Understanding the Ineffective Transplant of the Personal Tutor System at the Sino-Foreign University

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_7How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Personal Tutor System; Sino-foreign University; