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Policy-making on the improvement ofuniversity personnel in China under thenational reform environmentXiaonan Cao aa State Education Commission , BeijingPublished online: 05 Aug 2006.

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Studies in Higher Education Volume 16, No. 2, 1991 103

Policy-making on the Improvement of University Personnel in China under the National Reform Environment

XIAONAN CAO State Education Commission, Beijing

ABSTRACT The role of university personnel management in higher education has been re- examined at all levels in both China and the West during the past ten years. This role will become even more important over the next decade of low-development in higher education in China. But, what kinds of policy does China have regarding the management of university personnel? How have these policies contributed to the improvement of university personnel? Since the policies were made under special circumstances of reform in the country, do they leave problems for the future development of higher education? This article is intended to discuss these interesting issues and preference will of course be given to those policies which have predominated in the past ten years. In addition, for the better understanding of the following discussion and the special Chinese situation, 'higher education' refers to the regular one and "university personnel' refers to full-time staff, both administrative and academic, in all higher education institutions.

Background

With reform sweeping across the country, Chinese education has undergone remarkable changes in many ways. Higher education, in particular, has experienced the biggest expan- sion ever in the past decade. According to statistics released from the State Education Commission, the numbers of institutions, full-time students and academic staff have grown enormously (Fig. 1). The interesting trends have taken place not only in this sort of 'number game' but also in other aspects of institutional life such as teaching and research and management. The subject of Chinese education reforms has been widely discussed in many publications both inside and outside China (Lewin & Xu, 1989). Here, I am going to pick out some changes in the field of higher education which have had the greatest influence on policy-making towards the improvement of university personnel.

(1) The postgraduate education system has developed rapidly since the congress passed an Act of Academic Degrees Award in the People's Republic of China in 1980.

(2) Greater autonomy has been given to institutions, since the government reform bill on education was published in 1985.

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(3) The personnel system has been reformed and a new type of university leadership has been established.

(4) In teaching, the credit-system has been widely introduced and, in research, the contract- system has been employed.

(5) The student admission system and the employment system of graduates have been changed slightly since 1986.

(6) The combination of teaching and research has been re-stressed and the co-operation between institutions and enterprises has been encouraged in order to help economic development.

One can easily imagine how these changes created new pressures for, and demanded greater ability of, the university staff. On the whole, the policy for university personnel management has been in line with the overall policy employed by the government for all professions during the past ten years. Furthermore, it has been progressing along the path of develop- ment-adjustment-development again-adjustment again. The total number of university staff has increased by some 92%, but the proportion of academic staff has been maintained at about 40%. The current ratio of academics to administrators is 2.2:1 (CESYB, 1988). Hence, it is understandable that policy-making for university personnel has been focused on academic staff.

A New Type of University Leadership

The centre of the reform of personnel management in China is to abolish the tradition of 'one system for all' and establish a series of appropriate systems for each profession, in order to meet the demand to diversify economic development. What is the system planned for the academic profession? Information on this subject was not released until the Government reform bill on education was published. The bill confirmed that institutions of higher education should gradually start to practise the President Responsibility System in their management and establish a new appointment system for their academic staff (CPC, 1985). The latter will be discussed later, and the former is a question of university leadership which, in general, is not a question concerned with personnel. But, for a centralised system, it has special significance for the restructuring of staff in Chinese higher education institutions.

The President Responsibility System is actually not a new managerial model for university leadership in China. It existed in the early years after the founding of the People's Republic. Then, with the up-and-down political movement in the country, the university leadership became more and more revolutionised, from the responsibility system of the School Affairs Committee under the leadership of the School CCP (the Chinese Communst Party) Committee in the 1950s and early 1960% to the Revoluton Committee during the Cultural Revolution (Min, 1987). This politically-dominated administrative system de- stroyed the contingent of institutional administrators, and those senior administrative posts were occupied by war-surviving cadres, military personnel, representatives of workers and farmers, red guards and some experts. They were classified as 'state cadres' and treated like other state-cadres, too. So it had to be changed when the Cultural Revolution ended and normal campus life returned. But the change would not have gone far enough, if political reform had not taken place in the country.

