Abstract
Creating world-class universities (WCUs) has recently become a significant policy and practice in higher education in China under the Double World-Class Project. However, some negative effects have encouraged decoupling from the policy goals. To identify the reasons, we conducted policy document analysis and purposive interviews at three elite universities, focusing on financial funding, discipline development, and human resources. First, the uneven funding plans by central and local governments shape non-competitive environments for universities, hindering the dynamic adjustment of the Double World-Class Project. Second, universities have closed or merged programs in weak academic disciplines to gain legitimacy and stability in conformance to WCU guidelines. Last, as a result of the unbalanced development of universities in east, middle, and west China, universities in the west are facing a serious brain drain. To achieve a higher level of performance, an increasing number of ‘shadow academics’ are being recruited by Chinese universities. These decoupling responses and manipulative strategies result from the dominating constituent in WCUs, ambiguity in policy contents, hierarchical control systems in higher education, and uncertain environments for universities.
Highlights
In September 2017, the Ministries of Education and Finance and the National Commission for Development and Reform in China launched the Notice to Release the Lists of Creating World-class Universities and World-class Disciplines, Double World-Class Project (DW Project) (MOE 2017)
Financial resources: discouraging dynamic environments The analyses of national DW project documents, provincial policies concerning the DW project, and university strategies and plans suggest that the numbers of World-Class Universities (WCUs) and World-Class Disciplines (WCDs) in various parts of China are uneven
Due to the ambiguous policy content, these strategic responses were based on perceived meaningfulness by policy implementers, resulting in some decoupling phenomena
Summary
In September 2017, the Ministries of Education and Finance and the National Commission for Development and Reform in China launched the Notice to Release the Lists of Creating World-class Universities and World-class Disciplines, Double World-Class Project (DW Project) (MOE 2017). This revealed the Chinese government’s commitment to support a selected number of elite universities and disciplines to become world-class. After nearly 20 years of solid implementation, the 211 and 985 projects are criticized for lacking incentives to promote competitiveness among those universities already on the 211 and 985 lists (Zhang 2019). This phenomenon has been first defined in Meyer and Rowan (1977)’s study as ‘policy decoupling’: a policy is formally introduced but is not effective or implemented.The DW project replaced the 211 and 985 projects with the expectation that it would encourage ongoing competitiveness among elite universities through dynamic and continuous evaluations (MOE 2017)
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