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書名: COVID-19 and Higher Education: Report of the Online International Workshop, December 11, 2021

As Asia's largest host country of international students, China's digitial placemaking is impacting on international students’ experience whilst studying and living in the country. This rqualitative study addresses the issue of international students’ transition to the digital environment in China. It draws on the theoretical perspectives of international students’ digital journeys and miniaturised mobilities to inform thematic analysis of artefact-mediated student interviews and social media posts. Findings show that international students’ digital journeys in China are characterised by three modes of digital adaptation including digital shock, digital border crossing and digital approachability. We argue that engaging in these modes of digital adaptation has reconstituted international students’ subjectivity through empowering miniaturised mobility, but also a sense of digital in-betweenness as they operate between two different virtual worlds.

Since the emergence of global university rankings in the 2000s, East Asian universities have been recruiting academics with doctoral degrees from Western countries to strengthen their competitiveness in the global university league tables. Governments offer scholarships to support students in their overseas doctoral studies and encourage graduates to return. Although much attention is given to researchers with overseas degrees, little is known about their experiences and pre-employment academic productivity. Drawing on a nationwide survey and bibliometric data, this study examines whether and how the institutional prestige of a host university and academic supervision contribute to the academic productivity of government-funded Chinese PhD returnees during their doctoral studies. Results show that supervisors’ research support and collaboration positively affect pre-employment academic productivity. However, a university's prestige does not exert such an influence. Moreover, co-authorship with a supervisor is a crucial mechanism in the influence of supervisors’ research support on PhD students’ productivity.

Building on a theoretical model of decision-making under risk and uncertainty, this paper examines how Chinese college students made decisions about international moblity or immobility during the Covid 19 pandemic. The paper finds that among the 118 interviewees, most continued to choose to study abroad, whilst some gave up after getting offers from prestigious Western universities. We further analysed the divergent patterns of two choices which can be explained by resilience to risks and uncertainties and lack of thereof. For those who have given up studying abroad, the symbolic capital and labor market advantages brought by degrees (especially master degrees) from Western universities have become uncertain and offset by the risk of the epidemic. These findings suggest that, in addition to safety, college students will prefer certainty more than before when choosing whether to go abroad and the study abroad landscape may change based on this mindset.

This article extends Bourdieu’s convertibility of different forms of capital to understand the patterns of study abroad by elite graduates from Peking University, China. We draw upon empirical data...

As the global mobility of researchers increases, many of whom are supported by national funding agencies’ mobility schemes, there is growing interest in understanding the impact of this overseas mobility on knowledge production and networking. This study addresses a relatively understudied mobility—the temporary international mobility of PhD students in STEM fields—and its relation to the establishment of research collaborations between mobile PhD students and researchers at the host university and with other researchers overseas. First, we find that 55% of the participants established relevant international collaborations (i.e., with hosting supervisors and/or others at the hosting university), and we explore these collaboration patterns in detail by taking a novel research propagation approach. Second, we identify features of the visiting period that influence the formation of research collaborations abroad, such as the prestige of the host university, the duration of the international mobility period, the cultural distance, and the number of peer PhD students at the host university. Previous research collaborations between the home and host supervisors are also found to play a crucial role in research collaboration development. Age at the time of mobility is not found to be particularly relevant. We find that female PhD students are less able to benefit from collaborative research efforts than male students. These findings advance the knowledge of global research networks and provide important insights for research funding agencies aiming to promote international research mobility at the doctoral level.

This study explores the relationship between studying abroad, social capital, and Sino-Swiss scientific research cooperation. Evidence from in-depth interviews involving 16 Chinese doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and visiting doctoral students in Switzerland informs the findings and conclusions drawn from this study. Social capital plays a vital role in the establishment of scientific research relations between China and Switzerland, especially in the initial stages of cooperation. Specifically, Chinese scholars use strong and weak ties to obtain information about studying in Switzerland. Findings show that in the initial stage of cooperative relationship establishment, structural holes play an essential role, and the relationship between trust and international research collaboration is differentiated between three types of academic mobility. Under the trend of antiglobalization, international scientific research cooperation is facing new challenges. How to build a trust relationship to maintain effective international cooperation deserves further research.

書名: COVID-19 and Higher Education: Report of the Online International Workshop, December 11, 2021

University leadership is considered as a key factor in university development. In a competitive environment, the role of university leadership has become increasingly important. At present, China i...