The political reform called for the separation of roles between the party and administra- tion, and for that to happen, leadership at all levels should be in the hands of persons who are revolutionary, young, knowledgeable and specialised (Den, 1980). The Party handed

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University Personnel in China 105

over the administrative power to university presidents though it was still kept under the supervision of the CCP; these four requirements became the basic requirement for the appointment of senior administrators in all institutions of higher learning. Obviously, the new leadership has its own characteristics. One is that a president can appoint senior administrators directly now, and the other is the office-term system which was introduced. However, for a number of reasons, only about one-fifth of all institutions in the country have actually practised this new system. In 1986, the State Education Commission (SEDC) set up Regulations on the Appointment of Administrators in Higher Education Institutions which clarified further the duties, appointment procedure, office term and so on of institutional administrators at all levels. For instance, the office-term is four years for presidents and two years for heads of departments (CEYB, 1985-86). These policies have changed not only the style of the university leadership but also the structure of administra- tive staff in the whole system.

i No. of institutions

I I 0all 85.6

Student enrolment No. of faculty ( × 10,000) (× 10,000)

FIG. 1. A comparison between the numbers of institutions, students enrolling and faculty in Chinese higher education: ( [ ] ) t978; ( [ ] ) 1988 (source: AECS, 1949-83; CESYB, 1988).

So far, there are no detailed statistics available for administrative staff in institutions of higher learning as a whole. But a survey taken in Sichuan province in southwest China in 1987 may provide some information on the current structure of institutional administrators. By the end of 1987, there were 15,000 administrators distributed in 59 institutions of higher learning in that province; 80% of them had received some level of higher education and 15% of them were from teaching posts; 22% of administrators at institutional and departmental levels were under the age of 45; only 8.5% of all administrators had received some professional training (Wang et al., 1988). The results of this survey show certain typical trends for the whole country. Although the structure for institutional administrators has been improved in the past 10 years, some fundamental problems are still unsolved. For instance, most administrators have a lack of managerial knowledge and administrative skills, and many presidents are 'scholar-type' rather than 'manager-type'. These factors inevitably produce low efficiency, which is proved in practice. Also, the office-term system causes presidents and heads of departments not to be as responsible as they might, and to be 'short- sighted' in matters of institutional management.

The Pattern of Staffing

In the centralised Chinese system, there has been, surprisingly, no clear and specific policy on the issue of staffing in higher education institutions as a whole, released from the Government. This is different from the case in Britain, where the Government had the 'new blood scheme' and the 'early retirement scheme' in the early 1980s (UGC, 1984; Lockwood & Davis, 1985) though China was facing similar problems of faculty structure as Britain, and at the same time as Britain. However, this does not mean that the Government has

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relinquished overall control of the issue. The control has been maintained by what is called an 'administrative approach', but has not worked properly. In the past decade, the 'recruiting young and excellent graduates' theme has naturally become the indicator for staffing in all institutions of higher learning in China. Fig. 2 shows the increasing rate in the number of university faculty in the country at the time. The average is 6.7%; about 14,000 recruits are taken into the system annually.

t~ C£

15

10

t I I I I I I t I t 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988

Year

FIG. 2. The curve of the annually increasing rate of the number of university faculty in China, 1978-88 (source: AECS, 1949-83, 1980-85; CESYB, 1986, 1987, 1988).

There are three peaks on the curve in Fig. 2, which represent three trends of university staffing in China in the past ten years. What the Cultural Revolution left to the contingent of university faculty was the loss of 1,218 professors--and the whole generation (Shi, 1985). Teachers were badly needed by every institution of higher learning in the country, when the normal higher education system was recovered in 1977. With the spread of the nationwide political campaign of 'correcting mistakes', thousands of former university teachers who were sent to 'grassroots' for 're-education' were able to return to the campuses. This fact, together with the recruitment of some relatively qualified personnel from other professions, and new graduates, caused the first expansion in the number of university faculty in 1979. That is the first peak on the curve. Needless to say, the staffing issue in higher education was only a quantitative one and neither the government nor the institutions themselves cared much about the qualification of recruits. The inadaptability of these recruits soon became apparent in terms of age profile and depth of knowledge. The first group of students to graduate after the Cultural Revolution was thought to have received a standard level higher education. When they came out in 1982, every institution recruited as many of its own excellent graduates as possible, without considering the structural health of the contingent. Within just two years, more than 60,000 new graduates had been taken into the profession (CEYB, 1986-87). This causes the second peak on the curve. Unfortunately, the new blood did not change the age profile of the faculty very much, in spite of their vitality. In 1983, the average age of professors, associate professors and lecturers in all higher education institu- tions in China was 68, 56 and 48 respectively (Shi, 1985). The issue of intellectual health was ignored by most institutions. The 'inbreeding' problem was very serious and some old departments, for example, had four generations 'under the same roof. Furthermore, such a large group of recruits formed a 'platform' in terms of faculty age profile, which would have problems for their promotion, further training and even retirement in some years' time. In fact, this kind of pressure has emerged on faculty training programmes. Meanwhile, many teaching staff who had been recruited during the Cultural Revolution were moved from teaching posts due to lack of qualifications. The exact figure is not available.

