论文部分内容阅读
In a recently published book entitled Worker Bees, The Life of Young University Teachers, Lian Si, an associate professor at the Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics, compared young college teachers to worker bees.
Worker bees are at the lowest level of a bee colony, in which they feed the queen, drones and larva with food they have collected, and perform other chores such as cleaning, repairing and defending the hive.
The book is based on a survey of college faculty under the age of 40 in five cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou in southern Guangdong Province, Wuhan in central Hubei Province and Xi’an in northwestern Shaanxi Province. Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that as of the end of 2010, the number of college faculty under 40 surpassed 860,000 in China, accounting for 63.3 percent of the total.
The survey revealed that 84.5 percent of the 5,138 respondents believed that they were at the middle or lower end of the social stratum, and 72.3 percent reported feeling stressed from the heavy research and teaching workload and low income.
Lian said that a major source of the stress felt by young college faculty members is the changing social value system. “Power and money have replaced knowledge and morality to become the core evaluation criteria. The overall status of intellectuals has dropped,” he said.
Lian is also author of Ant Tribe, an influential book published in 2009 that shed lights on low-income college graduates residing in crowded quarters on the edge of Beijing. Lian likened the group to ants, which are also intelligent, weak and densely populated.
In 2010, Lian published the book’s sequel, Ant Tribe II, which studied “ants”in several other big Chinese cities such as Shanghai.
Tenuous tenure
Although China does not have an academic tenure system, an unspoken rule in universities today is that if a young faculty member cannot get the title of associate professor in five years, he or she must leave the university.
Yuan Bentao, Vice President of the Institute of Education in Tsinghua University, said that almost all universities now appraise faculty members’ qualifica- tion for academic titles by the number of papers they published in academic journals recorded in the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Engineering Index (EI) or Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI), the number of books published, the number of awards earned and the number of important research projects they have conducted or participated in.
This evaluation system has put a lot of pressure on young faculty members. Peng Feng, a 33-year-old teacher described in Lian’s new book, taught social science subjects for eight hours a week at a top university in Beijing. In the meantime, he also engaged in two research projects.
Peng’s goal was to be promoted to an associate professor as early as possible and to a professor before turning 40. To achieve this goal, he planned to publish six papers in CSSCI-listed journals within three years.
Research and teaching kept Peng fully occupied. In the morning, he usually looked up materials, did some reading, wrote research reports and tutored students. In the afternoon, he taught for two hours, and then spent one hour or so handling miscellaneous affairs such as reimbursements. On the weekends, he sometimes traveled to academic meetings.
In addition, Peng made time to build a network, hoping to achieve his goals earlier.
Lian’s survey showed that meeting the standard for senior academic titles is not an easy task. The study found that in the preceding three years, 20.5 percent of young college teachers in social science and humanities did not publish a CSSCI-indexed paper, 92.5 percent of those in science did not publish any SCI-indexed paper, while 85.5 percent of those in engineering did not publish any EI-indexed paper. During the same period, 83.2 percent young college teachers failed to publish any independently authored books.
Peng had worked for almost five years, and was still a lecturer. Only one fourth of his peers had attained the title of associate professor, and almost none became a professor before turning 40.
Financial pressure
In addition to stress from work, young college teachers are also subject to financial pressure.
Although being a university teacher is widely thought of as a prestigious occupation, Lian said that young college faculty members are not highly paid.
Lian’s study found that the group’s average annual salary income was less than 50,000 yuan ($7,995), and only 10 percent of them earned more than 70,000 yuan ($11,193) a year.
For example, Peng made about 40,000 yuan ($6,396) from teaching and 20,000 yuan ($3,198) from conducting research each year.
In addition to their job in the university, many young teachers also took spare-time jobs to boost their income. Among the respondents to Lian’s study, 14.2 percent said their income from part-time jobs were their main source of income. Nonetheless, the annual non-salary income of more than half the group was less than 20,000 yuan.
After paying daily expenses, only 31.3 percent of the respondents reported that they had surplus money to put into savings.
Actually, the average annual salary income of young college faculty members is just slightly higher than that of employees in urban enterprises nationwide.
