China's Higher Education System
2 China's Higher Education System
THE HIGHER EDUCATION ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM
HIGHER EDUCATION SCHOOL-RUNNING SYSTEM
HIGHER EDUCATION FUNDING SYSTEM
The higher education system that resulted from central planning in the early 1950s played a historical role in supplying the senior professionals who were badly needed for national industrialization and large-scale socialist development. However, its flaws became glaringly pronounced in the wake of economic restructuring and social progress. Among its major problems were rigid control by a government that was running things virtually all by itself, lack of public participation; administrative barriers resulting from inflexible departmental and regional boundaries, redundancy of look-alike colleges, monotonous curricula, and serious waste of resources. In the nation's transition from central planning to a market economy in these years of reform and opening up, the government has taken bold restructuring measures as the first step in boosting the development of higher education. It has mandated a series of platforms and guidelines to advance higher education reform. All-round transformation of higher education has picked up speed since the mid-1990s, involving overall administration, the school system, the investment system, enrollment, graduate employment, and the internal governance of schools. Breakthroughs have been made during the transformation, providing a great impetus for further development of the higher education system and laying a solid foundation for China's socio-economic development.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM
Breakthroughs were made in overhauling the administrative system over China's higher education in the 1990s. A great success in practice, this administrative system reform was hailed as a highlight in the development of higher education in China at the turn of the century.
The current higher education administrative system
The current higher education administrative system operates at two levels, in three sequences, and by an executive body (Figure 2.1).
Two administrative levels. At the first level, the State Council and the Ministry of Education are responsible for the central administration and overall guidance of the provincial governments and relevant central ministries and commissions with regard to the national principle of education and related policies, funding, and planning. At the second level, the provincial governments and central ministries and commissions, the Ministry of Education included, are responsible for the direct administration of the institutions of higher education affiliated to them.
Three administrative sequences. The first sequence is the State Council, provincial governments, public and private universities under the administration of provincial governments. The second sequence is the State Council, the Ministry of Education, universities affiliated with the Ministry of Education. The third sequence is the State Council, ministries and commissions, universities affiliated with these ministries and commissions.
The executive body. The Ministry of Education is the State Council's executive body in charge of the national work on education. It is responsible for planning for national higher education development, establishment of new schools, relevant policies and regulations, evaluation of the quality of teaching, and issues concerning teachers and students. Provincial governments run their own education departments or commissions. The other ministries and commissions of the State Council have departments that provide administration
and coordination over the institutions of higher education affiliated with them.
To sum up, China has basically established a new higher education administrative system whose functions are divided at the central and provincial levels, with the provincial government administration in the main.
Guiding principle for administrative reform
The old higher education administrative system was born of the highly centralized planned economy of the 1950s. Under this administrative system, central departments and local governments each ran their own universities under a unified central plan. Administration of universities was thus divided along central department and regional government boundaries. Under the macroeconomic conditions of the time, this system ensured investment in these schools, facilitated the cultivation of needed talent according to plan, and played a major role in bringing more students to college and accelerating national industrialization and local economic development.
However, the flaws of this administrative system and structure of running schools were increasingly felt in the course of economic growth, scientific and technological progress, and social advance. The divided school administration between central departments and local governments resulted in rigid administrative barriers, and universities were handicapped by such problems as a narrow range of curricula, smallness in size, low-level redundancy of too many look-alike colleges and academic programs, and non-communication between industry, scholarship and research. All this affected the efficiency and quality of education, hindered inter-disciplinary exchanges and development, made it hard to bring the best out of available resources, and resulted in a lopsided allocation of resources.
The transition from central planning to a market economy since the mid-1980s prompted the nation's policymakers to reconsider the relationship between higher education and the market economy. This led to a major controversy over the concept of higher education. However, after much exploration, the policymakers began to have second thoughts about the notion that higher education is merely a consumer and public-interest undertaking, and they came to see its productive nature. Regarding development in higher education, they eschewed stressing a particular field of development and embraced the idea of giving prominence to optimization in scale, structure, quality, and efficiency, and valuing the role of the market in allocating education resources. The consensus today is that higher education administration must be reshaped according to the inherent needs of the market economy and that an end must be put to the practice in which institutions of higher education relied solely on a “do-it-all” government.
In 1985, right after making the policy decision for economic restructuring and reform of the science and technology system, the government issued the Decisions on Reform of the Educational System and began to explore ways to revamp higher education administration during the new period of reform and opening up to the outside world. The publication of the Outline for Educational Reform and Development in China in 1993 and the procedural regulations for implementing the program in 1994 signified acceleration in higher education administrative reform. These documents call for starting the reform process by creating diverse forms of schools, lifting rigid bureaucratic boundaries from institutions of higher education, and overcoming the drawbacks in the administrative system. They also call for giving full scope to the regulatory role of government policies and social needs in fostering cooperative relationships between central-affiliated and local universities and between the local ones. In this way, the geographical distribution of higher education can be put on an even keel, the higher education structure optimized, and the education efficiency improved.
Process of administrative reform
Administrative reform, the central task of higher education reform as a whole, was a hard nut to crack. The State Council General Office held three symposiums, in 1994, 1995 and 1996 respectively, to summarize the experience and clarify the guiding principle for it. The 1998 national conference for swapping experience in higher education administrative reform set the principle of “joint construction, readjustment, cooperation and consolidation.” Taking the opportunity of a major organizational reshuffle in the State Council, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, the State Planning Commission, and some other central departments took three major steps and basically streamlined the administration of central-affiliated universities, a move that was lauded as a major historic breakthrough in higher education administrative reform. Some of the schools involved were put under the administration of the Ministry of Education or merged with those affiliated with the ministry, but most of them were relegated to joint construction by central and local authorities, with the local administration assuming the chief responsibility for them. Some new schools were born out of this move, and appear to be more encompassing and better than their predecessors. A significant move in this reshuffle was that quite a few large and fine medical colleges were incorporated in comprehensive or multi-disciplinary universities, thus putting an end to medical colleges' history of independent development (Figure 2.2).
