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Teaching in Higher Education

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What price the building of world-class universities?Academic pressure faced by young lecturers at aresearch-centered University in China

Mei Tian & Genshu Lu

To cite this article: Mei Tian & Genshu Lu (2017) What price the building of world-classuniversities? Academic pressure faced by young lecturers at a research-centered University inChina, Teaching in Higher Education, 22:8, 957-974, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2017.1319814

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What price the building of world-class universities? Academicpressure faced by young lecturers at a research-centeredUniversity in ChinaMei Tiana and Genshu Lub

aSchool of Foreign Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China; bInstitute of Higher Education, Xi’anJiaotong University, Xi'an, China

ABSTRACTThis study explores the challenges faced by young lecturers inmanagerial transformation in elite Chinese academic institutionswhich aim to develop into world-class universities. Drawing ondata from in-depth interviews, the paper discusses how a groupof lecturers on tenure-track contracts at a research university inChina perceived the impacts of this managerial personnel reform.The study revealed intensified academic pressure and consequentfeelings of insecurity, uncertainty and anxiety among theparticipants. Rigid tenure requirements pushed down researchquality, and detracted from the efforts the participants could havedevoted to teaching. Further negative impacts were strengthenedpower hierarchies and increasingly gendered nature of theacademic culture.

ARTICLE HISTORYReceived 20 November 2016Accepted 7 April 2017

KEYWORDSManagerialism; tenure-trackreform; young lecturers;academic pressure

Introduction

China, recognizing higher education development as an imperative to develop nationalcompetitiveness in the global knowledge economy, has carried out several reforms aimsat enhancing the quality of its higher education system (Lo 2011). Amongst the initiativeslaunched by the Ministry of Education is developing its elite academic institutions into theworld-class universities (Wang, Cheng, and Liu 2013). The initiatives have brought aboutchanges to the ways in which teachers’ performance in higher education institutes (HEIs)are measured. These can be seen as part of a new ‘managerial’ culture that has emerged onChinese campuses and particularly affects junior faculty (e.g. Zhang 2014). Previousresearch has contributed to our understanding of growing managerialism in the educationsector in China, but most existing research has focused on policy changes at a macro level.Despite an increasing number of empirical studies of school teachers’ and universityresearchers’ perceptions of managerial changes (e.g. Lai 2010; Vidovich, Yang, andCurrie 2007; Wong 2008), the particular challenges faced by early-career scholars inthis transformation of Chinese HEIs have not received adequate attention (Tian, Su,and Ru 2016). The study reported here focuses on a group of young1 lecturers at aresearch-centered university in central Mainland China. The university recently

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

CONTACT Genshu Lu gslu@mail.xjtu.edu.cn Institute of Higher Education, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049,China

TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION, 2017VOL. 22, NO. 8, 957–974https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2017.1319814

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implemented a ‘tenure-track’ personnel reform. Drawing on data primarily from in-depthsemi-structured interviews, the paper explores how the participants on tenure-track con-tracts perceived the impacts of this reform on their professional and personal lives. Theuniversity has the status of a national key university and its vision and mission statementsinclude transforming towards a world-class university.

Managerialism and challenges faced by academics: a literature overview

Managerialism is a mode of governance, which incorporates ‘organizational forms, tech-nologies, management practices and values more commonly found in the private sector’into the regulation of public sector institutions (Deem 1998, 47; Mok 1999). Central tothe rationales of managerialism is the improvement of efficiency and effectiveness ofpublic services (ibid). Key elements include setting up strategic targets, adopting con-tractual employment, introducing explicit and measurable standards of performance,and continuously evaluating employees’ performance according to those pre-set stan-dards; such ‘managerial’ practices have been witnessed in educational reforms world-wide (Vidovich, Yang, and Currie 2007). Research shows that higher education inthe UK (Clarke and Newman 1997; Deem 1998; Deem and Brehony 2005; Ross2015), Ireland (Grummell, Devine, and Lynch 2009), Finland (Ylijoki and Ursin2013), Taiwan (Chen 2008), Netherland and Sweden (Teelken and Deem 2013) isincreasingly characterized by market practices, with the language of business such as‘strategic plan’, ‘control’, ‘audit’ permeating official documents at national and insti-tutional levels (Deem and Brehony 2005; Mok 1999). In this managerialising shift inhigher education, quantification of output measurement is prioritized as it ‘allows forcomparability and… competition’ (Hartley 1995, 411). By using measurable perform-ance indicators, it is argued that research output can be objectively assessed, perform-ance can be better rewarded, and the quality of research outputs can be effectivelymonitored (Tang 2011).

To enhance their international rankings and attract more funding, managerial univer-sities are placing demanding requirements on the research productivity of academics (Hao2015; Yuan 2016). To meet research assessment standards, academics have been reportedas switching their work focus from other academic activities to research outputs that are‘quantifiable’ against internationally recognized standards (Mok 1999; Yuan 2016). Anunder-emphasis on teaching is a particular observation in the impacts of managerialreform in higher education. Empirical evidence reveals intense conflicts between teachingand research, driven by the output-oriented culture (e.g. Leisyte, Enders, and Boer 2009).It has been reported that academic staff prioritize research and perceive teaching as associ-ated with low status (e.g. Parker 2008; Young 2006). Consequently, teaching quality isnegative influenced (Cadez, Dimovskiv, and Zaman 2015) and inclination to innovationin teaching is hindered (Bogt and Scapens 2012).

