BEIJING(China Daily2010-8-27)---With a rapid increase in the number of Chinese PhD graduates programs in the past decade, it seems the quality of educating doctoral students is falling.     About 70 percent of employers complain that employees who hold PhDs show little creation in their work performance, according a resent survey.     The number of PhD students in China reached 246,300 in2009, about five times the figure in 1999. China replaced the United States to become the world's top producer of doctorate holders in 2008, according to an Asia Times report.     "Nowadays, it is not rare for people in their 30s to become professors in Chinese universities, but I really doubt their experience and capability at such a young age," said Ge Daoshun, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.     Almost half of the professors admitted each of them had to direct more than seven PhD candidates. Some 60 percent of PhD candidates admitted they have been given more than half of their professors' research projects. The relationship between PhD students and their teachers has become an employment, in other words, a "master-apprentice" relationship, since professors use their students as cheap labor to do research.     "Chinese universities should reform the tutorial system and introduce more stricter requirements for people to get a PhD diploma to improve the quality of education," Ge told China Daily.     However, Liu Xin, a 25-year-oldPhDcandidate at the University of Sussex in England, argued that a major reason China is producing low quality doctorates is that most of the candidates do not have a passion for academic research... "The best college students of China have seldom ended up in academic positions. Most of them want to work in either banking or foreign companies, which pay much better." What does the underline word in Para,5 mean?
teacher director student co-operator