This study aims to reveal gender and gender-matching effects in STEM master’s education in China by using the data of a nationwide survey. Research findings indicated the gender matching between master’s students and their advisors played an important role during students’ socialization. Female students were more satisfied with advisors of the same gender in mathematics and civil engineering. Female students supervised by a male advisor reported less research productivity compared with those supervised by the same gender in mathematics. In terms of gender effects, female respondents participated in fewer research projects and less likely to pursue a doctorate after graduation. There was no significant gender difference in academic publication. Moreover, the socialization among female students showed different patterns across STEM subfields. The paper also highlights the policy implication to recruit and retain female faculty members as role models in STEM fields.

This article explores how trust affects the nature and characteristics of civic engagement among university students in contemporary China. We draw upon empirical evidence from in-depth individual interviews involving 68 students born between 1993 and 1999. Four different types of civic activities, including associational membership with the Chinese Communist Party as well as self-organised town-fellowship associations, volunteering and digital activism, are analysed in relation to bridging, bonding and/or obligatory relationships. Generalised trust amongst university students seems to be low, but they do exhibit unquestioned trust in the State. The organisations with which they associate either are top-down through the Communist Party, which is ideologically narrow and socially distant among the members, or promote geographical origin-based bonding rather than bridging relationships. Our findings add new depth to our understanding of the relationships between the dominant modalities of trust and the typical form of civic participation in Chinese universities. We also highlight the effects of increasing meritocratic competition and stress on performativity on the civic attitudes and behaviour of students. We argue that the hybrid of neoliberal individualism and Confucianism seems to be a perfect match to reconcile the absence of civic traditions and to validate civic consciousness among university youth.

This paper draws attention to the current and possible effects of COVID-19 on the mobility trajectories of mainland Chinese students studying in Asia. By drawing on 35 biographical interviews, this paper focuses on their decision to study in Asian countries and regions. Particularly, it calls for more attention to Asia in global student mobilities and discusses whether COVID-19 has changed the position of Asia in the global landscape of student mobility. Results show that even if COVID-19 provides an opportunity for Asian universities to embrace more international students, Asia still lacks the capability to attract great numbers of them. Finally, the study argues that college students’ choice of mobility destinations is shaped by their perception of the central–periphery structure of higher education, which is hard to be shaken by the pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to analyze Chinese doctoral students’ career expectations and determinants or factors influencing their career plans based on main findings from the national survey of doctoral students in 2017. Main findings include: firstly, the Chinese case indicates that becoming academics is still attractive to most doctoral graduates; secondly, female doctoral students are more likely to choose to work in universities than male doctoral students; thirdly, the social background of doctoral students did not have a significant impact on their academic orientation scores, but doctoral students with richer family culture capital (parents with college degrees) are even more reluctant to choose to work in the universities; finally, significant disciplinary differences and the correlation between their socialization experience and their academic orientation could be confirmed.

PurposeThe paper tries to analyze the impact of the American higher education model on China's higher education since the reform and opening-up, enriching the research on policy learning in comparative education by adding a Sino-U.S. case.Design/Approach/MethodsThis study focuses on three cases of policy learning: undergraduate education reform, the transformation of polytechnic universities into comprehensive ones, and the introduction of the tenure-track system, using academic archives, oral interviews, and policy texts.FindingsThis study identifies several characteristics of policy learning. First, while the influence of the United States remains dominant, other countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and France have also become learning targets. Second, policy learning from the United States reflects the characteristics of selective adoption, suggesting that the foreign model is partially copied and reinterpreted in the Chinese context.Originality/ValuePolicy transfer is a classic theme of comparative education research. Although the Western model—and the U.S. model in particular—has had a profound impact on China's higher education reform, research on the impact of the U.S. model since 1978 is limited. This study addresses this gap.

The reform and success of China’s higher education since 1978 has attracted much attention in recent years. This article attempts to understand the nature of this reform from the perspective of de-Sovietization, outside the mainstream neoliberal and internationalization narratives. In the 1950s, China’s higher education was completely reformed by the Soviet Model with features of separating teaching and research, excessive specialization in undergraduate education, and high centralization. Moreover, Chinese institutions were increasingly disconnected from the international academic community. During the 1980s and 1990s, China started de-Sovietization reform and took measures to strengthen general education, develop comprehensive universities, integrate teaching and scientific research, and expand the autonomy of colleges and universities. De-Sovietization reform was also a process of relearning from Western countries, of which learning from the American experience was prominent. In this process, Chinese universities resumed ties with the international academic community. De-Sovietization reform has left an important impact on the development of contemporary universities in China.

This paper assesses the evolution and current situation of the Chinese research system, mainly the academic research system from 1996 to 2017, using trend analysis and the revealed comparative adva...

