Master’s and PhD candidates in some clinical medicine degrees in China can now graduate with a ‘practical achievement’ instead of a thesis. This is the second field to open such a pathway. Since 2024 master’s and PhD students in engineering have been allowed to graduate from universities across China after developing a new product, technique, project or installation.

On 22 October, a team of government-appointed education advisers released draft policy documents setting out the rules for the graduation pathway for students pursuing a professional master’s or PhD degree in clinical medicine — both are three-year courses typically taken by medical graduates and practising physicians.

In China, professional postgraduate courses focus on training students to solve problems in a particular line of work rather than developing research skills, as they would in an academic degree. The rules state that students have the option to graduate with a practical achievement, such as an analysis of a special clinical case or an investigation into a problem facing medical institutes.

Postgraduate courses in translation, agriculture, accounting and arts are expected to introduce similar pathways to graduate, according to China’s Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, a government body driving reforms for postgraduate education.

These reforms are a step in the right direction because students preparing for professional careers should be trained and assessed in ways that reflect those careers, says Futao Huang, a researcher of higher-education policy at Hiroshima University in Higashihiroshima, Japan. “The real challenge is to develop credible, transparent and profession-specific standards for assessing practical achievements,” Huang adds.

Real-life problems

For students pursuing a professional degree in clinical medicine, the new graduation pathway means that they can be assessed on the contribution that their research will bring to patients and society, says Zhou Feifei, a spinal surgeon at Peking University Third Hospital in Beijing. “This will encourage them to find problems in real life and to address the problem using a scientific way,” he adds.

One of Zhou’s students, Tie Dazhao, was the first person to graduate with a ‘practical PhD’ in clinical medicine in June, having been selected as a pilot case in 2023. Tie developed an artificial-intelligence-empowered software programme that can help physicians to classify a type of rare spine condition and recommend suitable treatment strategies to them, says Zhou.

Individual universities are encouraged to form their own policies on training practical postgraduate students and what requirements students must meet to graduate, says Liping Duan, chief physician of gastroenterology at Peking University Third Hospital and a member of a national advisory committee tasked with formulating the policy for clinical medicine. One of the biggest challenges will be creating a uniform standard to assess practical achievements, Duan says. “What works for cardiology may not work for dermatology, for example,” she adds.

How to control the quality of the achievements will also be important, Duan says. “Some people may mistakenly think that graduation has become easier now that students can choose not to write a thesis,” Duan adds.