Higher Education Research 1979-2008

Science of Higher Education was founded around 1979 in China, basically in accordance with reform and opening-up, which offered us the best sample to probe into disciplinary development. The citation rate of academic papers has been used to reflect papers'intensity of being paid attention to, and the continuity,application,developing and evaluation of research work. It's a widely used quantifying tool to suggest the changing course of discipline or research fields. By statistical studying and content analyzing highly cited papers published between 1979 and 2008 in higher education field, the characteristics of disciplinary development and research of higher education can be analyzed more objectively.The research problem of this paper is:From 1979 to 2008, in higher education research field in China, what characteristics are demonstrated in the distribution of research strength, research themes and methods? What its strengths and weaknesses are? From the category of 'higher education' in CNKI Chinese Citation Database (new), the author chooses 4253 highly cited papers published between 1979 and 2008 as research sample. By analyzing previous literature, the author firstly constructs the framework for analyzing of this paper. Then, citation analysis is employed to statistically analyze the basic information of highly cited papers, including the year of publication, authors, research institutes, journals and citation rates, to suggest the distribution of Chinese higher education research strength; Content analysis is employed to recognize and categorize research themes and methods to suggest their separate characteristics. A brief summary on the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese higher education research is presented finally.Research results show:Influenced by changing law of papers' citation rate and non-standard citing in early days, highly cited papers appears mostly between the year of 1997 and 2005; a few higher education journals, such as Higher Education Research, publish papers of higher academic influence; Universities is the major force in higher education research; Dispersed characteristics is demonstrated in authors distribution; A small amount of papers with relatively high citation rate become widely read and cited researches. Higher education research themes are highly affected by social issues, especially by the political trends and the public administrative guidance; Micro-empirical researches haven't been highly valued despite of the applied researches paid more attention to; As a research field, higher education research still lacks essential theoretical frameworks, and heavily relies on foreign higher education theory or pedagogy; And the construction of the principle about higher education and its methodology get ignored seriously; American and British higher education are predominant in comparative higher education research. The methodology of Chinese higher education research tends to diversify, but theoretical research still remains the major. The case study of research methods suggests speculative research only suits for higher education thinkers or leaders with rich practical experience and penetrating ideas and thoughts on higher education reform and development; Descriptive(qualitative) and investigation are the two main methods in qualitative and quantitative research respectively. The research norms of qualitative and quantitative research remain to be improved.The author thinks, while serving reform and development of higher education of our country, Chinese higher education research needs to keep its own independence of disciplinary research; Researchers need to look for the new point of growth of research and increase the concern about the micro-empirical researches; The construction of discipline and research methods should get more discussions at the same time; The construction of the basic theories of discipline should be strengthened, and scientific means should be applied to explore the law of higher education; Broadening the sight of getting to know foreign higher education and learning from the experience and lessons in different countries and regions are quite necessary. Higher education research must advocate empirical research, advance the diversification of research methods and develop the exquisite degree of research designs.In this research, the citation rate of highly cited papers has small sized error. Research results represent only the author's points of view. Higher education research front analysis, interaction analysis of higher education research and social progress, authors'inter-citation analysis of highly cited papers are follow-up research directions.