Moreover, overemphasis on the number of publications has been reported as leading toinadequate research ‘genuinely fostering’ creativity and innovation (Adler and Harzing2009, 3; Miller, Taylor, and Bedeian 2011). To survive assessment requirements, research-ers are more likely to give up research topics that are academically significant but requirelonger time to explore (De Rond and Miller 2005; Mok 1999). Obsession with publicationalso pushes researchers to conform to ‘existing practices, paradigms and approaches’

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(Bouchikhi and Kimberly 2001, 79). Consequently research aims can be distorted andresearch quality can be deteriorated (Lawrence 2008).

Moreover, the ‘strong management’, whilst prioritizing efficiency and effectiveness,threatens and suppresses academic and moral values traditionally embedded in highereducation (Deem and Brehony 2005; Lynch 2015). When universities over-stress the‘objective’ measurement of research output, the process of producing such output tendsto be overlooked, and the academic freedom, equalities, respect and trust characterizingthe process can be jeopardized and marginalized (Deem 1998; Hao 2015; Lynch 2015;Tight 2014; Ylijoki and Ursin 2013). The more severe consequence of this managerialapproach is the neglect of human wellbeing: the excessive evaluation of research grantand research publications can put faculty under continuous pressure (Miller, Taylor,and Bedeian 2011) and result in a sense of ‘insecurity, stress, anxiety, loss of morale…a persistent sense of powerlessness’ (Rees 1995, 209; as cited in Mok 1999). The managerialchange particularly disadvantages female professionals, who are more likely to workwithin an external context of greater family responsibilities; this in turn then strengthens‘hegemonic male dominance’ in higher education (Grummell, Devine, and Lynch 2009,192; Teelken and Deem 2013; White, Carvalho, and Riordan 2011).

Chinese higher education reforms

The changes in China’s economic structure since 1979 have been accompanied by reformsin higher education, in recognition of the role of universities in the development ofnational competitiveness in the global arena. In 1993 the State Council published theOutline of Reform and Development of Chinese Education, following which, in 1998,China launched a massive HE enrolment expansion, which extended opportunities forschool leavers to continue into tertiary education on an unprecedented level (Pretoriusand Xue 2003). To meet the soaring demand for higher education whilst reducing thefinancial burden on the State, from 1997 China required all HE students to pay tuitionfees. Other developments allowed HEIs to raise funds in other ways and the opening ofprivate universities. These massification and marketization developments, however, ledto concerns over ‘value for money and public accountability’ (Vidovich, Yang, andCurrie 2007, 92). To enhance higher education performance, China initiated the 211-project2 in 1995 and 985-project3 in 1998. Through direct investment in these nationalkey universities, the central government established a quality control system and carefullysteered the universities to fulfill its so-called ‘kejiao xingguo’ strategy (i.e. revitalizingChina through developing sciences and education).

In 2011, China released the national ‘twelfth five-year’ guidelines on science and tech-nology development (Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic ofChina 2011). Aiming at developing independent research capacity so as to support trans-formation of national economy, the plan stressed the tasks of establishing a ‘scientificevaluation and reward system’ of research output and ‘strengthening and optimizingscience and technology talent’ (ibid). It is worth noting that in contrast with scienceand technology (S&T) disciplines, research in social sciences and humanities (SSH) hasbeen placed in a disadvantageous position, as represented by both low levels of nationalexpenditure (see Table 1; National Bureau of Statistics of China and Ministry of Scienceand Technology 2015) and the low visibility of Chinese SSH scholars in international

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arenas (Flowerdew and Li 2009; see also Institute of Scientific and Technical Infor-mation of China 20134). Following the ‘twelfth five-year’ guidelines on S&T develop-ment, in 2012 the China Academic Degrees and Graduate Education DevelopmentCenter (2013), under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education, conductedthe third round of evaluation of the disciplines and schools of HEIs in China. The evalu-ation criteria particularly included a discipline’s publications and citations in interna-tionally indexed journals (i.e. SCI, SSCI, AHCI) and national core journals forhumanity and social science research (i.e. CSSCI). The evaluation also considered thesources and levels of research grants obtained, with national level research fundsbeing regarded as the most prestigious, followed by Ministry of Education (MoE)research funds and provincial funds (ibid).

More recently the State Council (2015) released a plan to promote ‘the developmentof world-class universities and world-class disciplines’ (the ‘double world-classes’ initiat-ive). The five-year plan clarifies the aims of ‘building a certain number of world-classHEIs and disciplines by 2020’ and of ‘transforming the nation to a world power ofhigher education by 2050’ (ibid). The plan announces that the central governmentwill set up a ‘scientific and reliable’ performance evaluation mechanism, and will ‘dyna-mically’ adjust its financial support based on the regular evaluation of an individual uni-versity’s performance, so as to ‘encourage fair competition, strengthen targetmanagement, emphasize constructive outcomes… (and) fully stimulate energy andvitality’ (ibid). Although detailed information of the proposed evaluation mechanismhas not yet been released, the ‘double world-class’ initiative is expected to initiatemore severe competition between Chinese HEIs, and further promote the market-oriented ideology and practices in Chinese HEIs.

