The dissertation

The process for getting a master's degree in China is an odd one: first you submit your dissertation to the government-overseen administration of your college or university, which decides whether your work merits a degree or a certificate.  A certificate signifies completion of coursework, whereas a degree signifies satisfaction of all requirements and that you will get the full master's credential.  Assuming that you did not write your thesis about the inner workings of the Party or the June 4th incident, you get the chance to defend your work in front of a panel of professors from your home institution, who then vote on whether to grant you a master's degree.  Then, if you're a Chinese student, you compete with your peers over the few jobs available for college graduates (h/t: Dan Harris) on the Mainland.  

For Chinese students, this process is the culmination of many years of education, as I detailed in my thesis:

Education is the central focus of Chinese family life. Chinese children progress through an educational system that includes pre-school, primary school, junior middle school, senior middle school, higher education, and adult education. The central government funds nine years of compulsory schooling through direct financial transfers to sub-national governments. Local governments provide compulsory education until senior middle school, but funds from the central government decline rapidly past that point. Upon graduating from senior middle school, also referred to as high school, students can enroll in three types of institutions: universities, colleges, and junior colleges. (A growing vocational system parallels high school and higher education, and provides post-baccalaureate training as well, in part to reduce the demand for higher education. ) But admission to higher education largely depends upon test scores from the national college entrance examination, a three-day event that occurs every June and that transfixes the nation. (The entrance exam traces back to the seventh century, when China used the科举 (keju) exam to select Imperial officials. ) The MOE uses the 高考 (gaokao, or high exam) to sort the vast majority of students into schools based upon their performance on the national examination, an experience associated with the opportunity for advancement through education. Not surprisingly, educational expenses represent the top consumption category for Chinese households.

Right now, Chinese and foreign students alike are waiting to discover whether they will get to defend their theses.  It's a bit frustrating, but the system results from efforts to modernize higher education in China:

Despite sweeping organizational changes, education in China thus far seems to emphasize access and size over skills and quality. In the past decade, the number of college graduates grew four-fold, the number of institutions reached 1,792, the number of enrolled undergraduates hit 16 million, and the number of enrolled postgraduates reached almost one million. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of junior colleges quadrupled and the number of vocational schools quintupled. The PRC awards four million tertiary degrees each year and has 700 million workers, but has only 40 percent of the skilled laborers found in OECD countries (per capita) and less than half of its college graduates find jobs within months of leaving school. China produces more engineers than any other nation, but those engineers tend to lack the skills required by the marketplace, their instructors focus on theoretical concepts and lack practical experience, and technicians lack the social status and compensation of more highly-regarded scientists who engage in basic research. The Ministry of Education now mandates a 14:1 student-to-teacher ratio in higher education and certain minimum qualifications for  instructors that revolve around educational attainment, but individual institutions struggle to comply with the mandates, and the Ministry of Education lacks the staff necessary to enforce them. To expand the number of teachers in rural areas, a pilot program initiated by the State Council will pay for the tuition and expenses of college students majoring in teaching at six normal universities managed by the central government, so long as those students agree to spend tens years teaching in primary and junior-middle schools in rural areas. The Ministry of Education also encourages universities to set up independent colleges, but specifies that the universities involved in creating independent colleges must have “relatively high teaching quality.” As such, despite the importance of education in Chinese culture, China does not prepare its graduates to compete in the global economy.

Looking back on it now, I am beginning to question the wisdom of submitting a dissertation concerned with the failings of Chinese education law to a Chinese institution of higher education run by the central government.  Oh well.