Promoting the reform of university faculty’ salary system is an important means to improve the qualifications of university faculties. The base salary system should be brought into theoretical discussion and practical reform because of its dual functions of security and incentive for university faculty. Based on relevant policies, administrative data and universities faculty’ salaries survey data, this study analyzes the implementation of the university faculty’ base salary system in China. We find that the base salary system has some problems, such as centralized management, inconsistency between basic salary level and local economic development level, low starting point, low proportion of base salary, inconsistency between the design of salary grade and the law of salary management, and failure of salary adjustment to achieve policy expectations, which inhibits security and incentive effect of base salary. In view of the above problems, combined with the salary management theory, the following policy implications are proposed. Firstly, the human resources and social security departments of central government should establish a unified national base salary system for university faculty, and the provincial government should formulate an overall base salary scale. Secondly, the minimum of base salary of university faculty and the base salary of faculties in developed provinces should be raised moderately to ensure their actual purchasing power. Thirdly, simplify the elements of university faculty’ salary and gradually increase the proportion of base salary. Fourthly, improve the grade difference of the base salary at each post level, and adjust the floating range of the base salary to enhance the medium and long-term incentive effect on faculties. Finally, the adjustment of base salary scale should take into account its proportion in total salary and its grade, and ensure that the increase of base salary and the proportion of base salary in total salary are reasonable.
中国人文社会科学核心期刊