As early as Oct. 26th, 2012, the co

As early as Oct. 26th, 2012, the committee made anonymous ballot on the renewal of the employment contract with 12 faculties (including Xia Yeliang) on the expiration of their contracts. 22 of 33 members of the committee were present for the anonymous ballot. The result for Xia Yeliang was: 11 ballots against the renewal of his contract, 10 affirmative ones, and one abstention. It indicated that the contract with Xia Yeliang could not be renewed. Xia Yeliang was notified of the result in time. In order to provide Xia Yeliang with an opportunity to improve his performance, the School decided to revisit the issue of the renewal of his contract in one school year, with the approval of the University. On Oct. 11th this year, the committee reconvened to decide “if the result of the last year’s anonymous ballot should be sustained”. 34 of 37 members of the committee were present (with four new members, including two newly-promoted full professors and two professors who returned as overseas visiting scholars). The result was 30 ballots against the renewals of his contract, three ballots for it, and one abstention, indicating far stronger opinion against Xia’s renewal. The notification was officially sent to Xia Yeliang on Oct. 18th, 2013.

The reason that most members of the committee voted against the renewal of Xia Yeliang’s contract lies in the performance of his teaching and research. With regard to his teaching, the result of annual teaching assessments since 2008 showed that he ranked lowest among the School faculties three times, the third lowest once, the fourth lowest once. His best performance was the sixth from the bottom twice. During the same period, more than 340 pieces of students’ complaints and criticism on his teaching were received, including a letter of request signed by over 20 students to demand replacing Xia Yeliang. Such a demand is extremely rare at Peking University. The students mostly complained about his digressive talks and excessive waste of time on materials irrelevant to the course. Some of the comments are sharp criticism, for example “Please teach economics in class; don’t bullshit!” “You put the cart before the horse.” “Too much superficial digression.” “His words are full of garbage.” Some of the students’ comments described his teaching as extremely shallow, for example, “We need genuine knowledge”, “You teach too little as academic study.” The rumor on the internet that Xia Yelaing’s courses are “popular” is simply untrue. On the registration record of the School of Economics , for the three courses that Xia Yeliang proposed to teach in this school year, one was chosen by seven students, one by eight, and one by only three, which was cancelled because the three applicants failed to reach the minimum requirement of the University.