Assessing the Tenure-Track Policy’s Impact on Early-Career Academic Well-Being in Chinese Universities: Perspectives from Academics and Administrators

Since the 1990s, China has increasingly localised neoliberal-inspired tenure-track policies in its higher education system, replacing the traditional bianzhi system with a competitive ‘up-or-out’ model. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with early-career academics and university administrators, this study critically explores how such policies affect academic well-being. It identifies three key findings: (a) the relentless evaluation cycle fosters constant pressure, undermining professional well-being; (b) contract-based employment and high-performance demands cause psychological stress and job insecurity, with those failing to meet expectations facing unemployment and psychological distress; (c) while administrators acknowledge these harms, they strictly enforce the policy to boost productivity, reflecting broader structural constraints and neoliberal logics prioritising output over support. This study contributes to understanding how neoliberal governance reshapes academic careers in centralised systems, revealing tensions between global higher education models and local policy adaptations that directly impact the well-being of early-career academics in China’s evolving university sector.