During 1992–2001, a total of 556 schools (387 regular universities and 169 adult universities) were regrouped to form 232 universities (212 regular universities and 20 adult universities), which meant a net reduction of 324. With the exception of a few schools that remain under the administration of central government departments because of their importance to overall national development or their special nature, most of the central-affiliated schools have been relegated totally or mainly to provincial government administration.
In 1999, the State Council invested the power and responsibility for developing post-secondary vocational education in the provincial governments, allowing them to make their own decisions on establishing post-secondary vocational and technical colleges and to make their own enrollment plans for junior college courses in these colleges. The central government, while tightening up macro-management of higher education, encourages localities to carry out diverse forms of reform and develop distinctive patterns for the development of local education.
HIGHER EDUCATION SCHOOL-RUNNING SYSTEM
The higher education school-running system is a government tool to standardize the running of schools of higher learning with regard to major issues such as who is running higher education, who the investors are, and what the property rights relations in these schools are. Reform in this regard is designed to scrap the old system under which all schools were run by the government, properly handle the relationship between the government and the public, and gradually install a new system in which all walks of life are involved in running the schools with the government contributing the lion's share.
Public schools of higher learning
Under the central planning system, the government was the sole owner, investor, and supervisor of all universities, which were run very much like government departments.
Public universities are now run at three levels: the central government, the provincial governments, and central cities. Figure 2.1 shows that the schools at the central level are affiliated to the Ministry of Education and other State Council ministries and commissions, whereas those at the provincial level are funded and administered mainly by the provincial governments. The central-affiliated ones are mostly elite universities that enroll students from all over the country, while the provincial-affiliated ones cater to local development needs. In recent years, however, colleges (mainly post-secondary vocational and technical colleges) run by central cities have made much headway. Decentralization of the power to run schools has enabled schools to make their own decisions according to social and market needs and to play a vital role in local socioeconomic progress.
Privately-run higher education
The transition from central planning to a socialist market economy has ushered in a new stage of development in the reform and opening-up effort. The government has pointed out the way to achieve common progress of diverse forms of ownership, with state ownership playing the leading role. Given this major change in the economic field, reform of the traditional higher education system has become the call of the day. The Outline for Educational Reform and Development in China issued in 1993 calls for scrapping the government monopoly and gradually establishing a framework in which the government continues to run most of the schools but people from all walks of life can share a piece of the action.
Since the adoption of the reform and opening-up policy, privately-run higher education has been thriving on government attention and support and the principle of “active encouragement, unstinting support, proper guidance and administration according to law” provided in the State Council's Provisions on Running Schools with Non-Governmental Resources that came into force in 1997. In 1999, the Third National Education Work Conference called for simultaneous development of public and private schools—with public schools in the main. In 2002, the 31st Session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress endorsed the Law on Promotion of Privately-Run Education; and in 2004, the State Council issued the Procedural Provisions for the Law on Promotion of Privately-Run Education. These events signified the arrival of legislation on private schools in China and turned a new page in China's history of non-governmental education. According to the Law on Promotion of Privately-Run Education, all activities by individuals or organizations other than government departments in
running schools or other educational institutions with nongovernmental money fall into the category of private education.
Starting from scratch and growing steadily in strength, private schools are all the rage in the current wave of higher education reform. They have emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the country's higher education system. Central and local authorities have shaped administrative rules and regulations governing the setup, teaching, and finance in private schools. The Action Plan for Rejuvenating Education for the 21st Century also furnishes work arrangements for privately-run higher education. All this has guaranteed sustained, healthy, and quick growth in higher education run by private sectors and motivated people from all walks of life to join in the action.
Private higher education in China assumes three forms: private colleges, independent colleges, and schools assisting those preparing for higher education self-study examinations. In 2004, there were 97,000 private schools with 24.48 million students across the land. (Statistics for 2003 do not cover correspondent colleges and vocational and technical training institutions.) These included 226 private colleges certified by the Ministry of Education or provincial governments to confer degrees and diplomas, which accounted for 13% of the country's total number of schools of higher learning, and the 1.4 million students (686,000 of them from independent colleges) attending these private colleges made up 10.5% of the country's total number of college students (Figure 2.3). These also included 1,187 private institutions assisting those preparing for higher education self-study examinations, with 1.053 million registered students.
The term “independent college” refers to one that is run under a non-governmental system by a regular university in collaboration with private resources; it is thus different from a public college. Instead of relying on the government for money, independent colleges are financed mainly with money pooled through partnerships or simply from private sectors. They collect enrollment fees from students in line with government stipulations. When the first independent colleges appeared in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in 1999 they were known as “state-owned, privately-run second-tier colleges.” The Proposals on Standardizing and Tightening up Administration over Independent Colleges Run on a Trial Basis under New Mechanisms and Patterns by Higher Education Institutions, issued by the Ministry of Education in 2003, set the principle of actively developing independent colleges and standardizing their administration in the spirit of reform and innovation, and lay down the ground rules for these colleges to operate under a non-governmental system and confer diplomas and certificates in their capacity as independent colleges. These stipulations add momentum to the development of independent colleges throughout the country.
