Entrepreneurial reforms of Chinese universities in the Greater Bay Area : experiences, strategies, and tensions

Abstract

Staring from the West, recent global reforms in higher education institutions (HEIs) have been greatly influenced by the tendency to developing entrepreneurial universities. Entrepreneurial reforms advocate the third mission of universities worldwide, enabling them to perform complex and even conflicting missions and roles. Although much attention has been given to the external roles of universities in societal transformation and their contributions to economic development, the missions and ideas of a university have been neglected in the reforms. This study attempts to elucidate how the traditional functions and classic ideas of the university have been transformed in entrepreneurial reforms in some Chinese universities. This study has adopted mixed methods research that consists of online survey and case study under the paradigm of pragmatism. It takes the emerging Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) as the research site. The GBA is a highly innovative and entrepreneurial region of social and economic changes in South China. The data was collected through a questionnaire of 87 practitioners in 10 universities in the GBA and semi-structured interviews with 71 administrators, academics, and potential student entrepreneurs in Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU), South China University of Technology (SCUT), Shengzhen University (SZU), and Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech).

After examining China’s unsustainable and fragmented approach to developing entrepreneurial universities, as depicted in literature, policy, and practice, the study reports three findings concerning the impacts of the extended third function in teaching, research, and the links among the three university functions: (1) Besides the development of entrepreneurship education, teaching and learning are undergoing a profound transformation to develop innovative and entrepreneurial talents of composite qualities through the integration of industry and education. (2) Based on a combined impetus of curiosity, national strategy, and market demands, academics engage more in polyvalent knowledge production in hybrid nexuses and hubs of multi-functions. (3) The reshaping of teaching and research urges an integration of the three university functions into a stronger joint force that creates a spillover effect from universities to the society. Additionally, the pursuit of excellence and efficiency has altered academic freedom and university autonomy, leaving the traditional humanist mission of universities in crisis. Academic excellence is promoted through the statist academic freedom integrated with entrepreneurship. The combination of political and administrative powers further weakens the academic power within Chinese universities via corporate governance. To conclude, this study postulates the inter-relatedness of teaching, research, and social engagement as the core feature of the entrepreneurial university. Warning the loss of the ideals of the university, it suggests that universities worldwide need to be more strategic in pursuing their changes in the present dynamic environment.