Extensive academic growth: tenure-track reform and the model of natural scientific research in China

Drawing on 15 years of administrative records and bibliographic data from China’s 76 Ministry of Education-affiliated universities, this study constructs a panel dataset to evaluate tenure-track reform impacts on natural science research and to forecast their long-term effects through multi-period difference-in-differences and panel vector autoregression analyses. The findings reveal that while the tenure-track reform has boosted SCI-indexed publications and citations substantially, these gains stem predominantly from expanded ‘faculty stuffing’ and R&D input. Its effects on per capita productivity or cost efficiency demonstrate no significant improvement. These results indicate that China’s current academic expansion predominantly follows an extensive growth model, characterized by scale-driven progression rather than substantive efficiency gains. Longitudinal analysis demonstrates that the reform’s stimulation of research output peaks in Year 7 before diminishing to marginal significance by Year 25, whereas its enhancement of academic influence declines monotonically into statistical irrelevance by Year 10. Significant efficiency improvements emerge post Year 10, with China’s scientific development potentially transitioning toward an intensive growth path after 2 decades of implementation. This analysis elucidates how tenure-track mechanisms reconfigure research productivity trajectories in Chinese higher education, providing empirical insights for aligning faculty incentives with institutional research priorities in evolving academic systems.