In 2004, 249 independent colleges were running on an experimental basis across the country. They had more than 687,000 registered students, and the higher education resources in their possession included 70,000 mu (one mu equals 1/15 hectare) of land, 8.76 million square meters of school buildings, 1.2 billion yuan worth of teaching aids and equipment, and approximately 20 million books. These experimental independent colleges enable their mother universities to tap their school-running and faculty potentials and put their fine traditions and management expertise in education to full use. They motivate private sectors to contribute money and other resources as well. With distinctly independent legal identities and their own campuses and facilities, and enjoying independence in teaching organization and administration, enrollment, conferment of diplomas, and accounting, independent colleges have emerged as a nascent field of development in private higher education.
Schools run in cooperation with foreign institutions
According to the Regulations on Chinese-Foreign Cooperation in Running Schools, schools established in cooperation with foreign education institutions to enroll Chinese citizens in the main are another form of private higher education. The government encourages the running of schools of higher education and post-secondary vocational education through Chinese-foreign cooperation, particularly partnerships between Chinese institutions of higher learning and well-known foreign counterparts. The government also encourages these cooperative schools to bring in academic programs and textbooks of advanced international levels which are in great demand in China; and sets great store by assimilating and incorporating the strengths and successful school management expertise of the foreign institutes to help schools in China gain a global competitive edge. These regulations protect, in no uncertain terms, the lawful rights and interests of both the Chinese and foreign partners, the schools they are running, and their teachers and students. For more details about this type of schools, see Chapter 9.
HIGHER EDUCATION FUNDING SYSTEM
New China's funding system for higher education is growing in pace with the progress in economy and education. It has gone through roughly two periods of development: the period of the planned economy, and the period of reform and opening up to the outside world. The funding system is being transformed in order to change the situation in which the government is the sole investor in schools, redress the long-standing deficiency in education funding, properly even out the costs of higher education between the state, the public, schools, and individuals, and establish a funding system whereby the money needed can be raised from multiple conduits while the lion's share comes from the government. Thanks to the reform and opening-up policy, breakthroughs have been made in overhauling this higher education funding system and providing institutional assurances for the rapid and sustained growth of higher education spending.
Guidelines for overhauling the education funding system
Education funding shortfalls have long been a major headache in higher education development. Prior to the adoption of the reform and opening-up policy, central planning was the rule, and the government was the sole source of funding for higher education. As the government was weighed down by this financial burden, the shortage of funding kept worsening and seriously hampered the development of higher education. Since the 1980s, the government has spared no effort to address this disparity between demand and input by improving the mix of financial sources, expanding investment conduits, increasing funding on education, and so on. Through these steps the government has found the solutions and made a breakthrough in its guidelines for reform of the higher education funding system, which is in transition from singular government spending to the sharing of costs by the state, the public, schools, parents, and other individuals.
The Higher Education Law enacted in 1998 provides: “The State institutes a system wherein government appropriations constitute the bulk of the funds for higher education, to be supplemented by funds raised through various avenues, so as to ensure that the development of higher education is suited to the level of economic and social development.” It also stipulates: “The State encourages enterprises, institutions, public organizations or groups and individuals to invest in higher education.” These provisions institutionalize a new higher education financing system that raises money through multiple conduits.
In recent years, sustained major increases in funding for higher education have been seen, thanks to government solicitude, the common efforts of people from all walks of life, and the implementation of a series of policies and measures. To ensure major increases in education funding, the central government ruled: “The percentage of education spending in the central government budget
shall be raised by 1% for five consecutive years from 1998 to 2002. The People's governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government shall, in the light of actual local conditions, increase the expenditure on education when arranging their own budgets.” This brought an aggregate increase of 48.9 billion yuan between 1998 and 2002 over the 1997 figure at the central financial level alone. After the central government took this unprecedented step to ease the financial strain on education, the governments of most provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government followed suit. The impressive increases in funding quickened the effort to develop world-class universities and key academic programs and brought about a quantum leap in higher education development (Figure 2.4).
Basic fund-raising channels
After nearly two decades of indefatigable exploration, China eventually blazed a new trail for tackling higher education financial shortfalls, that is, by raising money through the following conduits.
First, state budgetary appropriations. This has all along been the principal source of money for schools of higher learning. They can always obtain funds from central and local government budgets to carry out development plans and fulfill education and research tasks.
Second, education tax and tax reduction. The state levies taxes and uses the revenue in higher education according to provisions in the Education Law. The state also follows a tax reduction policy to save universities money for hi-tech development.
Third, tuition and other student fees. Universities charge tuition fees and rent to partially recoup education costs on the grounds that higher education is non-compulsory. The cost-sharing system impels students to value their schooling opportunities and alleviates the financial strain on universities. Tuition and other fees collected from students are a major conduit through which education funding is raised.
Fourth, revenue from businesses run by universities according to law.
Fifth, endowments. Institutions of higher education can obtain endowments from sources within China and abroad.
Sixth, foundations. Institutions of higher education have extensive ties in society, and enterprises, companies and communities, and individuals at home and abroad often set up foundations for general use or specific purposes in universities.
Seventh, sci-tech business revenue. A university may get paid for undertaking research projects in cooperation with enterprises, providing advice, or transferring research results.
Eighth, bank loans. Government policies allow universities to obtain bank loans to finance research, university-run factories, outsourced logistics services, or infrastructure construction. With the help of relevant government departments, they may also obtain foreign loan grants in aid of teaching and research.