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University Personnel in China 107

Following the previous practice of university staffing, both the Government and higher education institutions in China recognised that it was inappropriate to recruit recent graduates to teach undergraduates, because the quality of teaching is unlikely to be improved and it creates a big burden on faculty training. Their interests were, therefore, shifted to the first large group of postgraduates who benefited from the 1980's government regulation on awarding academic degrees in higher education. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education and the State Planning Commission jointly published a report on accelerating the development of higher education in 1983 (PSD, 1985), which set up a target of increasing university freshmen and enrolment to 75% and 53% respectively by 1987. There was no choice given to institutions. They had to leave the long-term planning of staffing aside and to recruit more staff for coping with that 'blind' expansion scheme. Another 60,000 new graduates joined the teaching staff in the country in 1985-86. But, this time, more postgraduates were taken in. Hence, the third peak on the curve appears. This third expansion of university faculty carried forward those problems caused by its second expansion. These two 'platforms' will cause difficulties for the further development of faculty in higher education institutions in China. After all, the difficulties are due to the 'blind' development of higher education in the country in the past ten years.

Faculty Tra'ming--an important path towards improvement

Unlike those indistinct policies on university staffing, the Government has made a series of policies on faculty training in all institutions in the country, since the new era of higher education development began in 1978. The principle of faculty training is to improve the faculty's teaching ability, by improving subject-related knowledge in general, and to give training priority to young teachers, especially to those who could become the core figures in their subject areas in future. This principle is decided by the special situation in both Chinese higher education and its faculty structure but, fundamentally, is under Deng Xiaoping's indicator that education must 'face modernisation, face the world and face the future'.

In order to tackle the problem of the faculty's rusty knowledge and low qualification, the Ministry of Education revived the tradition of sending teachers to leading universities to receive training in 1980 and organised various subject-oriented training programmes to meet the needs of faculty at all levels in the following years. Moreover, the 'open door' policy offered a chance for Chinese university faculty to exchange with their foreign counterparts on academic ground, which required the extension of the faculty's knowledge of foreign languages and computer science. These two subjects had been dominant in the faculty's in- service training in all institutions and, later on, became the basic academic requirement for promotion in higher education (CEYB, 1949-81). This kind of 'making up missed subject knowledge' training task was completed at the end of 1983. Some 31,000 university teachers had been organised and received certain off-service training (Shi, 1985).

After so many graduates had been recruited directly into the academic profession in higher education, the Government launched another campaign to improve their knowledge from undergraduate level to postgraduate level, in order to guarantee teaching standards under the expansion of higher education in 1984. A diploma course programme was established to meet the new government requirement that university lecturers must have received postgraduate training. This policy stimulated young university assistants' enthusi- asm for participting in this kind of course. From 1984 to 1986, more than 160 higher education institutions were authorised to establish such courses; about 13,000 university assistants participated in 894 courses in the country as a whole (CEYB, 1985-86). However,

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the number of participants was just one-fifth of the total number of university assistants during the same period. The demand was unable to be satisfied fully due to lack of funds and strict entry-examinations. The project is being continued but the in-take is declining year by year now. It is not a problem of low demand because, in 1988, 47% of university faculty in the country was under the age of 35 and only 18% of them have received some sort of postgraduate training. The problem arises from the mis-matching between policies on faculty management; for instance, the low teacher-student allowances and the over-casual promotion process for lectureships at institutions (Cao, 1988; Wei, 1988). Currently, the lack of attraction in higher education institutions for the academic profession (for economic reasons) and the strong attraction for studying abroad are making the situation worse.

The reputation of a university is much dependent upon whether or not it has a group of scholars who play a leading role in the study of their subjects on both the domestic and the international scene. China badly needs this kind of personnel in her academic profession. Originally, training of this kind of academic personnel was expected by sending prospective candidates abroad. But the cost in both time and money forced the Government and institutions to be self-reliant. In addition, the aged faculty affected the development of higher education institutions in China, and old universities in particular. For example, the average age of supervisors for doctorate candidates at Tsinghua University (seen as China's MIT) was 71 in 1984. The damage to intellectual health was so serious that the State Education Commission had to set up a special training scheme called 'Internal Visiting Scholar Scheme' (distinct from overseas visiting scholars) to meet the institutional demand in 1985 (CEYB, 1985-86). In terms of academic reputation in subject areas, some well- conditioned universities have been invited to take part in this scheme. So far there have been about 600 participants from institutions at various levels in the country. It is still too early to comment on its efficiency. It depends to a greater extent on one to one tuition than other training programmes do.

