CHINA, NATIONAL NEWS, Analysis: Is Tenure Reform at Peking University Good For All?
By Liu Yieqing
Peking University recently declared the abolishment of lifelong tenure for supervisors of PhD Candidates (SOPC), enabling more qualified associate professors and lecturers to apply for the position. With this reform, we are moving closer to the international practice. But whether this practice will become a nationwide paradigm is still unknown.
Supervisor of PhD candidates is seemingly just a title, while actually it represents a higher level than other professors in the academic world. To some extent, it's a "super professor." A SOPC enjoys much higher allowances as well as credit. To get this title, a professor has to first submit a formal application and then get through an anonymous critical examination by experts at the university in question and from other universities. In spite of repeated declarations by educational administration departments that SOPC is not a higher academic title than professor, society takes no notice at all.
The every-other-year competition of applying for the doctoral training program is getting more and more ferocious. So it is with the competition among the professors to get the "higher" title. Society obviously favors the SOPCs more: when the newspaper introduces a scholar, it's a common practice to add the title supervisor of PhD candidates to testify to his or her authority. On the other hand, the popularity of SOPCs means the downgrading of professors.
Why are there SOPCs who are above the professor rank in China? Why does society take its own course in spite of the repeated appeal of education administrators?
To reveal the puzzle, we can simply make a comparison of domestic and foreign grading systems of university teaching staff. In China, academic titles have four categories: assistant, lecturer, associate professor and professor. But in other countries, take the US for example, there are only three: assistant professor, associate professor and professor.
On the surface, it appears that we have one more grade than the Americans, while in fact we have one less grade. In the US, a newly graduated PhD will have to spend six years as an assistant professor before he or she gains an associate professor position and qualifies for tenure; it will take him or her at least 12 years to become a professor. But in China, theoretically it will take only 7 years: a doctor becomes a lecturer immediately as long as he or she will commit to a teaching career. Only 2 years later, he or she is qualified to apply for the position of an associate professor. And 5 years afterwards, he or she can apply for the title of a professor.
The greatest difference between the two systems is the missing associate professor. And the 5 missing years plays an extremely important role in testing a young scholar's devotion to science. What's more important, it will take a doctor only 7 years to reach the peak of the academic world, and during the following 30-year-academic life, with all stimulations gone, professors gradually slack off and linger on in where they are.
Either for the internal need of the school or the external need of society, a grading system of professors is indispensable. Thus this title of SOPC came into being and functions as a grading machine to classify professors into SOPCs and non-SOPCs. But this grading system is by no means fair: whatever achievement a professor has made in his academic field, if there is no doctoral training program in his field, he can only be reconciled to the position of a non-SOPC; on the contrary, if there is a doctoral training program in the field, as long as the quota hasn't been filled, even mediocre professors can become SOPCs.
Obviously, if the present academic grading system sticks to its old way, Peking University's practice will not easily extend to a larger area. SOPC will remain a higher academic rank than professors. Assistant, lecturer, associate professor and professor, this four-grade professional title system did make sense in history. As there were fewer doctors in the past, and university graduates and masters could teach immediately after graduation.
But now, in most universities, especially those specializing in research, a doctoral degree is a basic requirement of the teaching staff. Nowadays, assistants and lecturers in universities are as rare as pandas; universities are full of professors and associate professors, exhibiting a very strange upside-down pyramid. This kind of framework of academic talents is not conducive to academic competition.
Thus our primary task is to play down the SOPC rhetoric while turning it into a practical position, instead of a mere title. There is one outlet for the dilemma we are faced with, that is to hasten integration with international practice and adopt the three-grade system practiced in many developed countries. However, it should not be up to certain universities, it should be the government's responsibility to put it into practice.
Peking University recently declared the abolishment of lifelong tenure for supervisors of PhD Candidates (SOPC), enabling more qualified associate professors and lecturers to apply for the position. With this reform, we are moving closer to the international practice. But whether this practice will become a nationwide paradigm is still unknown.
Supervisor of PhD candidates is seemingly just a title, while actually it represents a higher level than other professors in the academic world. To some extent, it's a "super professor." A SOPC enjoys much higher allowances as well as credit. To get this title, a professor has to first submit a formal application and then get through an anonymous critical examination by experts at the university in question and from other universities. In spite of repeated declarations by educational administration departments that SOPC is not a higher academic title than professor, society takes no notice at all.
The every-other-year competition of applying for the doctoral training program is getting more and more ferocious. So it is with the competition among the professors to get the "higher" title. Society obviously favors the SOPCs more: when the newspaper introduces a scholar, it's a common practice to add the title supervisor of PhD candidates to testify to his or her authority. On the other hand, the popularity of SOPCs means the downgrading of professors.
Why are there SOPCs who are above the professor rank in China? Why does society take its own course in spite of the repeated appeal of education administrators?
To reveal the puzzle, we can simply make a comparison of domestic and foreign grading systems of university teaching staff. In China, academic titles have four categories: assistant, lecturer, associate professor and professor. But in other countries, take the US for example, there are only three: assistant professor, associate professor and professor.
On the surface, it appears that we have one more grade than the Americans, while in fact we have one less grade. In the US, a newly graduated PhD will have to spend six years as an assistant professor before he or she gains an associate professor position and qualifies for tenure; it will take him or her at least 12 years to become a professor. But in China, theoretically it will take only 7 years: a doctor becomes a lecturer immediately as long as he or she will commit to a teaching career. Only 2 years later, he or she is qualified to apply for the position of an associate professor. And 5 years afterwards, he or she can apply for the title of a professor.
The greatest difference between the two systems is the missing associate professor. And the 5 missing years plays an extremely important role in testing a young scholar's devotion to science. What's more important, it will take a doctor only 7 years to reach the peak of the academic world, and during the following 30-year-academic life, with all stimulations gone, professors gradually slack off and linger on in where they are.
Either for the internal need of the school or the external need of society, a grading system of professors is indispensable. Thus this title of SOPC came into being and functions as a grading machine to classify professors into SOPCs and non-SOPCs. But this grading system is by no means fair: whatever achievement a professor has made in his academic field, if there is no doctoral training program in his field, he can only be reconciled to the position of a non-SOPC; on the contrary, if there is a doctoral training program in the field, as long as the quota hasn't been filled, even mediocre professors can become SOPCs.
Obviously, if the present academic grading system sticks to its old way, Peking University's practice will not easily extend to a larger area. SOPC will remain a higher academic rank than professors. Assistant, lecturer, associate professor and professor, this four-grade professional title system did make sense in history. As there were fewer doctors in the past, and university graduates and masters could teach immediately after graduation.
But now, in most universities, especially those specializing in research, a doctoral degree is a basic requirement of the teaching staff. Nowadays, assistants and lecturers in universities are as rare as pandas; universities are full of professors and associate professors, exhibiting a very strange upside-down pyramid. This kind of framework of academic talents is not conducive to academic competition.
Thus our primary task is to play down the SOPC rhetoric while turning it into a practical position, instead of a mere title. There is one outlet for the dilemma we are faced with, that is to hasten integration with international practice and adopt the three-grade system practiced in many developed countries. However, it should not be up to certain universities, it should be the government's responsibility to put it into practice.
1 Comments:
At 1:16 PM , Anonymous said...
That is very true, I like your points.
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