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Since the twenty-first century, universities in many countries, including China, have introduced tenure-track employment to attract outstanding faculty. Through a survey of 1,099 faculty members from 21 high-level research universities in China, this study used a quasi-experimental method to examine the effect of the tenure track on faculty members' academic performance. The results suggest that the implementation of the tenure track led to an increase in the number of academic publications, but a decrease in the number of high-quality academic articles. The study further analyzed the underlying mechanisms by which the tenure track affected faculty members' academic performance, and found that introducing the tenure track increased cross-institutional collaboration, thereby promoting academic productivity. However, it resulted in a reduction in research collaboration within the institution, which hindered academic publication in high-impact journals. In terms of disciplinary heterogeneity, this study shows that the negative effect of the tenure track on publication quality was more significant in science than in engineering. Based on the research results above, this paper proposed several suggestions for improving the tenure system to ensure research excellence.

Although assessment and improvement of student performance is the focus of much research around the world, investigation of this topic is rare in Chinese higher education. The present study is the first to explore the relationship between classroom assessment and student learning in Chinese higher education institutions based on the data from Chinese College Student Survey (CCSS) 2011. First, the study describes how undergraduates experience and evaluate assessment carried out at the curriculum level. Second, the study investigates whether a structural model of classroom assessment on student learning represents the national data of CCSS. Third, the study explores the relationship between classroom assessment and undergraduates' learning process and outcome. The results suggest that the assessment characterized by communication and conversation between academic staff/faculty and students has larger effect on student learning than the assessment without communication and conversation. The major messages for Chinese higher education are the importance of making examinations part of rather than the end of learning, the importance of integrating paper/report writing into learning, and the importance of providing meaningful and timely feedback to students about their assessment tasks. Perhaps most importantly overall is the need for better communication between faculty and students.

Since the twenty-first century, universities in many countries, including China, have introduced tenure-track employment to attract outstanding faculty. Through a survey of 1099 faculty members from 21 high-level research universities in China, this study used a quasi-experimental method to examine the effect of the tenure track on faculty members' academic performance. The results suggest that the implementation of the tenure track led to an increase in the number of academic publications, but a decrease in the number of high-quality academic articles. The study further analyzed the underlying mechanisms by which the tenure track affected faculty members' academic performance, and found that introducing the tenure track increased cross-institutional collaboration, thereby promoting academic productivity. However, it resulted in a reduction in research collaboration within the institution, which hindered academic publication in high-impact journals. In terms of disciplinary heterogeneity, this study shows that the negative effect of the tenure track on publication quality was more significant in science than in engineering. Based on the research results above, this paper proposed several suggestions for improving the tenure system to ensure research excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publication pressure is perceived to be filtering down into doctoral education worldwide. We explore the causes and effects of the perceived centrality of publishing among doctoral students, emphasising the impact of publication pressure on students' identity trajectories. We draw on a qualitative analysis of 90 mainland Chinese doctoral students at universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. We find that the credentialisation of publications in the increasingly competitive and publication-dominant academic labour market results in publishing-centred doctoral journeys. Our key finding is that the centrality of publishing affects every aspect of identity trajectory development: it causes doctoral students to commodify knowledge production, devalues coursework, conference participation, and teaching assistantships, encourages students to regard their supervisors as publishing facilitators and their peers as rivals rather than collaborators, and marginalises engagement with external stakeholders. In discussing these dimensions, we emphasise the need for a more comprehensive evaluation of candidates' abilities and honours in academic recruitment and call for policies to curtail the overemphasis on research output in academic evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International doctoral students are an influential group in knowledge creation and cross-national engagement. Existing studies have mainly focused on this cohort's learning and research experiences in developed countries. However, relatively few studies have explored these students' experiences in non-traditional learning destinations. Drawing upon Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital and habitus, and the notion of global-national-local imbrications, this study explores international doctoral students' academic learning experiences in what can be understood as the Chinese academic sub-field. By interviewing 35 international doctoral students in a Chinese university, findings suggest that these students encountered certainty and uncertainty initially before some were able to navigate the Chinese academic sub-field more strategically. As a result, students progressively developed an in-between cosmopolitan habitus; this included as a result of exposure to both Chinese and international academic logics through learning with Chinese academic returnees. Students' experiences suggest that the Chinese academic sub-field can be understood as something of an in-between field that imbricates the global, national, and local within higher education contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'publish or perish' system has been widespread in the global higher education sector to incentivize academic performance. How the system affects academics in non-western countries has received scant attention. This research studies the relationship between different types of employment contracts, work pressure and the childbearing decisions of women academics in China. The data were collected in 2019 through a survey of 453 women academics working in universities in China. The research establishes a significant correlation between the types of contracts and the reproductive practices of women academics of childbearing age. In order to obtain more detailed information on the underlying consequences of the new system and the respondents' coping strategies, interviews were conducted with women academics across different stages of their career. We found that the respondents who had not signed a fixed-term contract on average had higher reproductive intentions than those who had signed the contract. They have adapted their reproductive behaviour according to work pressure. The universities adopting such an evaluation system need to adjust the contract terms to allow women academics to be able to balance work and life. The findings contribute to the understanding of the impact of this global trend. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on an interview study investigating the experiences of academic acculturation (a process of mutual influence and enrichment with regard to academic practice) of a group of Chinese academic staff in two research-intensive UK universities. Following a systematic content-based analysis, three major themes emerged as salient, namely: (1) different perceptions of academic practice in the UK and China, (2) the importance of disciplinary identity, and (3) the role of English and original cultural affiliations in the process of academic acculturation. The study shows that, while these academic staff took active initiatives to orient themselves towards UK academic culture, they did not perceive that culture to have changed much through their acculturation. The study also reveals that the cultural affiliation of the academic staff, perceived norms in the new academic culture, and relative proficiency in English language all have an impact on the process of academic acculturation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]