No other choices but involution
Understanding Chinese young academics in the tenure track system
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4545199 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Si Jinghui (0000-0002-7600-0547, Shenzhen Technology University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 53-67 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1360-080X • E-ISSN: 1469-9508 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1360080x.2022.2115332 |
| OpenAlex | W4292879171 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 39 |
| References cited | 38 |
Based on an analysis of policy documents, questionnaires and interviews, the paper discusses the experiences of Chinese young academics on tenure-track contracts. Findings suggest that young academics perceive tenure as a managerial solution to governance reform. Meanwhile, a population-resource imbalance and the uncertainty in career progression interactively and collectively create an involuted culture where overwork is normalised for self-adaptation. While young academics are experiencing insecurity and anxiety, the study found that they adopt a wide range of strategies to actively adapt into the context. Drawing on the competitive nature, the tenure system is interpreted as both a managerial approach and a training mechanism. This competitiveness and its related precariousness seem to remain, however, uncharted in social perception. An analysis of these issues illuminates tensions and conflicts in the implementation of the tenure-track system in the Chinese context, which have important implications for future managerial policies and practices
Context (archaeology · Corporate governance · Demographic economics · Economics · Management · Perception · Political science · Population · Public relations · Sociology · Higher Education and Employability · Higher Education Governance and Development · Human Resource and Talent Management · Psychology
Mapping the sources of academics’ job insecurity in China
Every cloud has a silver lining
Academic involution as a rat race at expense of health and well-being
Faculty Service and Professional Agency
Involution life in the ivory tower
Exploring means–ends decoupling in the tenure track system of China’s “Double First-Class” universities
What organizational supports matter in scholar development? An investigation of early career academics’ experiences in China
Career sustainability of pre-tenure academics in Chinese universities
Sustainable careers of immigrant academics
Employee Burnout, “Involution” and “Lying Flat”
Relaxation or stress? The impact of household chores on depression in Chinese adolescents
Extracurricular activities in higher education
Advance or retreat? Young female faculty members’ contradictory choices and coping strategies in Chinese elite universities
To sit the exam or to be recommended
The dual-edged sword of tenure track involution
Chinese academics’ attitudes towards journal peer-review
Early-career academics’ grappling with multi-dimensional duties in the one-dimensional academic world
Exploring the desires to become academics
Influencing Factors on Scholars' Perceptions of Organisational Support in Chinese Higher Education
Higher education teachers’ professional well-being in the rise of managerialism
The effect of the tenure track on faculty member’s job insecurity and innovative work behavior
Understanding the growing contributions of China to leading international higher education journals
Faking care, fading care
How academic competition fosters GenAI dependency in research among Chinese STEM postgraduates? A mixed-methods approach
Publish at home or abroad
Pursuing intellectual leadership in neoliberal academia
Faculty perspectives on the changing research and teaching career tracks of academics at private universities in Kazakhstan
Employees in change
Competing for research grants
Enhancing China’s Incentive System for Scientific Innovation
Temporal conflicts and time management
Understanding responses to managerialism
Acculturating for Change
You have to Survive Before Ideals”
Assessing the Tenure-Track Policy’s Impact on Early-Career Academic Well-Being in Chinese Universities
Supporting Academic Women’s Careers
Between “Harmonious Competition” and “Academic Capitalism
Does the tenure track influence academic research? An empirical study of faculty members in China
Institutional adaptation of managerialism in Chinese higher education
Social Space and Governance in Urban China
Knowledge, Higher Education, and the New Managerialism
What price the building of world-class universities? Academic pressure faced by young lecturers at a research-centered University in China
A complex dynamic systems perspective on teacher learning and identity formation
Conceptions of the value of higher education in a measured market
Peddlers and princes
Academic identities and university faculty responses to new managerialist reforms
Control by numbers
The smell of the place’
Metrics, Money, and Managerialism
Brief History of Neoliberalism
The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity
You can't always get what you want! Desired and undesired impacts of a new career development policy
The Chinese definition of internationalisation in higher education
Managerialism
Academic superheroes? A critical analysis of academic job descriptions
Where does the time go? An academic workload case study at an Australian university
Competing institutional logics of academic personnel system reforms in leading Chinese Universities
Transplanting tenure and the (re)construction of academic freedoms
Translating tenure track into Swedish
Incentivising academics
| Unique citing works | 39 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 13 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 38 |