Last Friday 29 November, NOST China organized a mini seminar on PhD Education in China and the Netherlands at the Netherlands embassy. The event was organized on the occasion of the Dutch participation to the PhD Workshop in Beijing. In total almost 40 Dutch and Chinese researchers attended the seminar which was supported by Neso China and Academic Transfer.
After a brief introduction by the Science Attaché from the Embassy, Prof. Karen Francois from the Free University Brussels introduced the EU-funded EU-China DOC project on doctoral education in Europe and China.
The presentation from Mr. Liu Lei from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) raised many questions about the practicalities of the well-known Postgraduate Scholarship Program which sponsors Chinese PhD candidates abroad. Since 2007, CSC has sponsored over 1400 Chinese candidates for PhD training in the Netherlands which makes the Netherlands the 4th largest European recipient of CSC grantees and the 8th worldwide. New for 2014 is that in total 7000 scholarships will be made available, consisting of 2500 for full PhD and 4500 for sandwich PhD programmes abroad.
The last presentation caused a lively discussion about the challenges of establishing joint or double degree programmes in China despite the Chinese government’s priority to encourage joint programmes. Dr Siyu ZENG from Tsinghua University presented their practical experiences with the Joint PhD Programme between Tsinghua-Wageningen University.
If interested, please contact the Science Attaché for the above-mentioned presentations.