The Relation between the Secretary of the Party Committee and University Development ——Empirical Analysis of 46 Universities in China

• In Event: VIRTUAL HYBRID SESSION: Governance and management of universities in 4 national contexts

Proposal

In recent years, China has begun to take the construction of the “Double First-Class” as its main direction of development, thus accelerating the pace of construction of the “world-class universities” and the “world-class disciplines”, as well as has also achieved a large amount of positive outcome. However, the effective implementation of the “Double First-Class” construction is inseparable from the main managers of the universities. In China, the main administrators of universities are the Secretary of the Party Committee and the President. But from a practical point of view, the Secretary has the significant right to make decisions on important matters, the right of appointment and removal of important personnel, and the right to use large amounts of funds. Therefore, the Secretary has a tremendous impact on the development of a university. In accordance with this situation, this study made an in-depth research of the relation between the Secretary and the development of universities.

This study selected 138 observational data from the 46 universities in China as the relevant research samples, along with tested the relation between the background characteristics of the Secretary and university development through the empirical research.

The research has the following conclusions:

（1）Descriptive Statistical Analysis of the Background Characteristics Variables of the Secretary of the Party Committee

From the characteristics of the population background，it could be found that 89.13% of the Secretaries of the Party Committee are men and 10.87% are women. Therefore, the position of the Secretary is still dominated by men, and the average age of the Secretary is 57 years old.

From the characteristics of educational background, it could be found that 65.22% of the Secretaries with the degree of doctor, 47.83% of the Secretaries with the highest degree majors belong to the category of science and engineering, as well as 52.17% of the Secretaries with the highest degree majors belong to the humanities and social sciences, thus the Secretary tend to be selected the people with the highest degree majors belong to the humanities and social sciences. 71.74% of them have the title of professor, and the requirement of secretary in academic achievement is not obvious.

From the perspective of personal experience, 43.48% of the Secretaries have overseas experience. 41.30% of the Secretaries are directly generated by the university, and 58.70% of the Secretaries are transferred from outside. These data show that the Secretaries tend to be transferred from other universities or government departments.

（2）Empirical Analysis of the Development Level of Universities and Background Characteristics of the Secretary of the Party Committee

The Secretary with the Degree of Doctor can positively influence the Teaching and Industrial Income of the university. At present, the Secretary of some colleges and universities in China do not have a degree of doctor. On the one hand, the Secretaries are promoted by their deputy secretaries or vice-presidents, who are specialize in administrative work. On the other hand, they are appointed by the government departments. According to this study, it is necessary to further improve the level of education of the Secretary in order to have a better development of the university.

If the Professional category of the Highest Degree of the Secretary is science and engineering, he or she will be able to effectively promote the increase of universities’ Industrial Income. At present, some of the income components of Chinese universities come from the industry service, so the higher the level of universities, the greater the proportion of industrial income for universities’ income. Obviously, science and engineering have more remarkable advantages than humanities and social sciences in the transforming scientific, technological achievements and promoting industrial development.

If the Professional category of the Highest Degree of the Secretary is humanities and social sciences, he or she will effectively promote the internationalization level of universities. Promoting the internationalization of universities requires that the main leaders own a global vision, a strategic vision and the ability to understand multiculturalism as well as communicate with different civilizations. Therefore, compared with science and engineering, the main leaders with humanities and social sciences background have more unique advantages in this aspect.

If the Secretary has Overseas experience, he or she can effectively improve the level of Teaching and Research of universities. The university managers who with overseas experience will pay more attention on how to keep in line with international standards, in terms of running philosophy, management level and grasping the law of academic production for university.

The Secretary who come from their own university, will have a positive impact on the Teaching, Research, Citation and Industrial Income of the university. Whether the main leadership of a university is transferred from outside or directly promoted from the university, and which way is better for the development of the university, has always been a controversial topic. However, from the point of view of this research, the Secretary generated by the university itself will have a better impact on the development of the university.

Author

• Kun Liu, Tsinghua University