Beijing University Says "Incompetent Professors Need to Leave"

Will the Chinese most prestigious Beijing University will succeed in its first ‘revolution’ in the last 86 years?

As the recent university rankings indicate Tsinghua University outperforms Beijing University, Beijing University has decided to carry out a large scale staff reform in an aim to make it as one of the best universities in the world.

The reform plan promotes a new system for professor hiring and promotion process that would allow the university to hire domestic and foreign professors with open competition and sack incompetent professors before retirement.

This initiative shows Beijing University`s willingness to strengthen its competitiveness by ridding ‘iron rice bowls,’ which are often referred to as secure or permanent jobs in China.

However, the reform has been suffering from severe blows from confronting strong opposing arguments in and out of the campus. The university modified much of the reform plan announced in May and recently proposed revised one, but it is sill meeting to much resistance from some of professors to make a decision. The university is to propose another revised plan in September.

The professor hiring reform plan was first proposed during a discussion forum held in the campus in February winter vacation. “Human resources are one of the most important factor to transform into one of the finest universities. To produce elite graduates, we need excellent teaching staff, so we need rational personnel hiring system,” Xizeuheung, dean of the university at that time, emphasized.

The major details of the reform plan includes open competition for hiring professors in and out of the country, minimum of Ph. D requirement for newly hired professors, renewing contracts for lectures and associate professors, terminating the contract if a lecture or professor has not be promoted to a full professor within the contracted term, half of the open positions for lectures and associate professors to be filled in by candidates outside the university, and sacking teaching staff if research works are poor.

This reform plan referred to as a personnel revolution in 86 years since 1917 has surfaced out from feeling the crisis.

The Beijing University has been lagging behind for the last three years against Tsinghua University in terms of university rankings in China and, further more, Beijung University only registered about 200 theses in international journals whereas Tsinghua University registered 500 theses

“The new teaching staff hiring policy is similar to those that most foreign universities have adopted and some domestic university has adopted some of it,” personnel reform manager Jang Weiyeing(economics professor) said. “In order to cultivate excellent students, maintaining the job should be more difficult that getting the job as professor.”

Current ‘iron rice bowl’ personnel policy should be changed to strengthen the university’s competitiveness and competitiveness of professors should be intermittently reviewed and contracts should also be renewed through this process. Most teaching staffs educated overseas and students agree to it.

However, some still oppose to it even though they agree to the idea of the reform because of other circumstances and suspicion of possible other motives behind it. They claim vast administrative staff which consist of two thirds of the 8,000 teaching staff should be first proportionally reformed.

One professor said, “In reality, administrative staff have all the real power. How could ask professors who are forced to read books in cafeterias due to lack of teaching staff rooms.”

Yoo-Sung Hwang yshwang@donga.com