for each university is presented in Tables5.3,5.4,5.5,5.6,5.7,5.8,5.9and5.10in
Appendix. Here we merely present the yearly averages^4 of sample 211Us on each
index, and analyze the overall dynamics of research productivity for 211Us.
5.1.1 Overall Change of Research Productivity
of 211NEAM Disciplines
Table5.1lists the average Malmquist-TFP score and its decomposition of 211Us in
NEAM disciplines, and Fig.5.1further presents their trends in line chart.
Taking a glance at the changes of Malmquist-TFP index of 211Us in NEAM
disciplines from 2006 to 2010, the results show that the annual growth rate is 7.3%.
From the perspective of growth stages, TFP is in a growing trend in these years,
reaching its peak value of 16.6% in period of 2008–2009. In other periods like
2006 – 2007, 2007–2008, or 2009–2010, the annual growth rates are 3.9, 2.9, 6.2%
respectively.
In order tofind the reason of TFP change, we decompose Malmquist-TFP index
into TC index and TEC index. According to the decomposition results, we canfind
that TC and TEC are simultaneously enhanced which bring out the betterment of
research productivity in 211Us. TC index increases in every period with an average
growth rate of 5.6%. By contrast, the TEC index is negative (−2.4%) in the period
of 2007–2008, and its average annual growth rate is merely 1.6, 4% lower than that
of TC index. Furthermore, by decomposing TC into PTEC and SEC, wefind that
the former grows with an average at 1.3%, and the latter is much lagged behind
with a negative value (−2.4%) in the period of 2007–2008 and afive-year average
of merely 0.8%. From this point, we can see that thefluctuation of TC index is
largely driven by the changes of SEC index.
From the path that Chinese high-level universities have taken to improve
research capacity of NEAM disciplines, it used to utilize technical premium to
achieve higher research productivity in short term, by the methods such as
recruiting high-level researchers, purchasing high-tech research instrument and
equipment, and setting up world-class research platforms. All these approaches
result into the short-turn upward shift of overall production frontier of 211NEAM
disciplines. However, the biggest problem of this growth mode is that, as a result of
less emphasis on the effective allocation of internal resources and research per-
formance,
5
research activities in most 211Us are highly homogeneous and short of
comparative advantages and features, which is obviously harmful to the long-turn
(^4) In analysis with Malmquis Productivity Index, all the means are geometric.
(^5) For example, there is an obvious limitation in the performance evaluations on the two biggest
university funding project—“211 Project”and“985 Project”, that is the focus on the construction
goals set by universities themselves, while lack of comparisons on the outcomes between uni-
versities, and more seriously, the cost-benefit evaluations.
222 5 Dynamic Evaluation on Research Productivity...