Considerations and Reflections on Coordinating the Catalogue of Disciplines and Specialties with Discipline Evaluation

The Catalogue of Disciplines and Specialties for Graduate Education (2022) has been promulgated, and the results of the fifth round of discipline evaluation have been fed back to each evaluated higher education institution. At the macro level, the catalogue of disciplines and specialties is the basis of dividing the fields of study for the discipline evaluation, and the results of the discipline evaluation may provide references for dynamic adjustment of the catalogue. At the micro level, the establishment of disciplines and specialties is a major task of discipline development for higher education institutions, and related experiences accumulated in the discipline development could provide ideas for setting up disciplines and specialties. The newly promulgated catalogue makes new requirements for the succeeding discipline evaluation, demanding a further and in-depth understanding of assessing units, indicator system, professional degrees, inter-disciplines, as well as newly-added and pilot disciplines and specialties, and a continuing exploration and innovation in the evaluation approaches. It is recommended to strengthen discipline development and evaluation by classification, to be objective on the correlation between discipline/specialty and school/department, to study and improve the functions of the disciplines and specialties, to learn from foreign experience, and to highlight the Chinese characteristics.