In July 2026, the controversy surrounding Jiang Fangzhou’s master’s thesis produced two sharply different conclusions from Renmin University of China. On 5 July, the university stated that some notes and individual formulations in the thesis were academically improper, but that it had found no conduct falling within the relevant definitions of academic misconduct. Jiang herself was not sanctioned, while her supervisor, the school leadership and the degree-review process were required to undergo corrective action. On 13 July, the university announced that new leads had led to a further investigation. It found nine passages overlapping with an overseas journal article, with neither quotation marks nor bibliographic references, determined that this amounted to academic misconduct, and revoked Jiang’s master’s degree.

The case should not primarily be treated as gossip about a particular writer’s character. It is a case about degrees, academic review, and a society’s capacity for judgement. There may be a procedurally straightforward explanation for the two decisions: the first inquiry may not have had enough material, and the second may have received evidence capable of changing the legal and academic characterisation. But the gap between the decisions is large enough that the university should explain more fully the scope of each inquiry, the difference in evidence, and the standard applied. A university’s duty is not discharged simply by issuing its final conclusion. It must be fair to the student and accountable for its own earlier judgement. Otherwise, the obvious public question remains: what did the first investigation miss, and why was external evidence able so quickly to overturn a formal finding?

Yet it would still be too narrow to regard this only as a failure of thesis review. The broader setting is a social psychology in China that has become excessively dependent on credentials. The expansion of higher education is not itself a mistake. A modern society can reasonably increase university participation, postgraduate education and lifelong learning. The problem begins when a degree is treated as status, respectability, a marriage qualification, an entry ticket to organisations, or even as comprehensive proof of intelligence and character. Education then drifts from developing ability towards producing certificates. The more certificates proliferate, the less patience society has for judging real ability; the less capable it becomes of judgement, the more it relies on certificates. The cycle reinforces itself.

Degrees nonetheless have an indispensable role. In medicine, law, financial-risk management, safety engineering and professional academic research, credentials are not principally badges of rank. They lower the cost of screening and assessment, and they protect the public. A patient cannot re-examine every surgeon before an operation, nor can an ordinary person independently verify the training of a lawyer, auditor or structural engineer. In such fields, systems of coursework, supervised practice, examination and continuing regulation are necessary. A sound system does not worship a graduation certificate. It connects education, licensing, practical competence and responsibility.

But it does not follow that the higher the degree, the better the fit for every job. Much of today’s misallocation of talent is not simply a case of an overqualified person doing an inferior job. It is a case of putting the wrong person in the wrong role. A PhD holder is not necessarily better suited to a technical position than someone with excellent vocational training. A postgraduate is not a natural substitute for an undergraduate, and an undergraduate is not a general substitute for a vocational-college graduate. Their training has different purposes, knowledge structures, practical skills and rhythms of work. Credentials are not always a single vertical scale. They often represent training in different directions.

China needs a large body of people with reliable vocational skills, and it needs a vocational education system that is genuinely respected. Australia’s TAFE system is useful here not because it offers a supposedly lesser alternative to university, but because it treats occupational competence as an independent and dignified educational aim. Vocational and university education do not conflict. Many people return to university after vocational study and work; many continue with master’s or doctoral study in their fifties or sixties. This is ordinary when education serves career change, renewal of knowledge and personal interest, rather than being reduced to a single ladder of social ascent. Once all education is compressed into that ladder, society loses sight both of horizontal division of labour and of the real value of different forms of training.

The Jiang case has also revived the idea of the child genius. Here too, domains must be distinguished. Mathematics, music, chess and other fields that rely heavily on abstraction, pattern recognition and immediate response can indeed produce remarkable young talent. A person may display unusual formal ability, memory or technical control very early. Literature is different. It is not merely verbal skill or a contest in imagination. At its deepest level it concerns human complexity, relationships, desire, shame, failure, time and death. A young writer may certainly produce beautiful poems, or even startling short fiction. But a stable and profound sense of the world in novels, essays and literature more broadly usually requires a longer accumulation of lived experience.