Ninth, interest from savings. Where permitted, universities may operate their surplus funds to obtain bank interest, but the bottom line is that such operations should be lawful and safe and carry low risks.
INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION
Internal administration is a basic factor affecting the daily operation and the quality of teaching in universities. Since the 1990s, it has also been a major area for higher education reform. Reform of the internal administration of universities is designed to address cumbersome administrative bodies, lack of incentives for competition and effective constraints on administrative conduct, over-employment of non-teaching staff, and egalitarianism in distribution. By restructuring the administrative bodies and changing their functions, and by streamlining the staff, the reform is also aimed at establishing sound internal administrative and operational mechanisms that are geared to the country's economic development and social progress.
University leadership and administration
According to the Higher Education Law, the president assumes full responsibility for his university under the leadership of the university's Party committee. The Constitution provides that, proceeding from the national and political systems, the Communist Party of China is the ruling party of the country, and that in a university, the Party's grass-roots committee provides the leadership and supports the president in governing that university independently and with a high sense of responsibility according to law.
A public university enjoys significant latitude in administrative and organizational affairs. It can set up or readjust its own administrative system and organizations according to actual conditions. From the 1950s till the 1980s, the administrative systems in a university mostly consisted of two levels: the headquarters and the faculties, each running a number of teaching and research offices under them. After a major round of expansion and faculty regrouping in the 1980s, many universities have introduced a headquarters-colleges-faculties system. Dividing administrative power into three levels, this system applies to universities that are large and have a complex array of fields of study. Under this three-tier system, however, the division of administrative power may be either real or nominal, and the power invested in each level of administration is not necessarily commensurate with its functions.
The Law on Promotion of Privately-Run Education requires that a private college should set up a decision-making body, such as an administrative council or board of directors. The administrative council or board of directors should have at least five members on it, including the owner or his representative, the president, and representatives of teachers and staff; one of them should serve as the chairman. The chairman of the council or board or the president may serve as the legal representative of the private college.
Organizational structure in a university
The central government appoints or removes university presidents and vice-presidents according to law. The president assumes full responsibility for teaching and research and other administrative work in his university. Specifically, it is the university president's duty to map out development plans, set rules and regulations, make annual work plans and see to it that they are carried out, organize teaching and research activities and character education, decide the internal organizational setup, recommend candidates for vice-presidencies, appoint or dismiss leaders of internal organizations, hire or fire teachers and non-teaching employees, oversee administration over students' registration and academic files, mete out awards and penalties, draft and carry out the annual budget, protect and manage campus property, and safeguard the university's lawful rights and interests. The administrative and organizational structure in a university forms a relatively independent system for carrying out activities within a prescribed scope. Such a system is both vertical (from headquarters down to colleges and faculties) and horizontal (that is, faculties or functioning bodies at their respective levels); it is thus an interactive and multi-leveled network.
The administrative department of a university is the executive body that is under the leadership of the president and assists him in conducting administrative activities. The functioning offices of this executive body address administrative affairs in accordance with the president's directives, and provide, on behalf of the university, services for teaching and research, and also supplies teachers and staff at the grass-roots level.
The university internal administration roughly consists of four departments that handle teaching affairs, general affairs, university affairs, and Party affairs respectively. The department of teaching, the main body in the university administration, organizes and runs teaching and research programs throughout the university. The department of general affairs handles logistics work and provides material guarantees for teaching and research and on-campus study, work and life of all teachers, staff and students. The department of university affairs takes care of clerical work, files, statistics, public relations, and personnel affairs. The department of Party affairs is accountable for the university's Party committee. There are also other organizations on campus, such as the Youth League, the Trade Union, the Teachers' Congress, and the department of retirees.
The administrative council or board of trustees of a private university exercises the following functions: appointing or dismissing the university president, amending the university constitution and shaping relevant rules and regulations, drafting development programs and approving annual work plans, procuring operational funds and monitoring budgets and final accounts, deciding faculty size and salary grades, ruling on the establishment or termination of branch schools and mergers, and handling other major affairs.
The president of a private university is responsible for teaching and administrative work. He is obliged to carry out the decisions of the administrative council, board of trustees, or other form of decision-making body, implement general development programs, draft annual work plans, budgets, and rules and regulations, appoint or dismiss faculty or staff members, mete out awards and penalties, organize teaching and research activities, ensure the quality of teaching, handle daily administrative work, as well as other affairs with the authorization of the administrative council or board of directors or other form of decision-making body.
Organizational structure at college (department) level
The colleges or departments in a university are grass-roots teaching and research units set up according to the curriculum to administer teaching and research. As the fundamental bodies in a university's organizational setup, the colleges or departments organize, direct, and manage teaching and research work under their charge, and directly handle academic and research problems arising with regards to teachers and students.
The dean of a college or department is appointed by the university president and assumes all-round responsibility for the work in his college or department under the president's leadership. Each college or department runs a number of teaching and research offices that are established according to the curriculum or research tasks to carry out teaching and research programs, train graduate students, compile textbooks, organize the teaching and research staff, operate laboratories, and collect information.
Reform of university personnel system
As the administrative reform proceeds in depth in a university, it gives rise to the need to revamp its personnel system, for this has a close bearing on the interests of the teachers and the building of a competent faculty and staff. The goals of the personnel reform are: First, to straighten out the relationship between administrative and personnel affairs, decentralize administrative power, implement the university's decision-making power, and foster good public relations to facilitate university reform and development by standardizing the division of functions between the government and functioning departments, the higher level administrative department, and the university itself.
