Given the major role of new enterprises founded by university alumni in creating employment and promoting economic development, it is well known that Chinese universities have implemented plenty of impressive initiatives to support students’ entrepreneurship. However, little is yet known about how students evaluate university entrepreneurship support and how it affects students’ entrepreneurial intentions. This study utilizes 13,954 recent college graduates from Chinese higher education institutions as a sample and aims to examine students’ perceptions of the support they received from universities and its influence on students’ entrepreneurial intentions. The results illustrate that students are not very satisfied with various university entrepreneurship supports. Findings also indicate that university entrepreneurship support positively impacts students’ entrepreneurial intentions, although it is not a very strong relationship. Moreover, university entrepreneurship support positively affects entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy, which in turn determine entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurial attitude, subjective norms, and entrepreneurial self-efficacy play a mediating role between university entrepreneurship support and entrepreneurial intention. The study contributes to the entrepreneurial literature theoretically and provides practical recommendations for policymakers and university administrators in China to reconsider and improve their entrepreneurship supports to encourage more students to become entrepreneurs.
This study explores the challenges faced by young lecturers in managerial transformation in elite Chinese academic institutions which aim to develop into world-class universities. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews, the paper discusses how a group of lecturers on tenure-track contracts at a research university in China perceived the impacts of this managerial personnel reform. The study revealed intensified academic pressure and consequent feelings of insecurity, uncertainty and anxiety among the participants. Rigid tenure requirements pushed down research quality, and detracted from the efforts the participants could have devoted to teaching. Further negative impacts were strengthened power hierarchies and increasingly gendered nature of the academic culture.
27 January 2014 in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
This study investigated the effects of Chinese tertiary teachers’ goal orientations for teaching on their approaches to teaching mediated by teacher engagement. In a survey of 597 Chinese tertiary teachers, the respondents placed particular emphasis on relational and mastery goals and expressed a preference for student-focused approaches to teaching. An emphasis on mastery goals was found to predict a preference for student-focused teaching, whereas ability-approach and work-avoidance goal orientations predicted a preference for teacher-focused teaching. Ability-avoidance and relational goals were found to be positively related not only to teacher-focused approaches but to student-focused approaches to teaching as well. In addition, teacher engagement was found to significantly mediate the effects of ability-approach, mastery and work-avoidance goals on teacher-focused intention, student-focused intention and student-focused strategy. These results have significant implications for Chinese higher-education institutions in light of their transition from teacher-focused to student-focused approaches to teaching.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a substantial transition of Chinese international education to online learning. This article discusses the impact of online learning from international students’ perspectives. Data were collected from exploratory interviews with a small group of international students at a research university and a nationwide survey involving 1,010 international students at 41 universities in China. A synthesis of the two studies’ findings pointed to low levels of online learning satisfaction, particularly among international students from Africa, those in undergraduate programs, those in life sciences and medical disciplines, and those studying at research-centered universities. Moreover, both studies revealed low emotional engagement significantly predicted international students’ online learning dissatisfaction. To enhance international students’ satisfaction, it is suggested that universities and teachers prioritize the building of student-centered online learning environments supporting international students’ emotional involvement and helping them feel a greater sense of belonging in online intercultural learning.