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Chinese University Administrations: Chinese Characteristics or Global Influence?

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Abstract

In this article, we examine the units of the central administrations of Chinese universities to ascertain to what extent they reflect Chinese structural and cultural characteristics or global templates, seen through certain administrative units in the US model of excellence for universities. We describe and analyze the main features of the Chinese university administrations and compare our case with similar US studies. The data from the websites of 174 universities reveal that the main structures of Chinese university administrations are highly standardized and that apart from some notable differences across differently ranked universities they are homogeneous. We also find that Chinese universities are structurally distinct from their US counterparts in most respects, but there are also some similarities. Most universities have set up development offices similar to the US ones, but few have diversity or legal offices. These findings suggest that Chinese universities diverge strategically from global trends but there is some selective convergence.

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Acknowledgement

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Comparative Sociology Workshop, Stanford University, April 8, 2019. The authors would like to thank the participants for helpful comments. They would also like to thank Mengxing Wang for excellent research assistance in data collection and coding. We also thank comments and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers and the editor. Financial support is from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Nos.: 71774164, 1633004).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Tom Christensen

  2. School of Public Administration and Policy, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Tom Christensen & Liang Ma

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  1. Tom Christensen
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  2. Liang Ma
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Correspondence to Tom Christensen.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table A1 University administrative units allocated across single functions.
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Table A2 Descriptive statistics of key administrative units among the US universities.
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Table A3 Descriptive statistics of key administrative units in the Chinese universities.
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Christensen, T., Ma, L. Chinese University Administrations: Chinese Characteristics or Global Influence?. High Educ Policy 35, 255–276 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-020-00208-8

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