Dual Career of High-Performance Student Athletes in China (mainland): A Comparative Study Based on the Analysis of Partial Chinese national and Provincial Teams

Abstract

With the goal to highlight itself on international sports forums, most countries attached tremendous attention to competitive sports. The elite athletes, therefore, are forced to dedicate themselves more and more to achieve excellence in their athletic careers (Dawn Aquilina, 2013). In this case, much less time is left for them to develop other aspects outside of their sporting career. However, as a whole person, elite athletes should consider their post-athletic life. This drives them to develop their dual career. Aiming to develop China into a powerful sporting nation from the current major sporting nation, Chinese sports authorities have made great efforts in competitive sports, including investing the modern facilities, inviting foreign coaches, improving the welfare of athletes and providing more opportunities to receive higher education. To ensure the conduct, Chinese sports bodies, and educational authorities formulated a lot of policies. Nevertheless, there still exist some deficiencies. Within this study, a large number of participants involving 24 Olympic sports including 33 disciplines were surveyed, which was documented firstly in Chinese HPSA literature. This study made a contribution to the policy-maker of high-level stakeholders, in addition to providing necessities to the DC pathway of HPSA. This dissertation was developed to explore the dual career of Chinese student-athletes in mainland China by means of conducting an open-ended questionnaire towards partially elite student-athletes from national teams and provincial teams. In order to provide a whole picture of the dual career of Chinese student-athletes, this research adopted quantitative descriptive research based on three theoretical frameworks. In addition, European and American dual career policies were also discussed to compare with Chinese policies. The objectives of this dissertation were: 1) to explore the performance of Chinese High-Educational Institutions and sports authorities on facilitating college degree accomplishment towards student-athletes; 2) to examine the referenceable availability of European and American policies of high-performance student-athletes for Chinese authorities; 3) to identify the performance of high-performance student-athletes in their High-Educational Institutions context. All in all, the core objective was to address the central question: How is the development of the dual career of high-performance student-athletes in China? This research employed psychosocial, developmental, and economic frameworks to examine the development of DC of Chinese HPSA and their self-perception of the implementation of DC strategies of Chinese educational organizations and athletic authorities. 1) Holistic athletic career model was adopted to evaluate DC policies on the different development stages of elite athletes, among which both normative and nonnormative transitions of them were concerned. Meanwhile, the transitions arising at the athletic level, psychological level, psychosocial level, and academic/vocational level were also involved. 2) Human capital theory as an interdisciplinary approach was applied in this research to reveal the practice conducted in Chinese HEIs and sports bodies. 3) Resilience theory was introduced to appraise SA¿s performance in front of adversity. 4) In order to further explore the DC policies that prevailed in different countries, this research also expounded on the relationship between sports models and the social system. The radical differences between socialism and capitalism lead to different pursuits in their sports model. Nevertheless, no matter what sport model, it is much related to politics. As for the methodology, this doctoral thesis adopted a quantitative research approach. It was used to identify problems with current practices in the dual career of Chinese student-athletes, justify the current practices of Chinese sports and educational authorities, make judgments, or determine what all stakeholders should do in similar situations. Therefore, 1) A web-based questionnaire containing 79 items was used to collect data; 2) Participants (n=675, Mage =21.3 ) who take part in 21 Olympic sports and some other non-Olympic sports were involved; 3) The questionnaire was designed and analyzed from three aspects, including sports career, academic career, and tutoring service. Regarding the results, four conclusions were drawn: 1) Time constraints taking up a major barrier, which is consistent with historical literature that revealed time constraints served as a crucial challenge involving balancing academic performance and athletic achievement; 2) China has provided modern, cozy and convenient training facilities for student-athletes, but training service was underdeveloped, including the coaches, psychology, etc.; 3) Most Chinese universities have employed modern and athlete-friendly teaching methods, while some higher-educational institutions provided biased academic context, including limited majors, lacking specific tutor service, etc.; 4) Further enhancing self-resilience beliefs was necessary for student-athletes to improve their capability to cope with not only adversities faced in sports but outside of sports.