No honey for 'Worker Bee' female university profs

Helen Huang, 31, got her dream job of being on faculty at a medical university in Jinan, Shandong Province. She was enthusiastic about teaching and being around young students for the first few years, but her passion gradually waned. She had to navigate the sophisticated system of guanxi to advance her academic title while coping with the pressure of doing research and having her research papers published. After the birth of her child two years ago, Huang focused more on her family, and the once-prestigious occupation of professor became just a way of making a living for her.

Huang's story resembles those of other faculty surveyed by Chinese sociologist Lian Si for his latest book, Worker Bees: The Life of Young University Teachers, published in September. In the book, Lian compares young university teachers under the age of 40 to worker bees, the lowest species in the caste system of the bee society.

The worker bee is female but lacks the full reproductive capacity of queen bees. With a life lasting only about six months, they work all their life to feed the queen, drones and larva, and are responsible for sealing honey, building and cleaning the honeycombs.

"Young university teachers share similarities with worker bees. They both are hardworking and intelligent. But they are at the lower stratus of the society," said Lian, who coined the term "ant tribe" in 2009 to refer to low-income Chinese college graduates who live in cramped buildings and endured hardships in the big cities of China.

Lian and his team conducted surveys among 5,400 teachers under the age of 40 in 135 universities in five Chinese cities, including Beijing, in 2011. Over 70 percent of respondents said they faced pressure to conduct research and take on a large teaching workload, all while accepting a low income. About 80 percent said they made an annual income of between 30,000 and 60,000 yuan ($4,800 and $9,500). About 80 percent said that based on their income, they were at the middle or lower status of the social stratum.

Besides the low pay and status, the book also reveals the disappointment and helplessness some of them face in a society that puts more value on money and power than knowledge.

"What concerns me most is that a lot of them have lost their passion and enthusiasm for knowledge. Instead, they see the teaching job just as a paycheck," said Lian, also an associate professor with the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing.

Chinese professors are usually referred to as intellectuals, who are supposed to be engaging in research in a certain field, spreading knowledge to young students, and taking a critical look at various social or economic issues.

However, that's not the case, according to what Lian's team has found out.

"A lot of them are focusing on going after academic titles," said Lian. "The overall academic environment is responsible for this as well," Lian said.

"Even at our university, we have the unwritten rule that you have to quit your job if you could not be conferred the title of associate professor five years after you become a lecturer," said Lian. A teacher's academic performance is usually judged on the number of papers published, awards received or projects conducted.

Among the respondents, 75 percent consider guanxi to be the primary factor in gaining academic titles.

However, the book has not aroused as much concern for teachers as Lian's ant tribe research did for college graduates. Lian has faced criticism for overlooking the benefits that teachers receive. For example, teachers usually have three months holiday every year, and their children can go to nursery, primary or middle schools attached to the universities without paying entrance fees that could reach upwards of 100,000 yuan in some cases.

"In Beijing, a lecturer of two or three years can be paid 60,000 to 80,000 yuan a year. Given the long holiday we enjoy, that seems fair to me," said Wendy Guan, an English lecturer in her early 30s.