The point that university teachers also need to receive education on a continuous basis seems to be readily accepted by the Chinese Government though it wonders how to achieve this goal within an imbalanced system in the light of centralisation. However, it has done a great thing, it has established a faculty training network for higher education institutions in the country as a whole. This is perhaps the only network of its kind in the world. The World Bank was attracted by the idea of establishing national training centres for the purpose of improving university faculty, and loaned US$ 4m from its second loan project to Chinese universities. The State Education Commission (SEDC) used the loan to establish two centres, one in Beijing and one in Wuhan, and later on established other sub-training centres (at both regional and provincial level). It formed the network together with previous training points (leading universities) (Fig. 3). In spite of its hierarchy, this network has successfully organised a variety of training programmes in co-operation with one another. To make such decisions on establishing a network for university faculty's continuing education is very much a Chinese characteristic. But the demand to decentralise the higher education system in China and to give greater autonomy to institutions will probably shake this well-designed network. Furthermore, the demand to transfer from faculty training to faculty development is gaining strength with the deepening reform in higher education. The question of how to make a quick response to this new challenge is an urgent problem facing the network.

The Recognition of Competition

People in China have long been used to the managerial system of what is known as the

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University Personnel in China 109

SEDC ®

Beijing Centre .j~'~ ~ ® . Wuhan Centre

Su b-training °e nt res J ~ l l ~ - ' ~ l ~ ' / / ~ " ~ I ~ Training points Institutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Institutions

FIG. 3. Sketch of the faculty training network in China.

'socialist iron rice-bowl' system which produces job-safety but low efficiency. The academic profession in higher education is certainly no exception. On the personnel management side, this is manifested mainly in that the promotion of staff is based upon seniority, regardless of actual performance, and that all posts are tenured. As far as academic business is concerned, it damaged the health of both the inteUectual and faculty structure. As with the contract- system for employment of staff in other professions in society, the Government set up a new faculty appointment system for all institutions of higher learning in the country at the beginning of 1986, which was intended to create a competitive environment for the better performance of the faculty.

The new system is the result of the reform of the old system in higher education institutions. Unclear responsibility, unlimited senior posts and tenure were the three main characteristics of the old system. It was originally estabished in the early 1960s and revived in 1978. By the end of 1983, about 176,000 university teachers (55% of the total at that time) had been promoted into grades above lecturer level (Shi, 1985) for the remedy of faculty losses during the Cultural Revolution. Additionally, the revival of the old system left many problems to the restructuring of the university faculty as a whole. For instance, age profile, and the fact that there was only a small proportion of senior posts. There were also other problems such as the egalitarianism and the wastage of staff. The new appointment system, however, took these problems into account and made some fundamental changes. The differences to institutions are: (1) filling all posts by real need and clarifying duties; (2) fixing the ratio of posts between academic ranks, based on the fixed quotas authorised by the government; (3) successful candidates are appointed by the President rather than the Personnel Department; and (4) the post-term is usually for 2-5 years and renewable (CEYB, 1985-86). More attractively, the new system is accompanied by a new salary system called 'Structural Salary System' which divides the salary into two parts--basic living which is the same for everyone, and a supplement, the amount of which is dependent on the level of one's responsibility.

The initial reaction of university faculty in the country towards the new system was cautious. On the one hand, they did not know if they would be able to beat the competition in future, and on the other hand, they were not sure what kind of benefits they could gain from it. Later on, their doubts were confirmed. Nevertheless, the new system has played a certain positive role in the restructuring of faculty in higher education institutions as a whole in the country (Fig. 4 and Table I). In the current structure, about 65% of professors and 60% of associate professors have been appointed under the new system (Tao, 1987). Moreover, many old professors have taken retirement, which contributed to the big drop of the professors' average age, but the average age of associate professors in the country dropped only a little. This means that a large group of middle-aged and young well-qualified teachers cannot come out yet because of the blockage by seniority. Simply, too many teachers who were recruited in the 1950s and 1960s are waiting for promotion despite little academic achievement. To some extent the situation is similar to the 'bottle-neck' problem of university lecturers in the UK during the 1980s (Williams & Blakstone, 1983).

