Discussion keeps the world's turning.
This is Round Table. Hello everybody, welcome to Round Table.
Coming to you live from Beijing, I'm her young, on a day's show.
For young Chinese academics, the path to tenure is a high stakes race against the clock, with a fiercely competitive tenure system demanding what's called up or out, coupled with recent cuts to permanent teaching positions.
The stability of academic careers is under unprecedented threat.
How are these pressures reshaping the lives and futures of emerging scholars in China?
And from free meal prep to your local market, to wallet friendly dining options at convenience stores, new contenders are giving traditional restaurants a run for their money.
How are unconventional food players stirring the dining scene up?
Join us as we explore this tasty transformation.
For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherley and Yushan, first on a day's show.
The academic life of a young Chinese scholar is fraught with challenges.
They face the intense pressures of a competitive tenure system, juggling the demands of research, teaching and administrative responsibilities.
In recent years, young academics have been subjected to the rigorous up or out policy, which gives them six years to meet specific quota for promotion or face dismissal.
This relentless system often described as, well, ruthless, places immense pressure on scholars to advance rapidly or risk losing their positions.
Adding to these pressures, recent reforms in China have exacerbated the situation.
The government reduced a number of officially budgeted teaching positions or bianjure, effectively dismantling the once stable iron rice bowl of university teaching staff.
And this reduction in teaching position quotas means fewer permanent roles and greater job in security for university educators.
So let's go to you first.
Yushan explained for us this up or out system and it is imported actually from Western universities.
So how did it happen here in China?
Yeah, that's exactly how it went.
Like back in the early 1990s or around 1999, I think that's when the system was gradually introduced in some major elite universities in China, like included in Beijing and Shanghai.
And it's actually a, we called it upper out system, but it was a model after the American tenure track.
And I believe we just chatted earlier that it's still practiced in the same way in the US as well.
So typically the system involves like a fixed term employment period of six years, like you mentioned, Hu Yang.
And during which time teachers must meet specific, like certain criteria in order to promote herself or himself to a certain elevated position, like it goes all the way from, say, teaching assistant to lecturer, then associate professor and finally professor.
And during this six years period, like schools and financial departments, financial departments of the school will provide support for these young scholars and young teachers for them to conduct research and build up their criteria in hoping for a near future promotion of sort.
But yeah, like recently is going tighten up in such areas for young scholars because, yes, like in recent years, the available, the availability of tenure position is actually in the drop because there are less bianjoo or official position that's granted to such educational positions are dropping as well.
So Steve, you must be familiar with this notion of publish or parish.
That's the... Yeah, I was going to mention that term a little bit later on, but yeah, publish or parish.
And now it's up or out. So from your international perspective, I mean, do you see this as, you know, particularly something worth raising eyebrows?
Well, it's worth raising eyebrows for people who are in the field or who are potentially going to be in the field or considering that line of life, if you will, academia.
It's a long and arduous course.
I was looking at the UC Berkeley website before the show today and it is similar to what's here in China.
This is what the website from UC Berkeley says.
Most newly minted PhDs are hired as assistant professors, then promoted to associate professor upon achieving tenure, and then they go through an additional review five to seven years later for a promotion to a full professor.
For people who aren't familiar, like I said, it's a very, very long track, right?
And you're constantly having to prove yourself.
And I think the issue now is that even proving yourself isn't guaranteeing your future success.
And that's why this is so stressful for people who are academics these days.
Yeah, it seems like there are so many things that they need to prove because everybody else seems really competitive at the same time.
And when there's limited positions for people to get hired and then everybody's upping their game.
And it sounds like an academic race in a way and really a very high pressured situation to be in.
But we didn't get here overnight.
And I think it's important that we sort of look at the history a little bit about this gradual transition.
And also in China, we have this beinger or the officially budgeted position situation and notion.
And this deserves a lot of explaining for our international audience.
Yeah, right. And this is according to sintha.com, a data platform of higher education in China.
So university teachers adopted an identity quota system or the beinger system that we were talking about at the beginning of the founding of the people's Republic of China.
So we're talking about seven decades ago, more than seven decades ago, this system already where this say, colder thing has already existed.
And according to six tone, at that time, university teachers in Chinese public universities were treated as civil servants.
And that's what we are trying to refer to as iron rice ball.
Something that they had a they had a guaranteed lifetime job, right?
That would never come into question.
Like once you're into this position, once you're qualified for this position, all the following benefits, supplies, supports and subsidies that follows will be yours to take or to enjoy.
But I think as time goes to the 1980s and 1990s, the colleges and universities, they were granted more autonomy on who has the quota and who doesn't because that's when the quota was transferred from position-based quota to one position with one quota.
So the university and colleges themselves has the say in who has it and which employee could have the quota.
So that kind of gave the universities and the educational facilities more power on choosing between certain employees.
And starting from 2015 and 2018, which is like around the recent 10 years, universities and public hospitals and other public facilities would no longer be included in the staffing quota management of public institutions.
So now it's in the trend that such quota granting system is gradually tightening.