Second, to gradually establish a new personnel administrative system that helps the university make decisions on personnel affairs, allows faculty and non-teaching staff members to choose jobs, and enables the government to oversee the university's personnel affairs according to law.
Third, to step up development of a sound system for internal competition and incentives, change the personnel administration's operational mechanisms, and introduce flexible appointment and distribution systems.
Since 2000, some universities have established personnel systems that are adapted to the socialist market economic system and help people handle with ease such things as employment and unemployment, promotions and demotions, and salary raises and cuts, thereby accelerating the reform of the teachers' appointment system, the organizational and staff system, and the distribution system.
Streamlining university organizational and staff structures
The reform to streamline university organizational and staff structures follows the principle of “controlling the aggregates, decentralizing power at micromanagement levels, cutting down on staff size and raising efficiency.” Specifically, the reform calls for downsizing and streamlining administrative departments and staff. For example, it is required that every university should keep the number of its administrative departments between ten and twenty. The government is also setting standards for organizational and staff administration, and guiding universities to adapt their staff numbers to the need to increase personnel efficiency and improve the quality of education.
Introducing an appointment system in universities
Universities appoint administrative personnel according to the provisions of the Education Law and the Higher Education Law. This appointment system is a new measure that conforms to the orientation of personnel reform in government institutions. Before this system was officially established as part of university administrative work, the Ministry of Education had adopted the guiding principle of “making careful studies, being prudent in implementation, carrying out experiments first, and introducing the new system step by step,” and had begun to experiment with this system in some universities in 1999. On the basis of the experience gained from the first round of experiments, more rounds of experiments had been conducted until the new appointment system became mature enough to be implemented in all universities.
Reform of university salary and distribution system
The salary reform is aimed at building a sound distribution system whereby salaries are fixed according to work posts and in accordance with the principles of “a fair day's pay for a fair day's work” and “the more the work the more the pay.” This distribution system establishes work-post salaries as the main source of private income, augmented by welfare and work-post allowances and social security, and gives long-term consideration to the need to attract new talent and keep people from leaving their jobs. It is an internal distribution system that provides universities significant latitude in dispensing pay and awards. Its idea is to follow the principle of “giving priority to efficiency and consideration to fairness,” give full scope to interaction between the way the total volume of salaries is regulated and controlled and the government's tax and social security policies. While intensifying reform of the distribution system, universities are called upon to conscientiously coordinate it with other areas of reform, persist in sustained development, and turn the role of salaries and distribution from improving employees' living standards to providing incentives that can motivate faculty and staff, from resolving immediate conflicts of interest to maintaining long-term stability in the ranks of faculty members, and from motivation with money to the promotion of values and a cultural spirit on campus.
UNIVERSITY TEACHERS
In China, teachers enjoy a high status in society, and teaching is a respected profession. Apart from the citizens' rights stipulated in the Constitution, teachers also enjoy academic freedom and rights in teaching, research, and academic exchanges as provided by education legislation. They also have the right to participate in university administration. Teacher's Day is a legal festival that falls on September 10.
Teaching staff: status quo and characteristics
The success or failure of the effort to develop higher education and improve the quality of teaching hinges on the number and quality of teachers. The ranks of university teachers are now rapidly expanding, thanks to a robust national economy and a burgeoning higher education system. The government has set the strategy to rejuvenate the country through science and education and the strategy to make the nation strong by cultivating talent. It advocates the social mores of respecting teachers and valuing education, is working to replenish the ranks of teachers, and is adopting steps to motivate teachers in work and innovation. As a result, the ranks of university teachers are expanding and the quality of teachers as a whole is improving.
Upgrading teachers' academic credentials
The number of university teachers in China rose by 87.44% from 503,900 in 1998 to 944,500 in 2004. During this period, the number of teachers in regular universities reached 858,400 in 2004, an increase of 451,200 or 110.8% in seven years. After many years of persistent efforts, the strategy to raise the quality of teaching mainly by upgrading teachers' academic credentials has paid off, and there has been a marked increase in the number of teachers holding graduate diplomas. During 1998–2004, the number of teachers with graduate diplomas rose from 126,200 to 303,700, an increase of 140.65%, and the number of them holding doctorates grew from 19,200 to 71,700, an increase of 52,500 or 237.44% (Figure 2.5).
Average age of core faculty members is becoming lower
After the reform and opening-up got under way towards the end of 1978, China has stepped up the building of a vast contingent of teachers. The percentage of teaching assistants in the country's total number of university teachers dropped from 34% to below 20% during 1990–1995 and has since remained at that level. For more than a decade, the percentage of teachers with no academic titles has hovered at the 5% level. The percentage of professors and associate professors rose from 25% in 1990 to 37.96% in 2004. In 2004, professors, associate professors, instructors, junior teachers, and those holding no academic titles accounted for 9.02%, 28.93%, 33.59%, 21.47%, and 6.98% respectively of the total number of university teachers. This gave the university teaching staff a sound academic structure, with professors, associate professors, and instructors forming the mainstay.
To address the serious shortage of young academic leaders and core teachers, universities throughout the country have in recent years carried out a project to bring forth innovative talent of a high order and stepped up their support of outstanding young teachers, thereby
enabling large numbers of core teachers to come to the fore at a relatively younger age. During 1998–2004, the number of professors and associate professors in the thirty-five to fifty age group registered a net increase of 171,700, from 76,000 to 247,700. This group comprises 69.10% of the total number of university teachers who held senior academic titles; this is an increase of 26 percentage points over 1998's proportion. Of the total number of university teachers in the country, they form 26.23%, or an increase of 11.2 percentage points over the 1998 figure. These statistics indicate a marked increase in the number of young core teachers (Figure 2.6).
Teachers' improved income makes teaching an enviable profession
These days many universities are granting work-post allowances, which have raised teachers' incomes considerably. During 1998–2002, university teachers' salaries recorded an increased rate of 101%, which outstripped the 61% for workers and staff in state-owned sectors by 40 percentage points. The average university teachers' salaries are among the highest of all professions and trades in China.
This improvement in income has turned teaching into a more attractive job, intensified the competition for teaching positions in universities, and drawn large numbers of outstanding talent to the ranks of university teachers. In 2004, the total number of university teachers in China increased by 173,100; the net increase was 130,100 as 43,000 quit teaching that year. A survey of university graduates' job preferences indicates a striking increase in the percentage of masters and doctors who choose to stay as university teachers upon graduation.
Developing a teachers' appointment system
With the enactment of the Teachers' Law in 1993 and the Higher Education Law in 1998, universities have institutionalized their personnel systems within the framework of state law. According to provisions in the Teachers' Law, the Higher Education Law and related legislation, the teachers' appointment system comprises the following elements.
Teachers' credentials system
This is a vocational permit system for aspiring university teachers. A Chinese citizen who wants to teach college in China is obliged to obtain the required credentials according to law. Accreditation of university teachers is under the authority of education administrative departments of provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the leadership of the central government, or the universities entrusted by them.
Teaching posts system
Those who teach college in China are under an academic and technical title system that classifies them as teaching assistants, instructors, associate professors, and professors according to their teaching and research tasks. The Higher Education Law stipulates that a college teacher must have a college teacher's credentials, a systematic command of basic theories in a particular field of study, a teaching and research ability commensurate with a teaching position, and the experience of teaching a course or courses for a prescribed number of teaching hours as appropriate to his or her position. The law allows universities to set qualification standards for teaching posts in light of actual conditions.
A person with certified credentials may be hired by a university according to the responsibilities, requirements, and term of office for the teaching position in question. The university president may sign an appointment contract with the person on the principle of equality and on a voluntary basis. According to the Provisional Regulations on University Teachers' Positions, universities are to set up teaching posts according to their teaching and research tasks, and the posts fall into four categories: teaching assistant, instructor, associate professor, and professor.
At the core of the administration of teachers is a teaching posts system. In the past, people tended to equate a teaching post with a teacher's personal identity, a misunderstanding that robbed the term of its true meaning, making people reluctant to settle for lower teaching posts, and dampening teachers' motivation to improve themselves. In 1986, some universities began to develop a teaching posts system and gradually heightened the vocational sense of the teaching post. In the spirit of “survival of the fittest” and “a fair day's pay for a fair day's work,” they also devised mechanisms to encourage competition and free flow of talent. These practices have become the mainstream of reform, and most universities have adopted the same teaching posts system.
Teachers' appointment system
The teachers' appointment system is being introduced on the principle of “setting up teaching posts according to needs and opening them to public bidding and fair competition, appointing only those who have proved that they are the best through scientific evaluation, and abiding them by contracts.” In introducing this system, due attention is paid to the following fields:
First, installing an all-round public bidding system.
Second, bringing in an appointment system that integrates evaluation with appointment.
Third, revamping relevant organizational and employment systems, decentralizing power over teachers' appointment and promotion to the college or department level, and giving full scope to the Professors Council's collective decision-making role.
Fourth, being strict with the standards for the appointment of teachers.
Fifth, standardizing the appointment contracts and post-appointment administration and adopting highly flexible and adaptable forms of appointment.
Sixth, taking advantage of the leverage of the government policy for teachers' appointments to develop academic teams.
Seventh, forming a sound dispute-mediating body so that instead of relying on administrative departments, all personnel disputes involving teachers can be handled through consultation, conciliation, mediation, or lawsuits on the basis of their appointment contracts.
Eighth, combining the introduction of the teachers' appointment system with the reform of the systems for appointment of technical and administrative personnel in accordance with an overall plan.
Teachers' testing and evaluation system
University teachers' work ethics, academic levels, and work performances are subject to testing and evaluation. The testing and evaluation results are used to support decisions on appointments, dismissals, promotions, awards, and penalties.
Sensible testing and evaluation are not only the basis for the administration of teachers but also the conditions for improving administration itself, because through testing and evaluation, universities can gather information and examine the achievements and mistakes concerning administrative work.
Testing generally covers three aspects:
First, moral integrity. That is, political awareness and work ethics and attitude.
Second, professional level. That is, teaching and research levels, work ability, and innovative spirit.
Third, work performance. As is shown in a teacher's work results and contributions.
Testing takes three main forms:
First, on-the-job tests. A teacher applying for a teaching post is obliged to submit, for examination and appraisal, a comprehensive summary of his work ethics and personal character, and what progress and achievements he has made in recent years, and only after the summary has passed the evaluation can he resume his work post.
Second, year-end tests, or tests for the duration of a post. Most universities give routine year-end tests as to teachers' ethics, abilities, diligence, and achievements, and only those with passing scores can resume their posts.
Third, single-item test. Many universities evaluate the performances of their teachers by testing them on such items as classroom teaching results, scores from promotion tests, and the volume of work done.
Chinese universities carry out a graded or composite salary system for teachers.
Teachers' continuing education
The training of teachers is a major task for university administration. Every university in this country pays due attention to the continuing education of their teachers.
Training is extended mainly in four ways: on-the-job training, full-time study, fieldwork, and academic exchanges. It takes the following forms:
First, pre-work training, which acquaints novices with the job, responsibilities, and the rudiments of the teaching profession.