Drawing on a unique dataset that combines returnees’ survey data and their information on research publications extracted from the Scopus database, this study systematically examines whether and how international doctoral mentorship for Chinese students in European countries promotes research collaboration before and upon the return of these Chinese PhDs to China. The results show that a considerable proportion of European-trained Chinese PhD returnees had co-authorship with their supervisors during their PhD study, and most of them maintained this research partnership after returning to China. In addition to the co-authorship during doctoral study, some individual characteristics (e.g., gender and marital status) and organizational factors (e.g., country of doctoral study and current work unit) were also found to contribute to international research collaboration upon the return to China of these Chinese PhD holders. This study sheds new light on the mobility and research collaboration of international students and provides policy implications for promoting Sino-foreign student exchange and research collaboration.

Quantification and audit have become management tools worldwide. Since the 1990s, along with Projects 211 and 985 and the professional transformation of university teachers, bibliometric evaluation has become an important means to assess the research performance of university teachers in China. On the basis of analyzing key policy documents in different periods and bibliometric data from a Project 985 university, this study illustrates the historical construction of bibliometric evaluation as a legitimate evaluation method. The impact of quantitative assessment on the academic life of university teachers, such as decisions on where and how to publish, professionalization of academic work, ritualism in the production of knowledge, and increase in the workload of faculty members, are also analyzed on the basis of interviews with more than 36 teachers and administrators in eight universities.

As Chinese doctoral education has grown dramatically in the past four decades and developed into one of the largest doctoral education systems in the world, it has become one significant and integral part of the global doctoral education landscape. However, in the literature, there is a lack of both a comprehensive understanding of the Chinese doctoral education system and of generic frameworks for understanding doctoral education in a global context, with an emphasis on the underlying value systems. This may not only hamper the research on doctoral education in China but also affect international comparison and collaboration with Chinese doctoral education. Using the theory of institutional logics, this study tries to bridge the gap by identifying the complex value systems underlying the context of the Chinese doctoral education system, through a qualitative study mainly based on interview data and complemented by documentary data. The interview involves 135 participants, including 45 university academic leaders, 33 doctoral supervisors and 56 doctoral students from 17 research universities, as well as one government policy-maker. We found that the context of Chinese doctoral education system consists of multiple logics of state, profession, family, market and corporation. The special constellation of institutional logics has shaped the current Chinese doctoral education system as a state-led model but meanwhile incorporating family characteristics, market orientation and regulated academic autonomy. The study also showed that Chinese doctoral education has been developing in line with international academic norms and global marketization trends, and has also been shaped by China’s socio-cultural tradition and the strong state regulation. In addition to the institutional logics analysis of the Chinese doctoral education system, this study paves the way for developing a novel framework for analysing doctoral education systems in other contexts and for comparative purposes.

Despite the growing research capacity and rise of Chinese universities in global rankings, the number of Chinese students going abroad to pursue doctorate degrees is still large. Previous studies argue that a series of pull–push factors at systemic and individual levels affect the motivation and outbound mobility of students. However, the factors at the institutional level and the changing landscape of Chinese higher education have been rarely examined. To fill this gap, this study interviewed 31 graduates from the chemistry department of an elite university in China, which ranks among the top universities in the world. The insights offered in this study are based on the concepts of institutional habitus and career scripts in academic career research and highlight the motivations of students to go abroad for doctoral education. One of the arguments of this article is that students’ motivation to go abroad is influenced by organisational factors (that is, institutional habitus) and career scripts, which are partly shaped by central government policy.

This special issue focuses on the reforms and collaborations in Europe–China doctoral education. The articles in this special issue provide an insightful picture of the recent reforms in doctoral education in China and EU countries. Next to the structural reforms in Europe and China, the special issue papers have also specifically focused on EU–China cooperation in doctoral education, such as the current cooperation models, quality assurance in joint programmes and student experiences. In additions to an introduction of seven papers included in the special issue, the introduction provides necessary background information concerning Europe–China doctoral education as well as a reflection on the general issues, challenges and their implications.

In the past decade, thousands of Chinese doctoral students received funding from the China Scholarship Council (CSC) to start a 1–2-year exchange study in European universities. Do these Chinese doctoral students significantly improve their academic skills and publications through such an overseas experience? What are the influencing factors for them to receive such benefits? Through a large-scale investigation, we confirmed the expectation that Chinese doctoral students did indeed receive benefits from these study abroad experiences in Europe, and identified several critical factors such as advisor and institution ranking for them to receive such benefits. These results confirmed our expectation that the advisor is the most important factor contributing to a successful abroad studying experience; such a conclusion is of important policy implications that CSC shall pay more attention to exchange Ph.D. students’ collaborative supervisor and his/her research team.