On May 28, 2020, the Ministry of Education issued the "Notice on Continuing the Second Bachelor's Degree Education in Regular Colleges and Universities," emphasizing that "Second Bachelor's Degree Education, as postgraduate education, is an important channel for cultivating versatile talents." The repositioning of Second Bachelor's Degree Education has marked a new phase in China's higher education system.
This year marks the fifth year since the restart of this initiative. Recently, the Ministry of Education announced the results of the 2023 undergraduate program filing and approval for regular colleges and universities, which includes a significant number of Second Bachelor's Degree programs. For example, Tongji University filed a total of 23 Second Bachelor's Degree programs in one go.
In the higher education system, Second Bachelor's Degree Education is indispensable. Its primary function is to help individual learners quickly respond to the changing demands of the market and industrial structure for talent and human resources, providing opportunities for individuals with new learning motivations to enhance their adaptability.
The term "individual" mentioned here includes both current students and individuals who have already been working after graduation. Individuals may move from one place to another in their work, or their job roles may change, leading them to develop a motivation to learn a new field outside their previous major. In such cases, pursuing a Second Bachelor's Degree becomes the best choice.
Moreover, since individuals are in a working state, pursuing a Second Bachelor's Degree through distance education or open education becomes a crucial option.
In this regard, some practices of the Open University of China are quite inspiring. Although none of the university's undergraduate programs are filed as Second Bachelor's Degree programs, they are likely to be a choice for many individuals who have already obtained their first Bachelor's Degree and wish to start studying for a Second Bachelor's Degree.
It is worth noting that among the new registered students at the National Open University in the autumn of 2023, around 14,000 freshmen already hold their first Bachelor's Degree. Among them, about 290 individuals have a Master's Degree, and even 8 individuals have a Doctorate. Judging from the overall estimation of current students, the National Open University is currently the largest university offering Second Bachelor's Degree Education.
Compared to the management measures for Second Bachelor's Degree Education in regular colleges and universities, the National Open University's Second Bachelor's Degree Education has three key differences, making its Second Bachelor's Degree Education relatively well-developed. More importantly, this level of development is not achieved under the mandatory requirements at the policy level but naturally through certain institutional guarantees. This is something that regular colleges and universities can learn from in terms of managing their Second Bachelor's Degree programs and educational models.
Firstly, the Second Bachelor's Degree programs at the National Open University do not need to be reported and filed with the Ministry of Education.
So, do Second Bachelor's Degree programs in regular colleges and universities need to be filed with the Ministry of Education? A semantic analysis of "Second Bachelor's Degree Education" indicates that "Second" refers to the individual learner, not the university itself. The common educational background feature of Second Bachelor's Degree students is that they already have a "first" Bachelor's Degree.
On the personal growth timeline, "first" and "second" are interdependent - there can only be a "second" if there is a "first," otherwise, the concept of "first" becomes irrelevant. Therefore, in Second Bachelor's Degree Education, the term "second" does not refer to the university at all. Just like the National Open University, any undergraduate program at a regular university can naturally admit students with a "first" Bachelor's Degree background without the need to repeat general education courses, focusing solely on specialized courses.
This implies that the curriculum of Second Bachelor's Degree programs naturally exists as part of the Bachelor's Degree program, and once a university establishes a major, it naturally has the qualifications to offer Second Bachelor's Degree Education. Clarifying this point can help both universities and education authorities save a lot of administrative management costs in the current financially tight situation.
Secondly, Second Bachelor's Degree Education in regular colleges and universities restricts the graduation time for applicants. According to the "Notice," Second Bachelor's Degree programs mainly admit recent graduates who have obtained their Bachelor's Degree from regular colleges and universities in the current year, as well as graduates who have obtained their Bachelor's Degree in the past three years and are currently unemployed. In principle, other individuals are not allowed to apply.
However, the National Open University operates based on the concept of lifelong education and does not limit students' application deadlines and timeframes, which is a key factor in the significant scale of its Second Bachelor's Degree Education.
So, should regular colleges and universities also lift the restrictions on applicants' graduation time? From an educational perspective, this is entirely reasonable, but there is a concern - will removing the graduation time limit for applicants lead to an excessively large student population?
In my view, the key to controlling the scale lies in tuition fees and financial allocations. If universities autonomously set the tuition fees for Second Bachelor's Degree programs and the government no longer allocates funds for Second Bachelor's Degree Education, universities gain greater autonomy in determining the enrollment scale for their Second Bachelor's Degree programs. Since students need to invest two years of time and opportunity costs for a Second Bachelor's Degree, if they also have to pay higher tuition and accommodation fees, they will be more cautious in choosing a Second Bachelor's Degree. Through the gradual maturity of market mechanisms, the scale of Second Bachelor's Degree Education will naturally be reasonably controlled.
Thirdly, according to the "Notice," the enrollment scale of Second Bachelor's Degree programs in regular colleges and universities is limited. As mentioned earlier, the key to implementing reasonable scale control lies in tuition fees and allocations, especially including accommodation subsidies for students. For Second Bachelor's Degree students, the government has already provided subsidies for their accommodation costs during their first undergraduate period, so providing additional subsidies for their accommodation costs during their Second Bachelor's Degree period would be unfair. The fact that Second Bachelor's Degree students at the National Open University do not have dormitories is also a key factor in the natural scale of their program. The analysis of the open university's second bachelor's education implies that the "notice" still needs continuous modification and improvement in order to enable the second bachelor's degree education to naturally play its role in the national higher education system.
(The author is a researcher at the School of Education, Peking University. This article is one of the achievements of the Ministry of Education's key research base for humanities and social sciences in the "14th Five-Year Plan" major project "Research on Education and High-Quality Development" (22JJD880003).
