A new rating system will soon be introduced in China to grade college teachers based on their teaching and research performance, replacing the long-standing practice of seniority-based titles at universities, according to a government notice.

Jointly issued by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Personnel, the notice said college teaching staff would be graded according to 13 additional levels, besides the present four positional titles of professor, associate professor, lecturer and teaching assistant, China Daily reported Thursday.

The different levels mean different income and treatment.

The new rating system will guarantee professors and lecturers treatment in accordance with their achievements.

Moreover, schools can also try to set up teaching-oriented and research-oriented posts under a reward system that better reflects the different contributions made by teachers with the same title, the notice said.

The present positional title system for university professors offers life tenure with the same titles enjoying the same treatment. Consequently, a teacher's income does not reflect different teaching and research contributions.

The move is designed to reverse the growing trend among some teachers of concentrating more on publishing academic papers -- an important criteria for becoming a professor -- while neglecting their teaching duties, a spokesman with the Ministry of Education was quoted as saying.

Zhu Longjie, a statistics professor with Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, found that there was a serious shortage of qualified teachers in colleges and universities.

"To make things worse, teachers with high positional titles always tend to reduce the time to give lectures to undergraduates, " Zhu said.

A recent survey by Zhu and his colleagues found that in 71 colleges and universities affiliated with the Ministry of Education, 25 percent of professors and 20 percent of associate professors were not teaching undergraduates from behind a podium.

Hong Chengwen, a management professor with Beijing Normal University, said when the rating method is put into practice it must be properly bedded down.

"The rating system needs to be executed in a more detailed way, targeting different types of universities. For example, teaching-oriented universities or research-oriented ones, universities belonging to the central government or belonging to the local government; therefore the system should be more tailored," Hong said.

"The rating system should give schools enough power to make their own decision on staff leveling to encourage their innovative ability in management," he said.

(Xinhua News Agency, March 6, 2008)