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Scholarship on university autonomy in China's higher education system in the past three decades has focused on the macro-relationship between the party-state and university leadership. This paper focuses instead on university-level management practices and college-level academic autonomy. Drawing on the discourse of "administerization" and "de-administerization" within Chinese academia, we demonstrate how the dual administration system and outdated management practices common in the higher education system limit academic quality and educational autonomy at the college level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is one of a series of papers generated from the Curriculum Reform study in Hong Kong with the purpose of understanding the impact of government’s role in the change process of the reform. This paper specifically examines the 17 government initiatives in the Curriculum Reform in terms of their adoption percentages of schools from before 2000 to 2006–7. These initiatives can be regarded as ‘soft’ measures of the Government, supplementing the hard policies on the Curriculum Reform. The adoption of these initiatives in schools reflects the extent of implementation of reform items and therefore should be crucial to the success of the Curriculum Reform. The study illustrates the impact of the government on the phase of adoption in the change process. The findings suggested that whereas the government initially played an important role in adoption of these initiatives it was not able to raise the adoption percentages further towards the end of the study. Other features of adoption and their impacts on policy and change are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The successful implementation of the most stringent environmental protection institution is crucial for China to prevent and control increasingly serious environmental issues. However, the current environmental protection institutional system (EPIS) is constrained by various barriers. This paper aims to construct a path analysis model to reveal the methods and timing to best select and overcome different EPIS barriers systematically, especially determining at which stage prioritizing corresponding barriers may lead to the optimal improvement of EPIS's performance. The barriers categorized in the environmental legal, economic, administrative and public participation institutional subsystems are identified by combining an empirical survey and literature review. A novel path analysis model based on rough DEAMTEL-NK approach is proposed in which the interaction relationship and intensity between barriers are used to construct a heuristic path searching algorithm; the optimal path for overcoming barriers in China's EPIS is determined by simulating the climbing optimization process of the system on the fitness landscape. The path results show that the defective integration among legislation, plans, and policies and the inadequate environmental economic policy assessment mechanism are the two key barriers that should be prioritized. This study provides a strategic tool or remedial measure for management to better optimize the implementation of the most stringent environmental protection institution and achieve environmental sustainability from the novel perspective of prioritizing approaches to overcoming barriers. • The path for overcoming barriers influences the optimization of EPIS performance. • The 16 main barriers in China's EPIS are identified. • The causal relationships between barriers are revealed. • A rough DEMATEL-NK model is proposed to simulate the path of overcoming barriers. • Defective integration among legislation, plans, and policies should be prioritized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]