The Third Mission, Governance and Higher Education: A Study of the Social Service Mission in Chinese Universities

Higher education (HE)’s role in society has undergone significant transformation in recent decades. The rise of the knowledge economy, neoliberalism, and escalating societal challenges have meant increasing expectations for HE to make broader impacts beyond teaching and research. This shift is evident in the third mission (TM) concept, which encapsulates universities’ contributions across economic, social, sustainable, political and cultural dimensions. This thesis explores how the TM is conceptualised and operationalised in China, an under-researched context. It focuses on the social service mission (SSM) – China’s indigenous equivalent of the TM – by investigating its portrayal in multilevel policies and its implementation within universities. Adopting a comparative case study approach, it explores how the SSM conforms to or differs from the prevailing Anglophone conceptualisation predominantly derived from Western systems. The study investigates three public universities within China’s stratified system, exemplifying what I term tri-faceted identification of sponsorship, prestige and locationality. University governance, particularly Clark’s (1983) Triangle of Coordination, serves as the main conceptual framework. Qualitative data are principally collected from documentary sources and semi-structured interviews. This study argues that the SSM in China functions primarily as a state-led policy instrument for achieving multi-level government agendas. The SSM manifests distinct forms, actors, and outcomes, compared to TM’s widespread understanding underpinned by the economic-centric entrepreneurial university framing. This divergence is shaped by China’s centralised HE governance and principal-supervisor-agent governance mechanism. Three case universities operationalise the SSM differently, reflecting varying degrees of state influence corresponding to their three-pronged institutional identities. A notable tension is identified between what I term the dominant state-driven SSM activities, such as technology transfer, and marginal community-oriented initiatives. This study challenges TM’s entrepreneurship-centric conceptualisation, offering contextualised understanding of universities’ evolving functions from non-Western realities. It also raises critical questions about the intersection between universities’ expanding roles and their core academic purposes.