Does the tenure track influence academic research? An empirical study of faculty members in China

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Tenure
• research excellence
• academic output
• academic career
• China

Acknowledgments

Financial support from the National Education Sciences Planning Project-National General Project (grant number BIA230184) is gratefully acknowledged. We thank the editor, the anonymous reviewers, and Ms. Jia Cai for their support in revising and improving this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The ‘Double First-rate University’ project is a world-class university project initiated in 2016 in China. As the name implies, this project has two goals: to build ‘world-class universities’ and ‘first-class disciplines’. The time we conducted the survey was during the first round of the ‘Double First-rate University’ project, when 42 ‘first-rate’ universities were included in the program. The sample for this study was drawn from the 42 ‘first-rate’ universities.

2 Member of the C9 League universities are the nine elite universities in the first batch of World-class University project in China.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Education Sciences Planning Project-National General Project, ‘A Study of the Tenure's Effect on High-quality Research Innovation of Faculty Members and Its Improvement Measures’ [grant number BIA230184].