Formation Continue du Supérieur

The following is a guest post by John Anthony Pella Jr., a  lecturer in international relations and international history, and Li Wang, a lecturer in education. Both work at Zhejiang University, in Hangzhou, China. China in recent years has aggressively moved to make its universities “world-class,” and top institutions have instituted numerous policies to achieve this goal. Two such policies are recruiting faculty who have been educated overseas and pushing faculty members to publish more academic work. While these strategies have their benefits, they run the risk of creating significant divisions in Chinese academe. The high value placed on foreign degrees has shaken up the job market. It has become easier for foreign-trained Chinese scholars to return home and get jobs at prestigious universities; and non-Chinese academics have an even easier time. By contrast, the chance for a domestically trained scholar to work at a prestigious university is dwindling, even if they get their doctorate from one of China’s top institutions. For instance, at a university that is a member of China’s Ivy League, the C-9, the policy is that 50 percent of newly hired faculty should be foreign-trained. Considering the number of doctorates awarded by Chinese universities—there were 50,289 in 2011, according to Chinese Ministry of Education data—it’s clear that a domestic degree is not the best path into a top institution. Read more...