138
We counted the number of the selected articles in the database of RHERD^1 from
1999 to 2014 by their source journals. The top ten Chinese journals have a signifi-
cant impact in shaping the field. They are the Journal of Higher Education (gaodeng
jiaoyu yanjiu), Tsinghua Journal of Education (qinghua daxue jiaoyu yanjiu),
Education Development Research (jiaoyu fazhan yanjiu), Jiangsu Higher Education
(jiansu gaojiao), Modern University Education (xiandai daxue jiaoyu), Comparative
Education Research (bijiao jiaoyu yanjiu), Peking University Education Review
(beida jiaoyu pinglun), Chinese Higher Education (zhongguo gaodeng jiaoyu),
Fudan Education Forum (fudan jiaoyu luntan), and Chinese Higher Education
Research (zhongguo gaojiao yanjiu).
HER Themes and Orientation
Situated in the unprecedented social turbulence after 1989, higher education in
China underwent an array of reforms and transformations. Substantive reforms of
recruitment, employment, and tuition fees occurred, and there were remarkable
institutional mergers in the Chinese higher education system. This made up the
study of higher education and societal transition timely issues and meant that HER
in this period was more focused on the practical needs of policy and institutions.
HER in China is oriented by practical issues and policy concerns, while it retains
a strong tradition of theoretical and disciplinary enquiry (Pan and Chen 2005 ; Zhong
et al. 2009 ; Wang and Liu 2014 ). Issues on the macro- and mesolevels have been
emphasized as policy consultation, and institutional needs are the prioritized tasks
for HER institutions in China (Wang and Liu 2014 ; Chen 2015 ).
From articles on higher education in the RHERD database from 1999 to 2009
classified as theoretical research, practical issue research, historical research, and
comparative research, we find among 3074 articles that 67 percent focus on practi-
cal issues, 17 percent on theoretical issues, 11 percent on comparative approaches,
and 4 percent on historical approaches. Among articles published on Chinese Higher
Education in 2012, around 70% attended to practical issues in higher education by
our calculation.
Recently, there are also rising research themes on student engagement and fac-
ulty development on the microlevel. But they still cannot outshine the traditional
themes on the macro- and mesolevels.
(^1) Renda Higher Education Research Digest (RHERD) (renda fuyin ziliao gaodeng jiaoyu) is anes-
tablished and highly reputable database of quality articles selected by experts invited by the
Information Center for Social Sciences of Renmin University of China. It can be found from http://
ipub.zlzx.org/
L. Hu and S. Chen