Creating world-class universities (WCUs) has recently become a significant policy and practice in higher education in China under the Double World-Class Project. However, some negative effects have encouraged decoupling from the policy goals. To identify the reasons, we conducted policy document analysis and purposive interviews at three elite…

In recent years, "creating world-class universities" has been an important project on the Chinese mainland. With the all-encompassing internationalization of higher education in the global market, it is of the utmost importance that the quality of universities be improved and that some of the top universities are pushed to become…