Second, refresher classes designed to help those who will start teaching a new course update themselves on the course and improve their ability to teach it.
Third, auditing graduate courses designed to help teaching assistants overcome problems arising from their low academic and work credentials and improve their knowledge structure.
Fourth, symposiums, study groups, and seminars, which are ideal for middle-aged teachers who want to refresh and expand their knowledge and exchange teaching experience with their counterparts.
Fifth, continuing education classes and topical seminars designed to train core teachers and academic leaders.
Sixth, fieldwork which enables young teachers to know society better and gain more practical experience.
Seventh, sending teachers abroad to pursue graduate courses in foreign universities, to engage in post-doctoral studies, as visiting scholars, on fact-finding or lecture tours, or for international academic meetings.
China will continue to build the lifelong learning system to help university teachers improve themselves for more demanding teaching and research posts.
Cultivating academic leaders and developing teams of innovative talent
The government values the building of a vast contingent of university teachers, high-level teams of creative talent in particular. In the late 1980s, the government carried out a series of programs to attract and cultivate top-notch professionals and core university teachers. The Action Plan for Rejuvenating Education for the 21st Century features a series of plans for bringing forth outstanding talent. These include the Changjiang Scholars Award Program, the Award for Outstanding Young University Teachers, the Cross-the-Century Plan for Training Outstanding Talent and the Facilitation Plan for Excellent Young Teachers.
Changjiang Scholars Award Program
The top-level Changjiang Scholars Award Program was set up in 1998 jointly by the government and the Li Ka Shing Foundation to raise funds for training top-notch talent. Acting on the Procedural Provisions for the Appointment of Guest Professors in Higher Education Institutions, the government has set up 500 to 1,000 positions for guest professors in universities around the country and clarified the responsibilities and credentials for those wanting to fill these positions. The universities designated to set up these positions are authorized to fill these positions by openly inviting applications from scholars and experts (both middle-aged and young) who are well-accomplished and have the potential and abilities to reach international standards in their respective academic fields or keep their fields of study in the front ranks of the world. After passing examinations by a panel of experts, successful candidates are appointed as guest professors for a term of five years and accorded preferential treatment—an annual award of 100,000 yuan over and above a state-mandated salary, insurance, and welfare benefits. In 2000, the Ministry of Education laid aside a special fund with which each Changjiang Scholar can hire five core teachers to engage in frontier research or hi-tech development. This program represents a pioneering effort to explore how universities should develop their own innovative teams.
The Changjiang Scholars Award Program enables China to pool an impressive number of outstanding talent and provide a great impetus for training academic leaders in universities. By 2003, a total of 537 guest professors and chair professors averaging forty-one years of age had been appointed in seventy-four universities, and these included sixty-six foreign citizens. Most Changjiang Scholars are undertaking major national research projects, and some have made major achievements in pivotal academic fields. During 1999–2003, twelve Changjiang Scholars were appointed academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. So far, twenty-five of them have become chief scientists for the National Program on Key Basic Research Projects (Program 973), and thirty-four have been honored as national-class experts for Program 863, which is part of the Tenth Five-Year Plan.
Award for Outstanding Young University Teachers and Cross-the-Century Plan for Training Outstanding Talent
The Award for Outstanding Young University Teachers and the Cross-the-Century Plan for Training Outstanding Talent are second-level programs designed to cultivate large numbers of academic leaders with solid academic grounding, extraordinary creativity, and vast potential.
The Award for Outstanding Young University Teachers, aimed at grooming academic leaders by relying on domestic resources, is extended to 100 people every year, and the highest award for a recipient may reach as much as 500,000 yuan in total for a term of five years. Since 1999, the award has dispensed 200 million yuan among 429 teachers (average age of 38) from 132 universities.
The major goal of the Cross-the-Century Plan for Training Outstanding Talent is to bring forth academic leaders with original innovative flair and character for scientific research. Since it was unveiled in 1993, the plan has spent 150 million yuan in support of 922 outstanding young teachers, and many of them have become leaders or chief scientists for major or key national research projects.
Facilitation Plan for Excellent Young Teachers and Facilitation Plan for Core University Teachers
Both the Facilitation Plan for Excellent Young Teachers and the Facilitation Plan for Core University Teachers are third-level programs for attracting and training core young teachers and keeping them in their teaching and research jobs in universities. The Facilitation Plan for Excellent Young Teachers has yielded good results in the fifteen years since it was established in 1987 by the Ministry of Education to support young college teachers in basic research work or forward-looking research in new sciences or inter-disciplinary fields. By 2002, this plan had granted 129 million yuan to 2,019 young university teachers; 90% of them had come up with outstanding research and teaching achievements, and over 70% of them had become academic leaders in universities. The other third-level aid programs launched by the Ministry of Education—the Facilitation Plan for Core University Teachers and the Start-up Research Fund for Students Returning from Abroad—had spent a total sum of 500 million yuan to assist 15,000 people, thereby contributing positively to cultivating outstanding young university teachers and keeping them in their jobs.
These programs have played an obvious pace-setting role in supporting exceptional talent. Many local governments and universities are following suit, establishing their own programs and stepping up their own efforts to bring in top-notch specialists and train outstanding young scholars. Some provinces have set up a professors' appointment system and have increased their support of local universities to attract and train top-notch specialists and core teachers.
