University teachers are the key strength of university and academic development, who can promote the university's vitality and creativity. The evaluation and engagement system is the core element of the university system, which has a decisive influence on the prosperity or decline of a university. The evaluation and engagement also involves the personnel management, academic evaluation, governance system etc., which is the axis of the university and may cause all the parts to move if it turns. This is particularly true for Republican Chinese universities since the modern university concept was introduced into China. There have been various insightful discussions on this issue, but most of them were the presentation of facts, which lack systematic in-depth interpretation, and failed to make comprehensive analysis of the internal relationship between Chinese and foreign universities' evaluation and engagement. On the whole, the research in this area is extremely inadequate. What kind of course did the universities' evaluation and engagement system go through in modern China? What are the general form, internal logic, historical meaning and practical significance? These issues need to be further explored. Modern Chinese universities started in the late 19th century, and the evaluation & engagement system evolved with the universities' development. From the 1890s to the early time of the Northern Warlords, the evaluation & engagement system was deeply influenced by Japan, but teacher professionalism was not ideal and the quality of staff was uneven. The reform of Peking University led by Cai Yuanpei directed this system gradually on the right track, which, to some extent, resulted from absorbing the nutrients from European universities. Meanwhile, Southeast University introduced more ideas of American universities. Generally speaking, during the Northern Warlords time, the university president had considerable decision-making power on the issue of the evaluation & engagement. It seems that the evaluation and engagement of teachers were relatively rough and arbitrary, and the degree of institutionalization was relatively low. After entering the period of Nanjing National Government in 1927, a series of policies were issued and implemented in the whole country. The evaluation and engagement of university teachers became more standardized, mature and strict, and the standards were significantly improved. Especially after the 1930s, the level of evaluation and engagement for university teachers increased rapidly, while the number of returned overseas Chinese who got doctorates from famous foreign universities was greatly reduced. Both local scholars and returnees fully competed in an active academic market. The result was that the Chinese knowledge-community made great progress and better integrated into the world academic system. International exchanges became increasingly active, and China's academic autonomy was significantly enhanced. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the presidential autonomous evaluation & engagement system was diluted and the state power was more deeply involved in the university governance. It can be concluded from the above discussion that, after a long-term exploration, China formed a more reasonable evaluation & engagement system for university teachers, absorbed nutrients from other countries and was also in line with China's actual conditions. The university evaluation & engagement systems in Germany, France, Britain, the United States, Japan and other countries had their own characteristics. The Chinese intelligentsia made extensive reference, but mainly learned from the experience of the United States. By taking the American ″complete external employment system″ and ″up or out″ system as frame of reference, China formed the cumulative promotion and engagement system of ″no appointment and out″ , and prestigious universities also formed their own characteristics. This system started to take root in China and promoted the rapid development of Chinese academy. In this regard, the evaluation and engagement for university teachers in modern China was not entirely a product of human creation, but a system formed by the joint actions of the social environment, academic production, educational reform and international exchange, which was an important achievement of modern China's system construction. In this process, the system and personnel, ideas and interests, domestic and international factors interacted intricately, which finally formed a very complex network structure. To a certain extent, this process is a miniature of the evolution of modern Chinese academy and society, and reflected the process of modernization of Chinese academy and higher education.
刘超 田正平. 中国近代大学教师评聘制度的历史考察——以国立名校为中心[J]. 浙江大学学报(人文社会科学版), 2020, 6(2): 18-.
Liu Chao Tian Zhengping. A Historical Study on the Evaluation and Engagement System of Republican Chinese Universities: Investigation on the Prestigious National Universities. JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY, 2020, 6(2): 18-.