Study On Factors Affecting University Faculty’s Application For Research Programs: Evidence From Tsinghua University

Universities play an important role in science innovation in China, making greatcontribution to building an innovative country. Innovative scientific activities inuniversities mostly rely on various scientific programs, in which teachers are both theappliers and undertakers. In these years, some problems appear in the process ofapplying and managing scientific programs in universities such as lacking innovativeresearch results, abuse of scientific funds, and low cost for manpower in scientificprograms. These problems are not only related to macro environment in our country, butalso reflection of micro behaviors of teachers in universities. Therefore, study on factorsaffecting university faculty`s application for research programs helps to understand thecauses of existing situation of research programs application in universities, and thusacts as a reasonable reference to guiding the behaviors of university teachers, in order tohelp build China as an innovative country.This paper studies on university faculty`s application for research programs, takingTsinghua University as an example, and build an explanatory framework based ongrounded theory, which is a typical qualitative research method. Through interviewing25university teachers, and analyzing the records which are more than120thousandcharacters, this paper constructs a theoretical framework making an integration of “cost-benefit“analysis and “subject-object“analysis. The main logic of the frameworkis that the subject features, object features, as well as other subjects impact thebehaviors of subject in a direct way and environment generates an indirect impact. Thebehaviors of university faculty refer to making choices among different kinds ofresearch programs from different sources, at different levels, in different orientation,and in other dimensions. The subject features include subjective consciousness andobjective conditions; object features include costs and benefits of the program; othersubjects include research teams and the university which teachers belong to.This paper also gives an explanation to the theoretic framework through analyzingfrequency of the nodes, and structure of relationship among different concepts, as wellas matrix analysis. With analysis of node frequency, this paper explores the effects ofdifferent factors on behaviors of university faculty, which, sorted by frequency in descending order, are personal values, evaluation mechanism of university, individualacademic ability, economic benefits of the research program, as well as personalrelationship etc. Through analysis of structure of relationship among different concepts,this paper, based on specific cases and text contents, reveals the causal link betweendifferent factors and faculty`s behavior. By matrix analysis this paper discusses thecorrelation between different factors and behaviors of university faculty in applying tocertain kinds of research program. According to the findings, factors effecting theapplication of crosswise projects most are the type of discipline, personal relationship,economic benefits, as well as the management of funds. Factors effecting theapplication of longitudinal projects most are evaluation mechanism of university,individual academic ability, personal relationship, and personal values. Factors effectingthe application of national projects most are evaluation mechanism of university,difficulties in applying the program, age and experience, as well as reputation of theuniversity. Factors effecting the application of major projects most are individualacademic ability, age and experience, personal relationship, and capacity of organizing.Finally, according to the results of the analysis, this paper presents some policysuggestions such as building a comprehensive assessment system on university faculty`sperformance, promoting the reforms of management system of research funds,improving the reviewing mechanism of research programs, strengthening theconstruction of organizational culture of universities, increasing support for youngfaculty in doing research, as well as making some preferential policies to help femalefaculty in applying research programs.