In order to enhance academic rankings, Chinese universities pressure their faculty toincrease research output by introducing various performance appraisal and incentive pol-icies (Qiu 2010; Tsauo 2013). One policy having potential influence on early careerresearchers is tenure-track recruitment mechanism. The tenure-track system waspiloted at Tsinghua University in 2003 (Qiu 2010) and so far has been implemented inmost 985-project universities and some 211-project universities (Tian, Chen, and Liu2015; Zhang 2014). Although specific contents vary, these tenure-track policies generallyinvolve three- to six-year short-term contracts, lists of quantifiable performance objec-tives, assessment of faculty’s academic performance based on the pre-designed objectives,and decisions of awarding/rejecting tenure (bian zhi) at the end of the contract period. Thetenure-track systems have been approved as ‘giving greater pressure to young scholarswho are in the most productive period (of their academic life), so as to help them toachieve… academic innovation’ (Tian, Chen, and Liu 2015; see also Zhang 2014).

Table 1. 2014 China research and development expenditure by disciplines (National Bureau of Statisticsof China and Ministry of Science and Technology 2015).Disciplines Expenditure (Million RMB) Percentage

Natural sciences 32,283.00 16.75%Agricultural sciences 12,440.90 6.46%Medical sciences 7,695.57 4.00%Engineering 136,253.31 70.74%Social sciences and humanities 3,945.01 2.05%Total 192,617.79 100.00%

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Methodology

Research focus

This paper is based on a study conducted at a Chinese university, which recently intro-duced a performance-oriented ‘tenure-track’ lecturer-employment reform. The researchinvestigated how ‘tenure-track’ lecturers perceived the impacts of the reform. The researchquestions were listed as follows:

(1) How do ‘tenure-track’ lecturers perceive the reform?(2) What are the perceived impacts of the ‘tenure-track’ reform on their academic work

and personal lives?

Research context

The research reported here was carried out at a national key university in central China (hen-ceforth referred to as CU). CU has over 3000 full-time academic staff, and educates over30,000 students at different levels in its 40 schools, colleges and affiliated hospitals. CU isa research-centered university, being strong in science and engineering research, but rela-tively weak in social sciences and humanity disciplines. In 2012, CU introduced a tenure-track lecturer-employment reform to ‘attract and cultivate world-class young teachers tobuild world-class research university’ (CU website). The policy promises newly recruited lec-turers in that year and hereafter high annual salary, which doubles the average salary of thelecturers recruited before the reform, tenureship and promotion to associate professorship onthe condition of their meeting specified ‘performance’ criteria at the end of a three-year con-tract (see also Tian, Su, and Ru 2016). Any ‘new’ lecturer failing to meet the criteria withinthe contract period would lose the job. The revised policy in 2015 requires that the fulfillmentof the three-year contract would no longer lead to tenure; the contract would be renewed foranother three years. Job specifications remain unchanged. From 2012 to 2015 roughly 400‘new’ lecturers were appointed at CU (CU website). Table 2 lists examples of the so-called‘new lecturer’ tenure-track contracts at CU.

Quantitative study prior to the reform

In 2010 a questionnaire survey was conducted at CU to examine academics’ general per-ceptions towards their work.5 The questionnaire was distributed to academic staff in theschools of electronic engineering, humanities and management, sampling 152 teachers inthese schools and obtaining 110 responses (i.e. 72.5% rate of return). The survey responsesreflected the institutional contexts of CU prior to the reform, and helped to understand thepossible impacts of its tenure-track reform. The findings also informed the design of theinterview study, from which the main data presented in this paper were generated.

Interview study

The interview study focused on young scholars who joined CU after the implementationof the tenure-track reform in 2012. In 2015, an email inviting participation in the studywas sent to all ‘new’ lecturers appointed after 2012 whose contact details were available

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on the CU website. Three out of twenty whomwe had contacted agreed to participate; theywere all in science and engineering disciplines. The low response rate warned us of busywork schedules among the young lecturers and the possible sensitivity of this researchtopic. Another four participants were later recruited from among ‘new’ lecturer colleaguesof the first three participants based on the principle of snowball sampling. We then askedfor help from the school of public management, the school of humanities and the school ofinternational studies through personal contacts. The three schools forwarded the invita-tion letter to the 16 lecturers they had recruited in 2012 and later. From those volunteeringto participate, six more participants were selected.

Efforts were made to achieve diversity of personal characteristics (i.e. gender, areas ofresearch, year of employment) across the sample. Although those we finally interviewedwere not as ‘representative’ of the schools, colleges and affiliated hospitals of CU as wewould have liked, we managed to interview seven early career lecturers under ‘new’ lec-turer contracts in sciences and engineering, and another six in linguistics, foreign litera-ture, humanities, political studies and management. Four of our interviewees werefemale and nine were male; the female/male interviewee ratio in our sample is similarto that of academics appointed under ‘new’ lecturer contracts, which is 1:2.04 (CUwebsite).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted in autumn 2015 and spring 2016. In inter-views, interviewers carefully avoided constraining the participants’ illustration of issues ofconcern; the interviewees were encouraged to freely narrate their perceptions and experi-ences despite the articulated research aim and objectives. All interviews were carried out inChinese (Mandarin/Putonghua). Each interview lasted 90–120 min, was recorded andfully transcribed. Interview data were coded under broad headings such as ‘perceptionsof the contract’, ‘perceived impacts on work’ and ‘perceived impacts on personal life’. Cat-egories were later modified as we engaged further with the interview transcripts. Interview

Table 2. ‘New lecturer’ contract requirements.

