133well as an academic community in China is closely correlated with an emerging
group of researchers and an expanding higher education system itself.
1970s: The First Generation
In the pre-discipline time, interests in studies of the university and higher education
were scattered and not organized. It was Professor Pan Maoyuan, a widely recog-
nized founder of higher education studies in China (Hayhoe 2006 ; Hu 2010 ), who
gathered individuals in conferences and other organized activities. This was the
prototype of higher education research community in China. It was until 1978 that
he formally established and led the first research center of higher education at
Xiamen University, the first institutional base for higher education research then.
Out of need of studying higher education issues at Peking University, Professor
Wang Yongquan in the Northern China founded another spearhead Institute of
Higher Education Research in 1984 on campus. In the middle part of China, the
cities of Wuhan and Shanghai, another two higher education institutes were also
established at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology and East China
Normal University. These institutes are still the most renowned centers of higher
education research in China.
1980s–1990s: The Second Generation
The first generation of HE researchers came from various academic backgrounds,
such as engineering, Chinese literature, English, history, and comparative educa-
tion, as there was no formal program ever named “higher education” in existence in
China. However, the forerunners sought to train and attract new higher education
researchers with more specialized knowledge to expand and consolidate the
disciplinary foundation of the HER. Thus, a stream of the second generation of
higher education researchers grew up locally holding specialized degree in higher
education. These researchers began to exert their influences in the 1990s as a
formally trained academic cadre in the Chinese field of higher education.
Meanwhile, a group of fresh PhD graduates trained overseas returned to China.
They brought back related disciplinary and methodological knowledge and instilled
into the rising field of HER. For example, Professor Min Weifang, a trained educa-
tional economist from Stanford University, joined the Institute of Higher Education
Research at Peking University and led quantitative empirical research in higher educa-
tion planning, education economics, and finance in the1990s. Professor Chen
Xiangming, a colleague of Professor Min at Peking University, pioneered qualitative
methods in higher education, education, and social research in China in the late 1990s.
In the 1990s, four institutions were authorized to grant PhD degrees in higher
education, i.e., Xiamen University (since 1986), Peking University (since 1990),
7 Higher Education Research in China: An Independent Academic Field Under the State