I have seen many people seeing such position as teaching in the university as a iron rice bowl, like a security for their job and career.
But nowadays is becoming more challenging.
Yes. And you mentioned public hospitals and all kinds of other public institutions as well.
It's not just restricted to universities.
It's not. So this has got a far reaching effect in Chinese society.
Well, when you've got these big changes that happen in the arrangement of treatment of people's jobs, then of course people are going to sort of set up and listen.
And also, if this really affects you, this is definitely on people's minds.
And we've seen that reform has taken place since 2015 in public colleges and universities as you should have mentioned just now.
And how are these universities sort of responding with this big sweep of reform?
Well, one thing I can give you an example, such as in Beijing in 2015 for the universities.
Actually it's interesting that the municipality published a guideline sort of qualming the worries of some of these teaching staff in universities and saying that sure we have this big reform coming up, but we're going to roll it out slowly in the sense that if you are above a certain age, then you get to keep your tenure.
And until you retire, that position is going to disappear.
Oh, so when those people eventually retire, people who held those positions that would be thinking from top to bottom, the positions would open up at the top, meaning the line would move up if you will, creating new positions at the bottom.
Well, not so simple actually.
So for the existing professor positions, for example, maybe there used to be five, now maybe there are only three.
And then the two people who retire, those two positions disappear.
And are not filled again.
No. And then for the younger folks, these young academics we're talking about, and then they're competing no longer for five, but for three positions.
Right. Now I understand.
So they said they would roll it out slowly, meaning the positions will not exist in the future, but the people who hold those positions at the time, okay, don't worry, we're going to wait until you retire.
But when those people retire, those positions are not filled again.
Yes. And what has to this really stressful situation is that when you've got so many PhD graduates and young academics in the pipeline, but they're competing for less number of these coveted positions.
And this isn't just a situation in China I was looking before the show, university is worldwide.
They're now pumping out a record number of doctoral graduates.
I think a long time ago, if we heard about someone having a PhD, we would think, oh, they are really in the minority, aren't they?
They're still in the minority, I would say, but the number of PhD holders is really, really climbing.
And this creates a really competitive environment where even highly qualified candidates are struggling to find tenure track positions.
That's one problem. But then there's another problem internationally as well, academic institutions, they really rely heavily on external funding to support their research programs and also by extension, I suppose, their faculty as well.
But the landscape of research funding is becoming increasingly competitive.
It's also becoming increasingly unpredictable.
So the dependence on grant money to finance these faculty positions creates this instability.
It also creates this uncertainty in the job market.
And then a lot of institutions are unable to commit to long term academic roles.
So then you've got that and then you've got the other problem of adjunct predicament.
And what that means is if tenure positions aren't being offered at universities because they don't have the funding for it, they're not getting the research grants for it, then people who would typically take those PhD holding jobs are now being put into adjunct positions where they don't get the same benefits, but it's either that or you look for another job.
It's not fair. It's not fair at all.
And one way that the Chinese universities are coping with such scenario is that nowadays it's rather common for them to hire staff members without staffing quality.
Because well, this is according to Professor Xu Gang from the School of Politics and Public Administration at South China Normal University that he once observed ten universities while across China and found that the average number of teachers without the staffing in ten universities increased by 492 in 2020 comparing with that in 2016.
So these days teachers are also getting hired but just not getting the quota.
Right. So they are working with, let's say, three-year contract or something like that.
So there's definitely the uncertainty of, okay, maybe your contract might not be renewed as such, but also just to go back to one of the great points that Steve, you mentioned, I would boldly state that maybe, okay, drop the maybe, the competition is even more fierce in the Chinese intelligentsia or this academic circle just for the fact that we have such a huge population,
you mentioned that the number of PhD students around the world is growing.
Look at China. So there are these figures.
Apparently in 2004, there were less than 8% of university teachers with a PhD degree and almost two decades later this figure has risen to nearly 30%.
Yeah, exactly. Yes, and also look at last year, over 30,000 doctoral degrees were awarded in China and in 2019 alone, over 580,000 graduates returned to China with international degrees.
And then it's just very, very competitive.
Also adding to that, and this is one thing I suppose different people in China will look at this differently, whether it's a good or bad thing.
But we're looking at reforms in this country in the education sector and there seems to be a reduction in the number of departments and faculty in universities in recent years because universities want to consolidate, they want to streamline.
And this is all part of the reform of higher education.
And you know what that directly translates to a drop in number of professors or even teaching positions.
And do you have some of the figures that you can share with us here?
I think one thing that I was reading about is that back in 2017, there are five departments, including the Ministry of Education published like a guideline on reform in higher education institutions.
And the aim is to give the determination rights back to the universities for them to establish their staffing system of internal institutions such as teaching, research, and administrative departments based on their actual needs and principles of simplification and efficiency as well.
I think that that reads to me as if that's all the zero tolerance on mediocre performance among teachers and all those reasons why there has been a drop of quotas is pointing towards the getting a more efficient and reduced system.
