to get scores higher on the state assessment exams through rote memorization. The damage of the NCLB teach-to-the-test mentality continues today.
Meanwhile, many young Chinese professors are spending a year in Western countries. They are discovering the advantages of teaching by questioning, and are returning to China with an understanding of their need to change.
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.