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3.8%

45.4% ~ 37.4% ~ /

m Professor Associate

[ ] Lecturer [ ] Assistant

F]G. 4. The distribution of university faculty by academic rank in China: (a) 1983; (b) 1988 (source: AECS, 1949-83; CESYB, 1988).

The big disappointment to both institutions and their faculty is that, because of the national economic situation, the new salary system was not implemented with the new appointment system in higher education. University teachers, therefore, have to squeeze themselves on to the old 'single-plank bridge'--increasing payment only by gaining promo- tion. The significance of the new system has certainly diminished and problems are inevitable in practice. For instance, the over-emphasis on seniority, and lowering the requirements; the imbalance of senior-post distribution among institutions and so forth (Wang, 1989; Ding, 1989). Also, because the manpower market has not been established in China yet, institutions of higher education cannot ask society to 'digest' their unqualified personnel. Combined with the increase in institutional protectionism under the new post- limited system, the new system makes it more difficult for teachers to move from institution to institution within the higher education system. It seems that all problems stem from the limitation of senior-post numbers. This caused the debate on the system of what is called 'one track' or 'two tracks' for faculty promotion. The difference between the two is the difference between authorised numbers of senior-posts and the number of teachers who are qualified for filling them. Although the debate is still going on in the country, some institutions, mainly old universities, have been granted the autonomy to appoint senior staff based only on their own assessment without obtaining the approval from the government departments to which they are related. Some of them used this power to set up a special policy on promoting talented young teachers. For example, Peking University and Tsinghua University appointed a few professors and associate professors in their 20s and 30s. In general, neither the old nor the new system can solve in the near future the problem of the 'generation gap' in terms of both the intellectual health and the age profile of faculty in higher education institutions in China.

TABLE I. A comparison of the average age profile of university faculty in China in 1983 and 1988 (source: Shi, 1985; CESYB, 1988)

Average age of faculty(yea~)

Year Total Professor Associate Lecturer Assistant

1983 42 68 56 48 32 1988 39 59 53 42 28

Involving International Exchange

Having benefited from the 'open door' policy, Chinese higher education is no longer restricted to exchange with only socialist countries, but is now able to carry out exchange

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University Personnel in China 111

with industrialised countries in the West as well. The method of exchange has been diversified and priority has been given to train university faculty in the past decade. There is no specific policy on the exchange except that sending students to study abroad has been encouraged in accordance with the fluctuating political atmosphere in the country.

With the co-operation of international organisations such as the World Bank, UNESCO and foreign non-government organisations such as the British Council, the Fulbright Foundation, and foreign universities, more than 57,000 Chinese had been sent to study abroad and about 25,000 of them had completed their studies and returned home by the end of 1988 (CESYB, 1988). Of them, more than 6056 were university teachers. If short term academic visits are also included, therefore, more than 60,000 university teachers have taken part in foreign exchanges (Lin, 1989). Furthermore, 6000 university teachers have partici- pated in 2600 international conferences on various academic disciplines abroad, and China itself has organised some 150 academic conferences which have been attended by 3000 foreign scholars and 8000 Chinese university teachers (CEYB, 1988). In addition, there are about 1500 foreign teachers working in higher education institutions in China annually. Undoubtedly, all these international academic exchange activities have greatly contributed to the improvement of university faculty in China. It is specifically demonstrated in the following three aspects:

(1) Making contact with the frontiers of modern science and technology has helped middle- aged and young university teachers to obtain greater academic achievement which, in turn, has given them ideal conditions to be promoted quickly, e.g. Huazhong Science and Technology University has 269 returned teachers, 54 of them have been appointed as professors and 22 of them as associate professors (Zhang, Yi & Long, 1989). Such improvement makes the faculty structure more favourable.

(2) Returned teachers have brought not only the latest information on subject areas but also advanced western managerial experience. Many of them have taken senior administra- tive posts at both institutional and departmental levels, e.g. 60 out of 236 returned teachers had been appointed as Heads of Departments and Vice Presidents at Beijing Normal University by 1986 (BNU, 1988). This changes quite distinctly the style of institutional management.

(3) Because of the new ideas and more information they have on the subject areas, returned teachers have made many contributions to the improvement in teaching quality and, therefore, they have played a very important role in faculty training. Teachers from low-level institutions can learn about recent developments in their subject fields without going abroad. This advantage is helping the improvement of university faculty as a whole in the country.