ON-CAMPUS LOGISTICS SERVICES
A major aspect of university work, logistics services provide the foundation for higher education development as a whole. China is running one of the world's largest higher education systems, but for a long time on-campus logistics services were the bottleneck in the development of universities. The government's guiding principle in revamping logistics services is to outsource them and transfer university administration of such services to business management. The effort to outsource university logistics services has paid off. It has not only solved the students' food and boarding problems but has also markedly improved service quality and the students' diet and living conditions at a time when consecutive years of enrollment expansion have greatly increased the number of students while increases in funding have failed to keep pace. The large-scale construction of basic facilities and rapid growth in logistics services resulting from the outsourcing efforts have also furnished new jobs, drawn investment from private sectors, and helped ease the strain on employment and develop local economies.
Causes and guiding principle for the reform of university logistics services
During the many years of central planning, university logistics services in China had been sustained with government money. Every university had an internal department working exclusively to provide day-today services for teaching and research, and teachers and students. Boarding was free for students, and housing for faculty and staff was distributed as a welfare benefit. One fifth of those working in universities were in logistics services, about one half of every university campus was occupied by houses and dormitories, cafeterias, and other service outlets.
With higher education growing and a market economic system burgeoning, the drawbacks of this type of logistics services were increasingly felt. The swelling demand for university logistics services became too much for the government to handle as the sole provider of financial support. University leaders had their hands full just coping with logistics services, so that they had hardly enough time and energy to concentrate on teaching and research. The administrative operation of logistics services was becoming so costly and unwieldy that it posed a hindrance to the development of universities and the growth of higher education as a whole.
The situation in which “every school runs its own logistics, and every university's logistics department functions like a society in its own right” left an abundance of non-governmental resources idle. Many of the things that should have been done by society at large were handled by the government and universities exclusively. Many campuses were space-poor, and much of that space was taken up with teachers' and students' dormitories and other everyday facilities. This forced many universities to purchase land and seek development at a high cost, increasing the financial burden on them and the government. Because of its monopolistic nature, poor service and low efficiency, university logistics provision was often the object of teachers' and students' biggest scorn and a destabilizing factor in campus life. University leaders wasted a lot of energy on it.
To reform university logistics services by outsourcing is, in essence, to bring about a major shift in how China's universities are run. The old system should be scrapped and replaced by new administrative mechanisms and a new operating system. The workers and staff should compete for work posts rather than wait for someone to assign work to them. All the resources on campus should be pooled and replenished by converting non-business assets into business assets.
In the beginning, the emphasis in the reform was on dividing every university's logistics department into two. One half became a service business to be won through public bidding and run according to contract, with rights, responsibilities, and obligations of both client and supplier clearly defined in a contract, and with service quality and efficiency linked to economic reward. The other half of it served as the client representative, working on behalf of the university to monitor the quality, efficiency, and price of these services. These people remained on the university payroll, but their functions were drastically changed and their numbers reduced, as the majority of them joined the service staff.
After the reform, universities throughout the country have detached logistics services from their administrative system. On this basis, logistics service companies have been established to run personnel affairs, finance, daily operation and management, and award and incentive plans according to the requirements of the modern enterprise system. Prior to the reform, higher education was seriously hampered by the failure to handle teachers' and students' boarding and catering problems. After the reform, the building of university facilities for logistics services registered historic development, thanks to well-conceived government planning, preferential state policies, and utilization of non-governmental resources. Construction of university logistics facilities and expansion of university campuses have charted a new trail to enlist extensive public support and diversify sources of investment under government guidance.
The practice of outsourcing university logistics services
Reform of university logistics services is one of the most rewarding efforts in higher education reform in recent years. No longer a part of university administration, these services have become businesses driven by an open market and fair competition. Such a change has motivated the workers and staff, increased their productivity, and optimized the allocation of logistics resources.
Outsiders have arrived to run university logistics services, giving rise to a logistics service market where orderly and fair competition is the rule. Four logistics companies have gained a foothold in Fudan University, for instance, accounting for 55% and 70% respectively of the business volume in on-campus catering service and real estate management. Some small universities have scrapped their logistics service departments and opened the field entirely to outsiders. Choosing not to run their own logistics services, many newly established universities and campuses have brought in joint-stock logistics service companies that are registered according to the modern enterprise system, but they have also shaped rules and regulations and undertaken measures to supervise on-campus logistics services.
China is seeing progress in franchising out university logistics services, thanks to the in-depth progress of reform and the introduction of market mechanisms. In many places, universities work together in purchasing food, student dormitory furniture, bedding, and other goods in bulk. The Shanghai University Logistics Center, for instance, purchases more than 100 million yuan worth of staple and non-staple food for member universities on an annual basis, accounting for over 35% of the total food consumption of all universities in Shanghai. The Shaanxi University Logistics Center supplies more than 1,000 items to student cafeterias and dormitories of all the regular universities and some private colleges in Shaanxi Province. A university logistics service company in Shanghai is running on-campus restaurant and supermarket chains, and its chain of 102 supermarkets registers an annual business turnover of 150 million yuan. In Beijing, Tianjin, and Heilongjiang, university logistics service companies have set up joint-stock heating companies to serve local universities.
Statistics, though incomplete, indicate that during 1999–2003, the country built 54 million square meters of university dormitories and 7.4 million square meters of on-campus cafeterias, doubling the total built in the fifty years prior to 1999.
Franchised university logistics services have freed higher education development from a serious impediment resulting from the past practice of relying solely on government-run logistics services, and given full scope to the role of the market in the allocation of university logistics resources. The reform has also rid universities of a heavy burden, giving them a free hand to go bigger and do better, and ensured the smooth implementation of the national plan to expand college enrollment all over the country.