Sciences & EngineeringPolitical Science & Public

Management HumanitiesForeign Language &

Literature

1. Work as teaching assistantin at least one course.

1. Take part in teachingevery academic term.

1. Deliver at least 32teaching hours peracademic year.

1. Deliver at least 180teaching hours peracademic year.

2. Be principal investigatorof a research project atnational level.

2. Be principal investigatorof a research project atnational level.

2. Be principal investigatorof a research project atthe MoE or provinciallevel.

2. Be principal investigatorof a research project atthe MoE or provinciallevel.

3. Have at least onepublication in topinternational journals 6 asthe first author orcorresponding author; orat least two publicationsin the most influentialjournal 7 as the firstauthor or correspondingauthor; or at least fivepublications in other SCIjournals as the first authoror corresponding author.

3. Have at least onepublication in the mostinfluential internationaljournal as the first authoror corresponding author;or at least two SSCIpublications as the firstauthor or correspondingauthor; or at least oneSSCI publication plusthree publications in thetop ranked CSSCI journalas the first author orcorresponding author.

3. Have at least two SSCIpublications as the firstauthor or correspondingauthor; or at least twopublications in the topranked CSSCI journal asthe first author orcorresponding author; orat least one publication inthe top ranked CSSCIjournal plus threepublications in otherCSSCI journals as the firstauthor or correspondingauthor.

3. Have at least one SCI/SSCIpublication as the firstauthor or correspondingauthor; or at least fourpublications in CSSCIjournals as the first authoror corresponding author.

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data presented in this paper were translated into English by professional translators. Inwhat follows, the participants in science and engineering disciplines are referred to asP1 to P7 and the participants in humanities and social science disciplines are referredto as HSSP1 to HSSP6 (see Table 3).

Findings

Features of academic work: the pre-reform situation

The survey conducted at CU before the tenure-track reform showed a clear emphasis onteaching in lecturers’ academic work in that year (see Table 4). Participants with ‘lecturer’status reported the highest percentage (48.95%) of work time spent on teaching in the aca-demic semester prior to the survey, compared to 47.63% of participants with associate pro-fessorship and 38.67% of participants with full professorship. Moreover, lecturerparticipants reported a lower percentage (34.26%) of work time spent on research, com-pared to the percentage of work time spent on research by participants with full professor-ship (42.33%).

Such time allocation matched the participants’ self-reported academic interest. In thesurvey, when asked to state their ‘academic interest’, lecturer participants were morelikely to mention teaching: The highest percentage (39.1%) of lecturer participants pre-ferred ‘teaching with some research’, compared to 18.4% of participants with associateprofessorship and 20.0% of participants with full professorship. By contrast, 26.1% of lec-turer participants preferred to do ‘research with some teaching’, compared to 28.6% ofassociate professors and 40.0% of full professors. 26.1% of the lecturers reported a prefer-ence for ‘teaching only’, whilst only a small proportion (6.5%) of lecturers preferred toengage solely in ‘research’ (see Table 5).

The analysis above indicated a clear emphasis on teaching among lecturer participantsin the survey. The next question we asked was: Did the lecturers’ emphasis on teachingmatch the university’s evaluation and promotion practices in that year? Using a 5-pointscale (with 1 indicating strongly agree and 5 indicating strongly disagree), the surveyshowed the strongest agreement among lecturers (N = 38, Mean 1.79) with the statement

Table 3. Participants in the study.

Participants Gender Age Experience Abroad Area of ResearchYear of

Employment

P1 M 20∼30 None Mechanical Engineering 2015P2 F 30∼35 PhD, USA Food Engineering 2015P3 M 25∼30 None Food Engineering 2015P4 M 25∼30 Postdoc, Germany Mechanical Engineering 2014P5 M 25∼30 None Mechanical Engineering 2014P6 M 25∼30 PhD & Postdoc, Singapore Biomedicine 2013P7 M 25∼30 None Pathogen Biology and

Immunology2013

HSSP1 F 30∼35 Exchange PhD Student,USA

Foreign Literature 2013

HSSP2 F 30∼35 None Linguistics 2013HSSP3 M 25∼30 None Humanities 2015HSSP4 F 25∼30 None Humanities 2015HSSP5 M 30∼35 None Political Science 2013HSSP6 M 25∼30 PhD, Hong Kong Public Management 2015

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that the university’s ‘evaluation and promotion practices emphasize research output’,compared to associate professors (N = 44, Mean 2.11) and professors (N = 12, Mean2.08). The results indicated that before the 2012 reform, CU had already put emphasison research performance: Lecturer participants in the survey, despite their stated interestin teaching, had been under pressure to promote research performance; the researchpressure perceived by lecturer participants were higher than the research pressure per-ceived by their colleagues with higher academic positions (see Table 6).