With the rapid extension of international exchange, however, the common problem in developing countries has emerged in China as well. That is, the so-called 'brain drain'. So far, some 27,000 government-supported students, including university teachers, have re- mained abroad (CEYB, 1988). Moreover, when 'studying abroad' became the 1980s' fashion in China, the outflow of young teachers from higher education institutions got out of control. Some departments and teaching units have suffered badly from this--some have even lost all young teachers, a phenomenon which destroyed normal teaching order seriously. The reasons are quite complex and could be any one of political, working, living or even matrimonial. The home attraction of their country is not strong enough for them, though the government and institutions have made efforts to improve their working and living conditions. The seriousness of this brain-drain was not estimated by the government at the beginning. Now it has been recognised that returned students bring back not only academic

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prosperity, but also some other western ideas which had not been anticipated. It is a controversial issue of how to balance the advantages against the disadvantage of the 'brain- drain' phenomenon in sending students to study abroad. After all, it is a symbol of the 'open door' policy.

Problems Related to Policy-making in the Field

Looking back on the 10-year practice of improving university personnel in China, there are six problems related to policy-making in the area in terms of its long-term development:

(1) The separation of policy-making and planning. It is not surprising that there is no substantial strategic planning of the development of university personnel in Chinese higher education institutions, even though it is a centralised system. Thus, the development has to face inevitable setbacks. For instance~ the blind increasing of faculty numbers in the past decade does not improve the faculty:student ratio very much (just from 1:4.2 in 1978 to 1:5.8 in 1988); the overstaffing will cause many structural problems in the coming decade of slowing down the development of higher education in the country. It would be helpful if the Government had some sort of scrutinised 'White Paper' on higher education in the country.

(2) Short-term interests have dominated in institutional decision-making. The policy of the office-term system does not work as it was expected. Four years for Presidents and two years for Heads of Departments make most of them become 'short-sighted' decision makers on institutional management, e.g. ignoring the urgent needs for staff training and lowering the requirements for staff promotion. Sympathetically speaking, they face so many campus problems. The problem is that there is no other type of governing board which can supervise them, such as the university senate.

(3) Mis-matching between related policies. This is the reason for inter-policy wastage and causes low efficiency. One of the reasons for the reduced significance of the new faculty appointment system, as the previous discussion has shown~ is that it was not accompanied by a substantial assessment policy. Only the workload calculation was practised~ which required an annual 1680 working hours in total for every teacher (CEYB, 1949-81). The fulfilment of duties was not assessed, though there was a regulation governing this. The new system, as staff joked, is a 'phoney appointment system'.

(4) Bad timing of policy. In most cases, education policies cannot be decided by education governing bodies alone. It needs appropriate conditions in society and the system itself. Faculty salary was lower than that of other professions in society (third from bottom (EFRG, 1988)) in the middle 1980s. So when the new personnel system came out, the raising of faculty salaries did not follow on because the national economic condition was not prepared for it (Ta% 1987). The reputation of the new policy is therefore seriously damaged.

(5) Less positive and diversified policies. China is a highly centralised country and used to adhere to the tradition of 'one policy for all' regardless of whether or not differences existed. As for the overstaffing problem in the first half of the I980s, for example, the Government had no policies such as early retirement or redundancy or other reward schemes, to divert the course of the contingent. More choices of policy mean encouragement and initiative to both institutions and their faculty.

(6) Lack of sufficient studies on policies. Most policies related to university faculty management have been made by means of policy-makers' experience rather than by scientific approaches in China. This has damaged the authority of policies and made policy change- able. The earlier debate in this article about 'one track' or 'two tracks' on the faculty

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apppointment system is a good example. In practice, a system of 'One Track' has been employed, but a 'Two Track' system appears to be attracting more support recently. Nevertheless, this problem cannot be solved soon because of the low qualification of policy- makers in China.

Conclusion

For a long time now, the main emphasis on higher education in China has been to serve the planned economy and, consequently, the mangement styles of the two have become linked. The way in which the style of economy affected university faculty management, is that the system became dosed. University faculty have lost the ability of self-adjustment, which perhaps does not matter when higher education is growing, but will cause even lower efficiency when it enters a contracted stage. Currently, the reform of both the national economic system and higher education itself requires changes in university faculty in terms of intellectual and personnel structure. Moreover, contraction of the national economy is slowing down the development of higher education. All of them underlie the deepening reform of faculty management in higher education--but to where? Many scholars and institutions think that the tenure system of faculty (though there is a new appointment system) should be abolished completely and that more competition should be introduced. Therefore, some universities employ their postgraduate students to do teaching assistant work instead of appointing assistants; other universities are trying to make junior posts into short-term contract ones by means of tasks, funds and other requirements (Mu, 1989). However, the mobility of university faculty is just one side of the problem. Other ways, such as enhancing staff development programmes and increasing part-time staff could also be employed. On the whole, university personnel management is an art rather than a science. It requires positive policies, but the thing which the teachers need most is an open environ- ment, not only a competitive academic one. The Chinese experience so far has made this quite clear. To Chinese policy-makers, it is still a puzzle how to implement new policies under the old system, and avoid conflict.

Correspondence: Xiaonan Cao, The Personnel Department, State Education Commission, 37 Damucang Hntong, Xidan, Beijing 100816, China.

NOTES

[1] Submitted to the 1990 Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society, Anaheim, California, USA, March 22-25, 1990.

[2] The opinions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of my government.

REFERENCES

BEIJING NORMAL UNIVERSITY (BNU) (1988) Working hard on the management of sending staff to study abroad, Information on University Faculty Management, 35(9), p. 6.

CAO, X.N. (1988) Studies on training young faculty in higher education, Information on University Faculty Management, 33(7), p. 4.

COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA (CPC) (1985) Reform of China's Educational Structure--decision of the CPC Central Committee (Beijing, Beijing Foreign Language Press).

DEN, X.P. (t980) Reform on the party system and its leadership, in: Stress on the Reform, Openness and Diversification (Beijing, People's Press, t987).

DIN(;, J.Q. (1989) Review on the new faculty appointment system in higher education, Information on University Faculty Management, 44(6), p. 2.

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EDUCATIONAL FUND RESEARCH GROUP (EFRG), SEDC (1988) Educational Funds and Teachers' Salaries (Beijing, Education Science Press).

LEWlN, K. & XU, H. (1989) Rethinking revolution: reflections on China's 1985 educational reforms, Comparative Education, 25(1), pp. 7-17.

LIN, Z.H. (1989) 40-year development of university faculty in China, Information on University Faculty Managemenb 47(8), p. 4.

LOCKWOOD, G. & DAVIS, J. (1985) Universities: the managemem challenge (London, SRHE & NFER-Nelson). MIN, R.Q. (1987) A study on institutional leadership in Chinese higher education, Journal of Yiyang Teacher

College, 2~ p. 18. Mu, R.H. (1989) Strategical consideration on development of university faculty in China in the coming decade,

Journal of Higher Education, 19(4), p. 64. POLICY STUDIES DEPARTMENT (PSD), SEDC (1985) Document Selections of Reform on Educational Structure

(Beijing, Education Science Press). SHI, Z. (1985) Historical development and current situation of university faculty in China, in: SOCIETY OF

UNIVERSITY FACULTY ]~.ANAGEMENT 1N CHINA, Studies on University Faculty Management (Shanghai, East- China Normal University Press).

STATE EDUCATION COMMISSION (1985) Achievement of Education in China: statistics 1949-83 (AECS, 1949-83) (Beijing, People's Education Press).

STATE EDUCATION COMM2tSSlON (1986) Achievement of Education in China: statistics 1980-85 (AECS, 1980-85) (Beijing, People's Education Press).

STATE EDUCATION COMMISSION (1987, 1988, 1989) China Education Statistics Yearbook, 1986, 1987, 1988 (CESYB) (Beijing, Beijing Polytechnical University Press).

STATE EDUCATION COMMISSION (1984) China Education Yearbook: 1949-81 (CEYB, 1949-81) (Beijing, China Encyclopaedia Press).

STATE EDUCATION COMMISSION (1988) China Education Yearbook: 1985-86 (CEYB, 1985-86) (China, Hunan Education Press).

STATE EDUCATION COMMISSION (1989) China Education Yearbook: 1988 (CEYB, 1988) (Beijing, People's Education Press).

TAO, Z.Q. (1987) Deepening reform on faculty appointment system in higher education, Information on University Faculty Managemenb 26(12), p. 1.

UNIVERSITY GRANTS COMMITTEE (1984) A Strategy for Higher Education imo the t990s (London, HMSO). WANG, L,B. (1989) Appointment and assessment of university faculty in China, Information on University Faculty

Managemeng 43(5), p. 1. WANG, W.S, XU, R. & LI~ X.N. (1988) Issues on training for university administrators, ffournal of Southwest

Normal University, 2, p. 35. WEI, Q.X. (1989) Difficulties and solutions of faculty training in higher education, Information on University

Faculty Management, 42(4), p. 7. WILLIAMS, G. & BLAKSTONE, T. (1983) Response to Adversity (London, SRHE). ZHANG, T.J., YI, W.Z. & LONG, C.X. (1989) Restructuring faculty by fully playing the role of returned staff from

abroad, [nforraation on University Faculty Manageraen~ 41(3), p. 8.

