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undergraduate students. This gigantic system as well as mounting reform efforts has
created tremendous opportunities for knowledge production in the field.
“Field” is a geographical and spatial metaphor for categorizing and classifying
knowledge. A research field is a result of accumulated knowledge, academic capi-
tals, and a bounded “tribe” with certain academic identities (Becher and Trowler
2001 ). Journals, books, societies, academic programs, departments, and research
centers are typical representations of an academic field (Altbach and Engberg 2001 ;
Goodchild 2011 ; Teichler 2011 ).
Higher education in China as a research field has amassed the above general char-
acteristics as in other regions (Yuan 2011 ). However, the national and historical con-
texts have shaped HER in China as a distinctive academic field and community. A
very recent study of higher education in Asia (Jung and Horta 2013 ) found that the
most productive researchers in Asia do not have their homed academic units special-
ized on higher education research. There is a visible discrepancy between research
outputs and the substantive organizational bases. The lack of institutional rapport and
relevant degree programs could cripple the academic communities of higher educa-
tion research (Jung and Horta 2013 ). On the contrary, the field of higher education
research in China is clearly filled up with named academic units of higher education
research, like institutes, centers, departments, and schools (Wang and Liu 2014 ).
This chapter outlines the formation and features of the research field of higher
education in China. A critical mass of researchers and practitioners in the institutes
of higher education have actively shaped and institutionalized HER as an indepen-
dent field as well as an organized community. At the same time, the state plays a
significant role in legitimizing and supporting the field. In the following sections, we
would analyze the formation and development of the HER in China historically from
two aspects of actors and institutions. To put in another word, those people who made
the field possible as well as the institutionalizing process are the foci of understand-
ing the HER in China. After that, some features of the field will be outlined.
Scholars Making the Field
Any field of knowledge is an arena of knowledge and people producing knowledge.
Without scholars and researchers who strongly committed to the bounded commu-
nity, a field is not possible only with claimed knowledge. Both founders and a criti-
cal mass of followers have made and sustained the field.
According to J. Li ( 2005 ) and Wang ( 2010 ), the historical development of the
HER in China can be periodized as four stages as the pre-discipline time, discipline
establishment period, scale expansion stage, and consolidation period. Those stages
have echoed the political and social changes of China as well as significant educa-
tional reforms, e.g., the years of 1977, 1985, 1992, and 1999. Based on a historical
analysis of researchers and higher education development in China from institutional
documents and relevant references, we found the development of HER as a field as
L. Hu and S. Chen