High pressure at work: the post-reform situation

The 2012 reform at CU involved all lecturers recruited in the year and hereafter. In the inter-views, many participants considered that the reform policy reflected CU’s effort to improveits national and global rankings and move it towards ‘world-class’ status. Most participantsappeared to have no trouble in coming to terms with the reform, particularly those who hadbeen exposed to such managerial practices during their studies in foreign universities:

All around the world it is the same, quantitative appraisal of performance and quantitativerankings of universities. (CU) is now following foreign (universities). (P6)

This is about university evaluation and global rankings, right? The reform in the humanitiesand social sciences may be slower, but this is a trend. This is understandable. (HSSP1)

Some, however, expressed concern over the reform. They claimed that an obsessionwith rankings and a consequence of managerial competition would lead to an over-emphasis on academics’ research ‘productivity’:

Table 4. Allocation of work time.Work Time Allocation Academic Position N. Mean Std. Deviation

Percentage of work time spent on teaching Professor 15 38.67% 18.07Associate professor 49 47.67% 22.29Lecturer 43 48.95% 20.34

Percentage of work time spent on research Professor 15 42.33% 21.12Associate professor 49 33.18% 18.47Lecturer 43 34.26% 17.03

Percentage of work time spent on administration,social services and other activities

Professor 14 19.64% 13.37

Associate professor 46 18.80% 12.44Lecturer 41 16.88% 15.95

Table 5. Academic interest.

Academic Interest

Academic Position

TotalProfessor Associate professor Lecturer

Teaching only N. 2 18 12 32Percentage 13.3% 36.7% 26.1% 29.1%

Research only N. 4 8 3 15Percentage 26.7% 16.3% 6.5% 13.6%

Administration only N. 0 0 1 1Percentage 0 0 2.2% 0.9%

Teaching with Some Research N. 3 9 18 30Percentage 20.0% 18.4% 39.1% 27.3%

Research with Some Teaching N. 6 14 12 32Percentage 40.0% 28.6% 26.1% 29.1%

Total N. 15 49 46 110Percentage 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

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Universities are competing against each other. The competition requires rankings. To rankthe universities there must be indicators. The indicators have to be specific so as to beapplied to each university and each discipline. Then each discipline applies the indicatorsto each school and department, that is, to evaluate each teacher in the school and depart-ment.… The academic GDP is teachers’ research products; teachers’ research products arewhat university competition is really about. (HSSP5)

There was unanimous agreement amongst the participants, regardless of their disci-plines, that their work pressure was high, with the main source coming from the needto produce the required publications:

The pressure faced by the ‘new’ lecturers is quite high. We are only (thinking about) theassessment, three years five SCI (papers). (P3)

And it’s not just about submission. The paper only counts when it is published. Beingaccepted is okay. But… peer review takes time. Sometime it takes as long as six months. (P1)

Participants in social sciences stressed different ‘ideologies, paradigms and discourses’,which they believed had increased the difficulty in getting international publications (Yang2013, 49):

The research in sciences and engineering is 100% in line with the research abroad. In socialsciences, (to get international publications) your topic, your arguments have to followWestern tastes. I am writing about the Party and hardly can our discourse system acceptedby international journals… ’ (HSSP5)

Writing in a second language was a further factor intensifying the academic pressure.Participants, including those who had successful publication experiences in internationaljournals, reported that they had to put extra effort when writing in English:

My English hasn’t reached that level. The paper I am currently writing has been revised forfive or six times, but I am not satisfied. It doesn’t express what I intend to express. (P7)

Compared with those in science and engineering schools, participants in humanitiesand social sciences reported more severe language problems. Dissemination of researchfindings in these disciplines seems to require more complex and nuanced language use:

I usually write in Chinese and translate it into English. It is easier to translate papers (in sciencesand engineering) as they are short and have more tables or diagrams. My case studies can be aslong as 20,000 words. Imagine how troublesome the translation would be. (HSSP6)

Research grants are also considered in end-of-contract evaluations. Reflecting CU’sreputation in sciences and engineering, participants in these areas did not report much

Table 6. Perceptions on evaluation and promotion practices.Academic Position N. Mean Std. deviation

Evaluation and promotion practices emphasize research quality. Professor 12 2.08 0.793Associate professor 44 2.11 1.039Lecturer 38 1.79 0.905

Evaluation and promotion practices emphasize administrative work. Professor 12 2.92 1.084Associate professor 43 2.49 1.009Lecturer 37 2.57 0.899

Evaluation and promotion practices emphasize teaching quality. Professor 12 2.83 0.718Associate professor 44 2.89 1.185Lecturer 38 3.00 1.185

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difficulty in obtaining research grants, but this seemed to be much more of a problem forresearchers in humanities and social sciences, with scarcer funding availability beingreported as the main reason for this. There was also a speculation that guanxi (i.e. theuse of social networks) may be undermining fairness in assessing applications and redu-cing junior scholars’ chances of gaining such grants:

The proportion of social science research funds is always lower than that of natural scienceresearch funds. And the assessment of applications for social science funds is not as regulatedas that of natural science funds. There is space where guanxi works… (HSSP4)

For those recruited in 2015 and afterwards, satisfying all the requirements of theirtenure-track contracts would not lead to a permanent position. The second temporarycontract became a further source of pressure and intensified their sense of uncertaintyand insecurity:

