Liang Chen’s new book A Study of the Living Standards and Social Structures of Faculty and Staff in Republic of China: Focusing on Tsinghua Campus was published in November 2020 by Beijing Science Press. Publication was supported by funding from the National Social Science Foundation.
The book systematically examines the numbers, work, family patterns, living standards, social status, and educational attainment of every category of Republican-era university employees through a case study of the Tsinghua campus. According to the results, from the perspective of living standards there were multiple strata in campus society. The income disparity between faculty, staff, and other groups was large. This created a structure in which differences were stark. Stratification in the “Tsinghua campus” was ostensibly reasonable, in principle based on position or title and the level of education. However, underpinning this structure were inequalities in access to education by wealth and geography origin associated with the general acceptance of the “Western learning” model of education and commensurate reduction in the role of education in social integration.
Here is the book page at Douban.
梁晨新著《民国大学教职员工生活水平与生活结构研究：以清华为中心》（A Study of the Living Standards and Social Structures of Faculty and Staff in Republic of China: Focusing on Tsinghua Campus）于2020年11月，在北京科学出版社出版。该书为“国家社科基金后期资助项目”，主要内容是对以“清华园”为代表的民国大学校园中各类从业群体的工作性质、人口数量、家庭规模、生活水平、社会地位以及教育获得的系统梳理和相关关系分析。分析发现“清华园”这样的校园社会中，以生活水平为标准，存在着多个阶层，教职员工各职业群体间的经济收
入相差悬殊，形成了差距鲜明，“恍若隔世”的生活水平结构。这种“校园社会”的阶层结构，基本以个体的职务或职称等级为基础，并以个体的教育获得差异为“合理性”依据，但背后实质上是近代中国全面接受“西学”教育体系过程中，教育获得极大地被财富和地理分布所左右，教育的社会融合功能大为降低。