Chapter 2
Evaluation on University Research
Efficiency and Productivity: Concept,
Methodology, and Literature Review
2.1 Introduction..........................................
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) play a key role in Chinese science and
technology innovation system, and hold an increasingly prominent position and
significance in national research system. According to“China Statistical Yearbook
on Science and Technology (National Bureau of Statistics, 2011 )”, the researchers
in HEIs, accounting for 11.3% of this nation’s total R&D staff population, utilized
8.5% of the total R&D budgetary funds, undertook 62.2% of total basic research
activities, submitted 21.6% of the total patent applications, obtained 28.8% of total
licensed patents, and published 64.6% of total academic articles. Guided by the
strategies of“fostering the country with science and education”and“building up
innovation country”, Chinese government highly emphasizes research productions
in higher education sector, and invests massive funds to facilitate universities to
achieve great-leap-forward development. From 2000 to 2009, Chinese universities’
R&D expenditures grew from 7.67 billion RMB to 46.82 billion RMB, accounting
for 8.1% of total R&D expenditures across the country. Inside the total expendi-
tures, there was 14.56 billion RMB for basic research, accounting for 53.4% of total
basic research budget nationwide.
1
At the same time, several national major pro-
jects were launched, such as“211 Project”and“985 Project”, to make every effort
to build a group offirst-class disciplines, programs and world-class universities, in
order to substantially raise the comprehensive research strength of Chinese higher
education. The“211 Project”has been implemented forfifteen years, which sig-
nificantly improves the research facilities in universities, and enhances universities’
ability to serve the country’s urgent research needs, and also raises the research
level in Chinese universities.
With the large increase of research input and output in universities, issues related
to quality of university research output and efficiency of university research become
(^1) Data collected from website of Ministry of Science and Technology, P.R.China (available at
http://www.most.gov.cn/kjtj/2011-12-10)..)
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
Y. Hu et al.,Evaluating Research Efficiency of Chinese Universities,
New Frontiers of Educational Research, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4030-6_2