I have no other feelings but pressure. Yes, I am, because we are on ‘3 + 3’ contract: After thefirst three years there is another three-year contract and another end-of-contract evaluation.After that university may revise the policy again and who knows what is going to happen.(P2)

In 2015 and afterwards, this sense of instability came not merely from speculationabout potential unemployment, but from observations of actual termination of their col-leagues’ contracts:

The university is now evaluating those recruited in 2012… For sure some would go. The uni-versity is serious. I met with one. When I was signing my contract in the personnel office, ateacher was signing out. He did not pass (the evaluation). I tell you, I heard from others, intotal over ten have been sacked. (P1)

This experience made P1 agitated. In his perception the reform strengthened the hier-archical power distribution at CU, with junior faculty in more disadvantageous positions.He believed that the university did not care about early-career lecturers but treated themmerely as paper-producing labourers whose work was purchased by money:

Why not put professors on tenure-track contracts, set up indicators for them and evaluate theirperformance every three years?Why not put the deans and presidents on the tenure-track con-tracts? I would ask whether they could reach all these standards in merely three years? (P1)

The university does not lose anything. Why? Suppose you cannot make 5 publications, butyou manage to have 4. Although you are sacked, all the 4 papers are still counted as this uni-versity’s research output. Right? This is like, ‘I just spend some money buying your papers. Itis not a big deal.’ Here is like a battlefield. You fall down and lots of others will rush to takeyour position. To the university it is not a big deal. (P1)

Consequences of pressure: affected research performance

All participants felt that this quantitative appraisal of publications (i.e. counting thenumber of articles) had affected the quality of their research:

If there was no such quantitative evaluation, you could do your own work in your own way atyour own pace. Then surely all of us would calm down and work on something which is reallymeaningful. Certainly we would do that. But the reality is the evaluation and we all have toface it. (P6)

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… It’s like you despise a person, but you have to be friends with him. Not passively, butactively cater to it because they pay you. This is the inevitable result of the quantitativegame. (HSSP5)

All participants reported that too much pressure discouraged them from attempting topublish in more prestigious journals. Another shared concern was that the contract didnot allow them space to pursue longer-term research, and to fulfill their research potential.

The contract is three years only; this is my biggest difficulty. I want to write something new,do something new, but I cannot… This is reality… (HSSP1)

The managerial approach was found to have affected choices of research topics andmethodologies. The following two participants reported that they intentionally switchedtheir research topics to meet ‘Western’ interests, and avoided qualitative researchdesign, as writing up quantitative study was less linguistically challenging:

Research in social sciences is serving the Chinese society. The social problems that Chineseacademics, Chinese government and Chinese society have interest in may be of little rel-evance to Westerners… But in academia, in this game, in this university, you have towrite in their ways to get international publications. (HSSP6)

I used to do qualitative research, case studies. My research topic required interviews to get in-depth understandings of social events… but it is easier to write up quantitative research, atleast to me. I am changing now, my research topics and research methodology are changingcompletely. (HSSP5)

Consequences of pressure: effects on teaching and relationships with colleagues

Before the 2012 reform, class teaching had constituted a significant part of lecturers’ aca-demic work at CU. After the reform, ‘new’ lecturers on tenure-track contracts in sciencesand engineering no longer had to do any teaching; across disciplines in the humanities andsocial sciences, teaching requirements for ‘new’ lecturers were much lower than for theircolleagues recruited before 2012. In interviews, all participants expressed the belief thatteaching was not encouraged by tenure-track system:

Teaching does not count. You think you are good at teaching and you are teaching well? Atthe end of the contract, what they evaluate is research. (HSSP6)

All respondents considered research as the absolute priority of their work. Althoughsome reported that they enjoyed teaching, the majority regarded teaching as a distractionfrom research:

Never did I feel research and teaching are compatible. They cannot be compatible. They arecompeting against each other, in terms of time. If you spend more time on one, you can onlyspend less on the other. (HSSP6)

When you are doing research, if you were always interrupted by teaching, constantly inter-rupted, you could hardly carry on. (HSSP1)

It should be noted that in each school, teaching hours assigned to the lecturersunder tenure-track contracts were much fewer than their colleagues recruited before2012. This tended to result in a tension and a division between them and other teach-ing faculty:

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(Our) salary is higher. (They have) heavy teaching load and often cannot reach the (teaching)evaluation standard. I don’t know how they feel. But if I were them, I would feel unfair.(HSSP3)

Moreover, across disciplines teaching requirements for tenure-track lecturers were verydifferent (see Table 1). The variety in teaching hours resulted in a feeling of unfairness,particularly when there was not a strong connection between teaching contents andtheir research focus, and when there was no appreciation from the university managementfor the participants’ ‘extra’ contribution to teaching.