In 2011, the average annual salary income of employees in urban enterprises (excluding private enterprises) was 42,452 yuan($6,788), according to the 2011 China Salary Development Report recently released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.
The report said that average annual salary for executives of listed companies in 2010 reached 668,000 yuan ($106,815). For example, the average salary of staffers at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank in the year totaled 357,400 yuan ($57,149), which was about 10 times the average of urban employees. The report unveiled a widening income gap between executives and ordinary employees, as well as between different social groups.
More than half of the respondents in Lian’s study—54 percent—thought the income disparity was unfair, and 65.2 percent believed that such disparity would deter people from working harder.
Lian said that both the winner-take-all social environment and universities’ management system contributed to the sense of inequality among young college faculty members. According to his study, in universi- ties, senior professors were more likely to get research funding.
The future
Lian’s research team found that although most young college faculty members complained about their treatment, overall they were cautiously optimistic about the future. Of the respondents, 38.9 percent thought things would improve in the future, 14.3 percent thought the status quo would be maintained, and 25.9 percent thought the future was hard to tell.
Chen Pingyuan, a 58-year-old professor at the Chinese Department of Peking University, said that every young generation will go through some hardship, and it is important to let excellent youth see a bright future.
In 2010, Yang published a story about the dormitory life of 20-plus teachers in their youth decades ago. Yang said that many students reading the story told him that they did not think their teachers’ experience was once that difficult.
“Frankly speaking, now the income of young people teaching in universities is not that bad as some of them said,” Chen told the China Youth Daily. “Of course, I hope young people will live better lives. But to expect everything all at once is not realistic.”
“There are always worker bees, not only in universities, but also in companies and government departments,” said Li Rui, a postgraduate student at Peking University. “To some extent, being a worker bee is an inevitable stage in our lives.”
Lian suggested that special lanes should be opened to young teachers in terms of research funding application and performance evaluation. For instance, he said that in addition to regular research funding, a special fund for young college faculty members should be set up to support their research, and the young teachers can be evaluated under a separate category so that they will not have to compete with senior faculty members for resources.
Worker bees are at the lowest level of a bee colony, in which they feed the queen, drones and larva with food they have collected, and perform other chores such as cleaning, repairing and defending the hive.
The book is based on a survey of college faculty under the age of 40 in five cities—Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou in southern Guangdong Province, Wuhan in central Hubei Province and Xi’an in northwestern Shaanxi Province. Statistics from the Ministry of Education show that as of the end of 2010, the number of college faculty under 40 surpassed 860,000 in China, accounting for 63.3 percent of the total.
The survey revealed that 84.5 percent of the 5,138 respondents believed that they were at the middle or lower end of the social stratum, and 72.3 percent reported feeling stressed from the heavy research and teaching workload and low income.
Lian said that a major source of the stress felt by young college faculty members is the changing social value system. “Power and money have replaced knowledge and morality to become the core evaluation criteria. The overall status of intellectuals has dropped,” he said.
Lian is also author of Ant Tribe, an influential book published in 2009 that shed lights on low-income college graduates residing in crowded quarters on the edge of Beijing. Lian likened the group to ants, which are also intelligent, weak and densely populated.
In 2010, Lian published the book’s sequel, Ant Tribe II, which studied “ants”in several other big Chinese cities such as Shanghai.
Tenuous tenure
Although China does not have an academic tenure system, an unspoken rule in universities today is that if a young faculty member cannot get the title of associate professor in five years, he or she must leave the university.
Yuan Bentao, Vice President of the Institute of Education in Tsinghua University, said that almost all universities now appraise faculty members’ qualifica- tion for academic titles by the number of papers they published in academic journals recorded in the Science Citation Index (SCI), the Engineering Index (EI) or Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI), the number of books published, the number of awards earned and the number of important research projects they have conducted or participated in.
This evaluation system has put a lot of pressure on young faculty members. Peng Feng, a 33-year-old teacher described in Lian’s new book, taught social science subjects for eight hours a week at a top university in Beijing. In the meantime, he also engaged in two research projects.
