On November 21-22, 2015, the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Joint Association of Deans of Chinese Graduate Schools, sponsored by the Joint Association of Deans of Chinese Graduate Schools and hosted by the Graduate School of Southwest Jiaotong University, was held in Chengdu, with the participation of deans of graduate schools and experts and scholars in related fields from 63 universities across China. The theme of this year's annual meeting focused on "deepening the reform of doctoral education and improving the quality of doctoral training", and the participating experts had extensive and in-depth discussions on various topics such as innovation of postgraduate training mode, improvement of postgraduate training quality, construction of internal and external quality assurance system of postgraduate education and the future development direction of the Joint Association of Deans. The experts had extensive and in-depth exchanges and discussions on various topics such as innovation of postgraduate cultivation mode, improvement of postgraduate cultivation quality, construction of internal and external quality assurance system of postgraduate education and future development direction of Dean's Joint Conference.

President Xu Fei of Southwest Jiaotong University pointed out in his speech that the construction of first-class research universities cannot be separated from high-level postgraduate education, especially doctoral education. Doctoral degree is the highest rank under the degree system in the world, and in a sense represents the highest recognition of knowledge exploration and innovation for human beings. For the university, doctoral education is a sub-system of the university talent cultivation system, which promotes each other with the sub-systems of scientific research, faculty and discipline construction, and jointly determines the pattern and weather of university operation. For the country, it in turn determines the influence of a country's higher education, scientific research level and academic competitiveness in the world. President Xu Fei believes that there is still a considerable gap between the quality of doctoral training in China and that of developed countries, especially compared with the United States and Germany. One of them is the lack of innovation ability of doctoral students, and the other is the unreasonable knowledge structure and too narrow knowledge. In addition to these two major problems of doctoral students themselves, there are also problems for educational institutions and supervisors, such as emphasizing the use and neglecting the cultivation. All these problems need to be improved by deepening the reform of postgraduate education in order to effectively improve the quality of doctoral students' cultivation.

Li Guanghua, member of the Education Working Committee of Sichuan Provincial Committee and member of the Party Group of the Education Department, delivered a speech on behalf of Sichuan Education Department. He pointed out that this annual meeting had built an important platform for the exchange of deans of graduate schools and provided an important opportunity to promote degree and graduate education in Sichuan Province.

Academician Gong Qihuang, Executive Vice President of Graduate School of Peking University, made a work report on behalf of the Secretary-General. Mr. Gong reviewed the history and analyzed the current situation together with the participants, and pointed out that the Joint Conference has played an active role in the development of Chinese graduate education and the construction of graduate school system. "During the 13th Five-Year Plan, the Association of Chinese Graduate Schools(ACGS）will celebrate its 20th anniversary. With the new situation and new challenges, the Ministry of Education and the member institutions are full of expectations for the future development of the Joint Council. In the future, the Joint Committee should adhere to serving national needs, based on domestic and international, and move from excellence to excellence. In the specific work, several special working groups/committees will be established to further improve the system and innovate the mechanism, so as to build a good platform and serve for the overall improvement of the quality of postgraduate training.

Mr. Lin Mengquan, Director of Evaluation Division, Center for Academic Degrees and Graduate Education Development, Ministry of Education, focused on "Basic Framework for Quality Assurance of China's Doctoral Students", "General Analysis of National Sample Inspection of Doctoral Dissertations" and "External Quality Assurance of Graduate Education - Assessment of Disciplines". --He gave a special report on three aspects: "The basic framework of quality assurance for doctoral students in China", "general analysis of national doctoral dissertation sampling" and "external quality assurance of graduate education - discipline assessment". He analyzed the quality concept of postgraduate education in China and pointed out that postgraduate education should be implemented in a comprehensive manner considering three dimensions: time, type and characteristics.

In the report session of the conference, representatives from graduate schools and higher education institutes of 10 universities, including Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University, made thematic reports. Among them, Liu Yubin, Executive Vice President of Graduate School of Nankai University, Tao Tao, Executive Vice President of Graduate School of Xiamen University, Wang Haiyan, Executive Vice President of Graduate School of Northwestern Polytechnic University, Liu Guoxiang, Executive Vice President of Graduate School of Southwest Jiaotong University, Chen Chuanfu, President of Graduate School of Wuhan University, Zhu Junjie, Vice President of Graduate School of Nanjing University, Zhang Wei, Vice President of Graduate School of Tsinghua University, Li Lan, Vice President of Graduate School of Tongji University In addition, Wang Tianbing, Vice Dean of Graduate School of Peking University, gave a wonderful keynote report on the enrollment, cultivation, management, quality assurance and academic innovation of doctoral students. In addition, Professor Yan Guangcai, Director of the Institute of Higher Education of East China Normal University, made a special report on the compilation of the annual report of graduate education in 2014, and introduced and exchanged the research contents of the annual report of graduate education in 2015.

The annual meeting also held "Dean's Salon" and special seminars on "Cultivation Model and Quality Assurance of Innovative Academic Talents", "Reform of Enrollment and Resource Allocation and Diversion and Elimination Mechanism" and "Dean's Joint Meeting". The participants had an in-depth interaction and exchange on the postgraduate training work such as "Cultivation model and quality assurance of innovative academic talents", "Reform of enrollment and resource allocation and streaming and elimination mechanism" and "Development and construction of joint dean's association". After the formal meeting, the participants visited the National Laboratory of Rail Transportation of Southwest Jiaotong University.

The deans and experts of the graduate schools of the participating universities spoke highly of the conference organization and conference services, especially the innovative aspects of the conference such as dean's salon and conference website, and the conference was a complete success.

Secretariat of ACGS

November 23rd, 2015