I know teachers in the school of XX Engineering. We are all on tenure-track contracts right?But they don’t need to teach. They don’t need to teach a single class within the three years.(HSSP1)

I am teaching history of XX. It is very different from what I am researching. It would be betterif I were teaching research methodology. Then I wouldn’t need to spend so much time onteaching preparation. (HSSP6)

My contract listed 180 teaching hours per year. I actually taught much more. This was ques-tioned by the university personnel. They asked, ‘why did you teach so much? Had you inten-tionally planned to use extra teaching hours as an excuse and avoid publishing researchpapers? (HSSP1)

Consequences of pressure: affected personal lives

In order to meet contractual requirements, participants generally reported working forlong hours:

I would like to have some recreational activities, but have to sacrifice weekends and holidays.(HSSP1)

High pressure and overtime work resulted in physical exhaustion and increased risk ofwork-related diseases. In interviews, participants reported headaches, insomnia, gastritisand low levels of immunity. Two of the participants (i.e. P4, HSSP6) talked emotionallyabout their colleagues who had died from cerebrovascular and heart disease due tofatigue and persistent overwork:

It would not sound nice but this work indeed affects our health. You always feel pressure; youhave to keep running so as to reach the goal, so as not to be eliminated. (P1)

Every time when I heard of young scholars’ deaths, I felt sad, pondering who should beblamed… (HSSP6)

To satisfy the contractual requirements demanded time and energy. All participants per-ceived that obtaining tenure was their prime commitment, and admitted that overtimework had reduced their engagement in family life:

We [participant and wife] have registered our marriage. But we are not going to hold awedding, because wedding planning requires time, you have to invite friends and relatives,and you have to book a reception venue. My time won’t allow it; my energy won’t allow it. (P1)

Significant differences were noted between male and female participants’ perceptions ofthe impacts on their personal lives. For male participants, wives or girlfriends were theprimary carers of the family:

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I told her (wife) I work hard so that she would not need to work so hard. Because there mustbe one looking after the elderly. Otherwise, who will take care of our family? (P7)

In China, cultural and social expectations for females to get married and have a child intheir 20s are high (Magistad 2015; Fincher 2014). When the interviews were conducted, allfour female participants were around 30-year old. Among them, one was married with atwo-year-old child. She described herself as the primary carer for her family and sherepeatedly expressed her worries of being less able to attain tenure because of the child-care responsibilities. Although a second child is now allowed to parents in China, sheexpressed no intention to have one:

I have personal constraints. No one helps me (to look after child). My mother is in hospital. Ineed to look after her too.… I can only write when my daughter is asleep. In the daytime shecries and plays and I cannot do any proper work.… She is not a gift…With her, it becomesdifficult to meet the demands of the contract. (HSSP4)

Another three female participants were not married, and only one was in a relationship.The other two participants frankly declared that the time they spent on research did notallow them to develop a stable relationship. They all expressed concerns over the new ‘two-child’ policy, believing that the consequent higher social expectations on women in childbearing and caring could further disadvantage female researchers in university recruit-ment and promotion:

Think about it, to have a baby you need six months’ maternity leave. Under the new policyyou may then ask for another six months’ maternity leave. Men do not need this at all. Thisaffects women immediately; they do not want to hire you. (HSSP2)

The following narrative reminds us that while these participants stressed that theirmarital decisions were made personally by themselves, such decisions may have beeninfluenced by the increasingly gendered academic culture in the current managerial trans-formation on Chinese campuses:

The personnel department held a meeting with us. The head asked us ‘are you married? Haveyou had a child? I think he is calculating, like, are you planning to get married as soon as youcomplete this contract, because this means you will be relaxed and give birth to a child. Hemay just be nice. But I do feel that as a manager, this is not something he would like to see.(HSSP1)

Discussion and conclusions

To increase its competitiveness in the global knowledge economy, China has targetedfurther enhancement of its educational strength, in its plan to promote the developmentof ‘world-class universities and world-class disciplines’ (State Council 2015). This target isbeing institutionalized in Chinese HEIs, particularly the elite 985- and 211-project univer-sities, through implementation of various incentive and evaluation policies. At CU, a‘tenure-track’ system has been introduced, requiring newly appointed lecturers to meetvarious performance criteria, including publishing a certain number of articles in selectivejournals and winning of research grants from selective sources, within a given contractperiod. All participants under the tenure-track contracts expressed their understandingthat the reform was for the development of CU towards ‘world-class’ status; they accepted

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its underlying rationale. The specific measurements of their academic performance,however, attracted the participants’ criticism.

The most apparent problem of the tenure-track system and the managerial approachunderlying it was the intensified academic pressure on the young scholars. Feelings ofinsecurity, uncertainty and anxiety over their career were expressed by the participants,in agreement with the negative impacts of managerialism in other literature (Mok 1999;Ylijoki and Ursin 2013). To meet the tenure requirements, participants found that theydid not have enough time to obtain higher quality data and, therefore, less likely toproduce research findings with more significant impact. In order to maximize researchoutputs during their contract, they tended to follow mainstream research topics andresearch methods. The affected research quality was in line with previous criticisms ofother higher education evaluation systems (e.g. Harley and Lee 1997).

Prior to the reform, lecturers at CU were more likely to have an academic interest inteaching and to have spent a higher proportion of work time on teaching. The employ-ment reform, with its rigid performance management requirements, privileged researchover teaching and teaching-related activities. In the interviews, participants expressedlow motivation to teach or engage in teaching-related activities, as such activitiescontributed little to their attainment of tenure. In addition, the differentiated class-teach-ing requirements brought tensions among the tenure-track lecturers in different disci-plines, and between the tenure-track lecturers and their colleagues recruited before thereform. In an in-depth qualitative research conducted in Hong Kong (Yuan 2016), thestringent institutional emphasis on research outcomes was reported to have affected anovice college teacher’s engagement in teaching and his professional growth as ateacher-educator. A further concern arising here is the extent to which the marginalizationof teaching might in turn affect the academic development of college students. There is anurgent need for research to explore the impacts of tenure-track reforms on teaching andmentoring services provided by early-career teachers, from the perspectives of universitystudents.

