‘Heavy mountains’ for Chinese humanities and social science academics in the quest for world-class universities

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the impacts of research excellence evaluation entailed in global ranking exercises, a control strategy characteristic of new managerialism, on Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) academics. The enquiry combines the Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) and internet-based discourse analysis, drawing on mass media texts and social media discussions. Our analysis identified three major dilemmas that may be created for Chinese HSS academics by their country’s aspirations for world-class universities embedded in its complicated socio-political context. First, a highly centralised system restrains academics’ autonomy to decide what to research and where to publish. Second, they are conflicted by the need to simultaneously attend to nationalistic interests and publish internationally. Third, ideological correctness is highly important. These findings invite us to reflect on the profound impact of university ranking exercises as a mode of university governance on HSS academics in many contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• New managerialism
• global university ranking
• Humanities and Social Sciences
• research assessment
• China

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editor and reviewers for their constructive comments on our study. The writing and relevant research were generously supported by a Short-term Vistorship at the School of Education, the University of New South Wales (Australia) and the SEED Grant for International and Cross-border Collaborative Research Funds (‘ICB’ Funds), Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The CDGDC is an administrative agency directly attached to China’s Ministry of Education. It is responsible for graduate education management, academic degree approval and certification, and the research evaluation of China’s higher education institutions.

2. In mainland China, when referring to soft disciplines, ‘philosophy and social sciences’ is often used instead of ‘humanities and social sciences’.

3. It needs to be noted that after the withdrawal of the first-tier journal list on 6 May 2016, the file was no longer retrievable online.

4. We provide a detailed list of the web sources for every extract in the Appendix. All the extracts were translated from Chinese to English by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the School of Education, University of New South Wales; Faculty of Education, the University of Hong Kong.