Well, that's what the proponents say, right?
That's what the people who support this system say.
It creates a stronger group of professors who are more qualified, who have published more papers, who have been more successful, so to speak in their careers.
And I guess on paper that's that theory works, right?
But then the other side of that coin is that this puts so much pressure on the professors because it's the professors to be or professors to be because they have to publish.
So much material within a certain amount of time, they have to achieve all of these different things and they're competing with so many other people.
Can you imagine the level of stress that these people are feeling and it undoubtedly has to have an effect on their careers, on their work, and on their private lives as well?
Right. And also, there are so many reports and so many personal anecdotes floating on the internet about this, a lot of the young scholars say that a couple of the ones that I read about online, it's really interesting that it says, basically this is transformed in not a positive way, the relationship between your peers because everybody is competing with each
other and gone are the days that we help each other out with research.
Now, I'm holding on to my stuff.
I'm not sharing with you because...
Well, you're talking about your future here.
Right? Whether you have a job or not.
Exactly. So the pressure is completely understandable.
And again, this is an international issue in the UK, PhD holders, they're valued really highly in society as they should be.
They've worked really hard to get where they are.
And they have this quota that they're looking to fill by 2027.
They want an increase in expenditure on research and development to 2.4% by 2027 so that they're hoping there will be 25,000 PhD students being recruited.
So even more are on the way.
But I've talked about all those problems that we have.
The universities aren't getting the research grants, they aren't getting the funding, but there are more and more people coming out with PhDs in doctoral education and some people, many people, as a matter of fact, don't see this as a positive thing.
They think that perhaps there are too many PhD holders, sufficient employment opportunities or questions, what will these people do?
What will they have to do in the future?
They've worked so hard, they've spent so many years to get where they are.
One concern this inspires, what me personally is that I heard such a story of, in face of all the pressure that they're facing right now, one of the professors that teaches at my friends' university, the university, my friends, was attending that she even complained to her student during a class on how fierce the competition is getting inside the department and which takes
lecture time for her to just vent it out to someone who's not really in the competition that might hear.
I mean, they have to, their students, they're in the class, they're there to listen to her.
It's something that's really inspiring concerns and we see that these young teachers, they're really facing such issues that some of them just find it hard to digest.
This is the part, sorry, I suppose, for a complete outsider, without necessarily the sympathetic eye might wonder, well, isn't this sort of the rules of the academic jungle and isn't this what happens all over the world and this is meant to be a competitive environment.
It's just in China for the last, well, we said 2004, then for the last 20 plus years or so, back then because universities were just developing and they went through this fast growing period when you saw all these expansions in enrollment and in the size of campuses, the size of the faculty as such, but now we've reached sort of a different stage of development for higher
education as well and therefore we can't afford to expand like that.
We need to sort of contract.
I'll play devil's advocate for enrollment.
If I want to be a professional athlete, right, and I spend all of my youth training, practicing, spending money, my parents investing in me and I try to become a major league baseball player.
Well that's extremely competitive and I might spend my whole life trying and then when I get my chance, I don't perform and I don't get there and I leave that and I go do something else.
Is this different or is it not?
What they're looking for here is the best of the best of the best of the best and if young students who are looking to get into academics as a career, if they're aware of this, then they know it's the best of the best of the best of the best.
If you want to play for the New York Yankees, for example, you have to be the best in the world.
So is this different? Should we, of course, sympathy, but it's an extremely competitive market and the people who are in charge are looking for the greatest.
Well, also, this is not a direct comeback to what you just said, but there are some people who are questioning the game itself and saying a rigorous selection system like this does it pick out the best of the best in what way does it only pick out the cream of the crop, the best of the best who know how to play this game or is it actually people who are fantastic teachers
and professors that can really research well, can really change the lives in these formative years of a young person.
And that is a very fair point because it's a lot more subjective than throwing a ball and hitting a ball.
So maybe baseball wasn't the perfect example.
I totally understand your point.
I think that's a great point, Julian, because we see that a lot of young scholars, in order to get that promotion and get the quota eventually, they have to meet certain criteria, such as publishing enough number of papers within a certain amount of time.
For example, we see this university employee, let's just name her do, is required to publish at least five articles in core journals, in core journals we're talking about within six years.
And well, I used to work in an academic publication company, let's say, in core journals and five papers in six years is something that they're doing at doing their time off of class.
And so it's really soft for us, maybe.
And depending on the subjects, they're also paying extra time on doing research, on leading students to join the team on doing the research.
All plus together is making the feeling such quite a bit harder.
And addressing some of these concerns, now we're seeing the government from the top level talking about, you know, maybe having special grants for the under 40-year-old scholars, and see if there can be funding sort of tilt towards their research projects a little bit more than the already very established professors, for example.
And this intersection of the reduction in officially budgeted positions with the upward out system in China creates a uniquely demanding environment for young academics.
All these systems aim to drive excellence and productivity.
They also risk fostering an unsustainable and stressful work culture.
And we need to see if there are more things that can be done to address these issues.