Writing about UK higher education, Deem and Brehony (2005) point out the connec-tions between the new managerialism and ‘relations of power and dominance’. In theresearch reported here, the interviews reveal power hierarchies that have been constructedand strengthened as a consequence, if not an intended purpose, of the managerial trans-formation at CU. Participants in sciences and engineering disciplines reported technicalproblems with the English language, whilst those in humanities and social sciences werechallenged by differences in local Chinese and ‘Western’ research interests. The findingsecho the reported hierarchical pattern of the world knowledge system, with English-speak-ing developed countries as the intellectual ‘center’ while these Chinese scholars suffer dis-advantages through enforced participation in international academic communication, inwhich they are ‘peripheral’ (Altbach 2004). Within the institution, a hierarchical relation-ship has been constructed between the young lecturers under tenure-track contracts andthe university administrators – or the ‘academic-managers’ in Deem and Brehony’s words(2005) –who have the power to decide the terms of the contracts, evaluate the participants’performance based on these terms and thereby determine these young scholars’ pro-fessional future. Furthermore, amongst the participants, those in social science disciplinesand those who do not have powerful guanxi relations realize they are disempowered in thecompetition for research grants.

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Another important finding is the increasingly gendered nature of the academic culturein the case-study university after its launch of the tenure-track policy. Previous research inEuropean countries has suggested that managerial culture presents significant challengesfor females in higher education (see White, Carvalho, and Riordan 2011). The tenure-track policy at CU, with the same demands of performativity for male and femaleresearchers, superficially appears non-contradictory to the principles of gender equality.Satisfaction of the contract conditions, however, has been shown to require the partici-pants’ whole-hearted devotion, which implicitly disadvantages female researchers whoare socially and culturally expected to shoulder greater family responsibilities outsidetheir academic career. The managerial changes at CU, therefore, encouraged -- ratherthan diminished -- male dominance. The research suggests that it is either male lecturersor female lecturers with fewer family responsibilities that tended to survive professionallythe impacts of the reform. These findings are in line with and add some detail to the resultsof a recent international comparative research on influences of tenure-track systems,which particularly revealed that female lecturers are more disadvantaged in ChineseHEIs (Myklebust 2016).

Tenure-track practices are recent phenomena in Chinese HEIs. In this study, the par-ticipants’ comments on the lecturer-employment reform indicated the problems facedby young scholars in China’s drive to enhance its educational and research strength,which are inadequately discussed in the literature. The findings show that the emergingnew managerial culture seems prepared to ‘buy’ some superficial measure of insti-tutional academic success at the expense of potentially serious individual, social and aca-demic harm. However, we are aware of the relatively small number of participants inthis interview study and the fact that it took place in a single university, whichcaution us against any inclination to over-generalize the findings. In this article, by pro-viding a full report of the case and its relevance to changes taking place at national andglobal levels, we encourage readers to think about the transferability of the findings toother contexts similar to this one from which the findings are derived (Henwood andPidgeon 1992). We particularly call for gendered studies of responses to researchpressure, as the research reported here only hints at the impacts of the tenure-track con-tracts on Chinese female scholars. Moreover, both qualitative studies and large-scalesurveys involving institutions at different levels in different regions of China areneeded. Such research will deepen our understandings of the academic pressure facedby early career researchers, enable more critical examination of the managerialistrecruitment and evaluation practices, so as to promote sustainable and healthy develop-ment of Chinese higher education.

Notes

1. In line with the tenure-track policy implemented at the case-study university, we use ‘young’scholars to refer to the scholars under 35 years old and holding a lectureship upon theirrecent completion of the PhD studies. The term is used interchangeably with ‘early-career’scholars in this paper.

2. The Chinese Ministry of Education initiated 211-Project in 1993 to prepare the nation fornew challenges in the twentyfirst century (hence the name). The project distributes localand national funding to the top 100 universities in China to strengthen their educationalquality.

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3. The Chinese Ministry of Education initiated 985-Project in May 1998 (hence the name). Theproject distributes national funding to develop the best 39 Chinese universities, promote theirresearch reputation and help to establish their ‘world-class’ status.

4. In 2012 4,210 SSCI papers, compared to 164,700 SCI papers, were published by Chinesescholars based in Chinese HEIs who listed themselves as the papers’ first authors (Instituteof Scientific and Technical Information of China 2013).

5. As part of a bigger project, the survey was designed jointly by one author of this paper andcolleagues at the Chinese university of Hong Kong (see Lai, Du, and Li (2014) on the researchdesign); at CU data collection and analysis were conducted independently by the author (seeLu et al. 2010).

6. ‘The top international journals’ refer to Nature, Science and Cell.7. ‘The most influential journal’ refers to the SCI/SSCI journal with highest Impact Factor in the

contract-holder’s discipline.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Fund for the Central Universities, China(sk201409) and Shaanxi Social Science Research Fund, Chin a (2014M01).

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