THE FACULTY PROMOTION AND MERIT SYSTEM IN CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES:THE CASES OF WUHAN UNIVERSITY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

Any serious inquiry about improving the quality of a university must begin with an examination of its faculty promotion and merit procedures, since a university’s quality cannot be higher than that of its faculty. In this essay, we will examine the tenure track or regular faculty promotion and merit systems at the University of California, Davis, and Wuhan University, with a view towards understanding how they motivate the professoriate and foster creativity. In our analysis, we will pay special attention to compensation, as well as to work-life balance, issues. Our hope is to extract some lessons for these and other institutions of higher learning in the Unites States and China and, perhaps, even in other countries. As more and more universities around the globe aspire to become world-class universities, the issue of faculty rewards is becoming paramount, for there can be no world-class universities without world-class faculties.