Abstract
Expansion of higher education has been perceived as the major tool through which China can raise its international competitiveness. To raise educational quality, the Ministry of Education initiated a new employment reform and a Teaching Quality Assessment for Undergraduate Programs. In this research, we employed a qualitative method to investigate the changing work life of academics in two universities in the Chinese Mainland: University A, a regional university, and University B, a renowned university. The experiences of the two universities reflect that the reform measures have led to a distortion of academic culture. Besides competing for national research projects, academics at the renowned university conducted research for the governmental sector, while academics in the regional university worked with the market. The government continually used various measures to maintain control over academic work. Most academics felt forced to conform to the reform measures. Within the two sample universities, there were indigenous interpretations of the relationship among the state, the market and academics.
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Lai, M. The changing work life of academics: a comparative study of a renowned and a regional university in the Chinese Mainland. Aust. Educ. Res. 40, 27–45 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-012-0068-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13384-012-0068-6