This is not an argument that poetry is easier than fiction, nor that longevity automatically produces insight. Someone may live a long time without observing, reflecting or bearing the consequences of experience, and still understand very little. But someone who has lived only a short time will usually not yet have passed through enough changing relationships, responsibility, loss, choice and consequence. What literature requires is not age itself, but the judgement that forms when experience has been absorbed. To elevate a teenage writer immediately into the position of a literary genius often reveals an adult society’s need for legend more than its judgement of the work.

This points to another contemporary problem. People are too ready to believe in prodigies, miracles, rapid-success stories and melodramatic conspiratorial explanations. These stories satisfy a wish for shortcuts and spare us harder judgements: how good is the work, has the person genuinely been trained, can the claimed achievement withstand scrutiny? Credential worship and genius worship appear to be opposites, but their psychology is similar. One believes that a certificate can prove a person once and for all; the other believes that a legend can do the same. Both replace sustained ability, work and responsibility with a label that travels easily.

Should a literary writer pursue a master’s degree or a doctorate? Of course there is no reason not to. Literary scholarship, literary history, critical theory, language training and interdisciplinary reading all have value. A degree may help a writer understand traditions, methods and their own position. The point is simply that a credential is neither a necessary condition for literary achievement nor a guarantee of artistic quality. In science, artificial intelligence and biotechnology, a breakthrough usually requires substantial theoretical training, experimental competence and prolonged dialogue with a community of peers. Literature can grow outside the academy because its roots lie in how a person encounters the world, not only in how they master a research method.

In some circumstances, early or excessive academicisation may even impose a cost. It does not necessarily destroy creativity, but it can make a writer substitute concepts for experience and correct analysis for living language. Expression becomes over-conscious, stiff, and too much like the completion of a competent thesis. This is not an argument against scholarship. It is an acknowledgement that scholarly and creative training overlap but also pull in different directions. A good writer can gain proportion from scholarship while retaining the ability to meet life before it has been processed into terminology.

We also need to distinguish academic research from independent or non-institutional inquiry. Chinese public culture often discounts people without institutional affiliations, as if no one outside a university, institute or formal project has standing even to raise a question. That view is too simple. In Western societies, an independent researcher is not automatically regarded as inferior. Someone not directly driven by promotion, grants and project evaluation may at least possess greater independence in choosing questions. Independence, however, is not a guarantee of reliability, and non-institutional research does not possess truth merely because it is non-institutional. It still requires evidence, conceptual clarity, coherent reasoning and the possibility of examination by others.

The value of an academic community lies in preserving those examinable standards. It requires sources to be traceable, arguments to be reviewable, concepts to be discussable and conclusions to be open to refutation. Its authority can sometimes suppress new questions, and established frameworks can exclude genuine breakthroughs, but that is not a reason to abandon academia. Rather, independent researchers who want their work to be understood and accepted more widely must also be able to enter into dialogue with existing bodies of knowledge and withstand equally serious scrutiny. The boundaries of academic institutions should be more open; their standards should not be lower.

The central question raised by this case is therefore not the shallow one of whether a writer deserves a master’s degree. It is whether we are prepared to recover basic powers of distinction between different abilities, educational paths and forms of knowledge production. Universities must be responsible for the seriousness of their degrees. Society must stop treating credentials as a total verdict on a person. Writers must speak through their work rather than their status. Independent researchers must earn trust through evidence and argument. Only when we stop worshipping both certificates and legends can education, scholarship and creative work return to their proper places.

Sources

The factual account of the two Renmin University decisions is based on syndicated Xinhua reports and publicly available Ministry of Education rules. The 5 July statement is available in this Xinhua report; the 13 July revocation decision is reported here. For the regulatory basis concerning academic misconduct and degree revocation, see the Ministry of Education’s Measures for the Prevention and Handling of Academic Misconduct in Higher Education Institutions and its explanation of the Degree Law of the People’s Republic of China.