Supplement The events of June 1989 in Beijing shocked the whole world and attracted much attention to the country's future internationally. Since so many university students and academics were involved in this political movement, some re- adjusted national policies have had a notable impact on campus activities. With the change in the political climate of the country, university personnel management has inevitably been influenced to a much greater extent by national policies. Relating to the theme of the previous discussion, some examples are given as follows:

(1) The leading role of the CCP has been re-emphasised to institutional leadership at all levels. "All institutions of higher learning in the country must be under the absolute leadership of the CCP," said the chairman of the SEDC in a speech to the National Conference of Institutions of Higher Learning in July 1989 (Li, 1989). Therefore, the practice of the "President Responsibility System" was limited and the responsibility system of president and vice-chancellors under the leadership of the school CCP's committee was reintroduced, The requirement of the 'revolutionary', which means to support the leadership of the CCP and socialism, has been stressed in senior administrators' appointments, and the model of 'collective leadership' of president, vice- chancellors and the school's CCP committee has been re-employed (Pan, 1990). Obviously, university presidents are not able to enjoy their administrative power fully as they did before.

(2) Many university staff felt lost when the political battle was over because it is widely accepted in society that western bourgeois liberalisation has had a greater influence upon academics' ideology in the past ten years (Mu,

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1990). "In order to train new socialist generations, there must be a clear and strict political requirement for university stag °' (Li, 1989). Under this principle, authorities in charge of institutions of higher learning at all levels in the country set up a series of re-adjusted policies concerning university staff management. Needless to say, political ideology has been dominated by those policies. For instance, political attitude has been re-emphasised as a main criterion in staff appraisal and promotion; political education, especially Marxism-Leninism should be included in staff training programmes; the practice of learning about national conditions should be a requirement for every young member of university staff, etc. (Zhou, 1989). In other words, staff could be sacked from teaching posts for their unfavourable political attitude and, in fact, this did h~ppen to a few staff in the country. Additionally, a new staffing policy for full-time political tutorial systems has been established, in order to strengthen the political education to students though it is controversial (Fu a al., 1989).

(3) In order to win back trust from the intellectuals and counter their complaints about the low-payment system, which is one of the reasons why so many of them were involved in the anti-government demonstration during the Beijing 1989 event, the Ministry of Personnel announced a new policy of salary scale increases for all intellectuals. For university staff, the average increase is about 15% (Professors 12.5%, Associate Professors 14.8%, Lecturers 16.5%) (PDSEDC, 1990). But many senior academics find that, under the new salary policy, length of service is not taken fully into account, and that too many less experienced colleagues are now on the same 'salary platform' as themselves. Hence, they feel that the situation is even more unfair than it was before.

(4) The worst outcome of the event is that many young academics have lost confidence in the country's future, especially those overseas Chinese students; so far only a few of them have come back after the completion of their studies. Young academics on the mainland are desperate in their attempts to go abroad to study. This is aggravating the 'brain-drain' and is causing new problems for staff profiles in institutions of higher learning, key universities in particular. Many institutions have already realised this problem and are trying to set up special policies on staffing in the 1990s; otherwise, some departments may have to close down due to this reason in the future.

REFERENCES (TO SUPPLEMENT)

[1] LI, T.Y. (1989) Higher education must uphold the socialist direction, Higher Education in China, 95(9), p. 2. [2] PAN, J. (1990) The recognition of the President Responsibility System under the leadership of the Communist

Party in institutions of higher learning, Higher Education in China, 105(7-8), p. 54. [3] Mu, J. (1990) Some problems about the present ideological education in universities and colleges, ffournal of

Higher Education (Huazhong Institute of Technology), 11(2), p. 17. [4] ZHOU, X.C. (1989) What kind of lesson should university staff draw from the turmoil?, Higher Education in

China, 97(11), p. 11. [5] Fu, H.Z., LI, B.Y. & ZNANG, X.L. (1989) Some suggestions for universities and colleges after the turmoil,

Higher Education in China, 98(12), p. 2. [6] PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT, STATE EDUCATION COMMISSION (PDSEDC) (1990) Collection of the Documents on

Improving Teachers" Pay and Conditions (Beijing, Publishing House of the Central Broadcasting and Television University).

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