Peng’s goal was to be promoted to an associate professor as early as possible and to a professor before turning 40. To achieve this goal, he planned to publish six papers in CSSCI-listed journals within three years.
Research and teaching kept Peng fully occupied. In the morning, he usually looked up materials, did some reading, wrote research reports and tutored students. In the afternoon, he taught for two hours, and then spent one hour or so handling miscellaneous affairs such as reimbursements. On the weekends, he sometimes traveled to academic meetings.
In addition, Peng made time to build a network, hoping to achieve his goals earlier.
Lian’s survey showed that meeting the standard for senior academic titles is not an easy task. The study found that in the preceding three years, 20.5 percent of young college teachers in social science and humanities did not publish a CSSCI-indexed paper, 92.5 percent of those in science did not publish any SCI-indexed paper, while 85.5 percent of those in engineering did not publish any EI-indexed paper. During the same period, 83.2 percent young college teachers failed to publish any independently authored books.
Peng had worked for almost five years, and was still a lecturer. Only one fourth of his peers had attained the title of associate professor, and almost none became a professor before turning 40.
Financial pressure
In addition to stress from work, young college teachers are also subject to financial pressure.
Although being a university teacher is widely thought of as a prestigious occupation, Lian said that young college faculty members are not highly paid.
Lian’s study found that the group’s average annual salary income was less than 50,000 yuan ($7,995), and only 10 percent of them earned more than 70,000 yuan ($11,193) a year.
For example, Peng made about 40,000 yuan ($6,396) from teaching and 20,000 yuan ($3,198) from conducting research each year.
In addition to their job in the university, many young teachers also took spare-time jobs to boost their income. Among the respondents to Lian’s study, 14.2 percent said their income from part-time jobs were their main source of income. Nonetheless, the annual non-salary income of more than half the group was less than 20,000 yuan.
After paying daily expenses, only 31.3 percent of the respondents reported that they had surplus money to put into savings.
Actually, the average annual salary income of young college faculty members is just slightly higher than that of employees in urban enterprises nationwide.
In 2011, the average annual salary income of employees in urban enterprises (excluding private enterprises) was 42,452 yuan($6,788), according to the 2011 China Salary Development Report recently released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.
The report said that average annual salary for executives of listed companies in 2010 reached 668,000 yuan ($106,815). For example, the average salary of staffers at Shanghai Pudong Development Bank in the year totaled 357,400 yuan ($57,149), which was about 10 times the average of urban employees. The report unveiled a widening income gap between executives and ordinary employees, as well as between different social groups.
More than half of the respondents in Lian’s study—54 percent—thought the income disparity was unfair, and 65.2 percent believed that such disparity would deter people from working harder.
Lian said that both the winner-take-all social environment and universities’ management system contributed to the sense of inequality among young college faculty members. According to his study, in universi- ties, senior professors were more likely to get research funding.
The future
Lian’s research team found that although most young college faculty members complained about their treatment, overall they were cautiously optimistic about the future. Of the respondents, 38.9 percent thought things would improve in the future, 14.3 percent thought the status quo would be maintained, and 25.9 percent thought the future was hard to tell.
Chen Pingyuan, a 58-year-old professor at the Chinese Department of Peking University, said that every young generation will go through some hardship, and it is important to let excellent youth see a bright future.
In 2010, Yang published a story about the dormitory life of 20-plus teachers in their youth decades ago. Yang said that many students reading the story told him that they did not think their teachers’ experience was once that difficult.
“Frankly speaking, now the income of young people teaching in universities is not that bad as some of them said,” Chen told the China Youth Daily. “Of course, I hope young people will live better lives. But to expect everything all at once is not realistic.”
“There are always worker bees, not only in universities, but also in companies and government departments,” said Li Rui, a postgraduate student at Peking University. “To some extent, being a worker bee is an inevitable stage in our lives.”
Lian suggested that special lanes should be opened to young teachers in terms of research funding application and performance evaluation. For instance, he said that in addition to regular research funding, a special fund for young college faculty members should be set up to support their research, and the young teachers can be evaluated under a separate category so that they will not have to compete with senior faculty members for resources.