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East China Normal University (since 1993), and Huazhong University of Science
and Technology (since 1996). Those PhD programs in HER produced around 100
PhD graduates specialized in higher education in the 1990s. With an increasing
number of scholars working in the field, their personal research trajectories in higher
education have defined and shaped HER as a clear and well-bounded academic
field. Around 80 percent of the top 20 cited authors from the 1980s to 2000s were
from this generation and the first generation of HE researchers (Fan and Gao 2010 ).
After 1999: The Third Generation
The year of 1999 represented a significant turning point in the history of Chinese
higher education from an elite system to a mass one. The enrollment rate of higher
education in 1999 increased by 50% in a single year. Such a policy-led system
expansion created numerous practical issues and problems, but they in turn acceler-
ated growth of HER in China by providing abundant research topics previously
unexplored. The vibrant growth of the field has created plentiful research opportuni-
ties as the field consolidates on the basis of soft but applicable knowledge in study-
ing practice (Labaree 1998 ; Terenzini 1996 ).
There were 10 PhD and 60 masters of higher education programs validated by
the state in 2003 (Li 2005 : 300). It was until 2009 that a professional degree of
Doctor of Education (EdD) was established. Such a professional degree symbolized
further development of the field to differentiate scholarly research and professional
practice. Professional and practical relevance have been highlighted in such pro-
grams when training university administrators and policy-makers in the field of
higher education.
Scholarship and the State Institutionalizing the Field
Beyond scholars as actors making and shaping the HER in China, the field has been
informally and formally institutionalized and legitimized by academic power from
scholarship and the state. It is far from enough for a group of scholars gathered and
claimed their academic identity as a scholarly field in China. The state holds the
substantial and symbolic power to legitimize and recognize the establishment of
such a field. An academic field stands as field only after being approved and enlisted
in the national academic catalogue of disciplines. Otherwise academic units could
not recruit students and issue-recognized diploma.
In the 1980s, accompanied by the recovery and revival of higher education in
China after the Cultural Revolution, HER was legitimated by the state as a subdis-
cipline under education in 1983. At the same time, forerunners fueled substantive
academic activities through taught programs, independent research, conferences,
societies, and liaison between a growing number of institutes of higher education
L. Hu and S. Chen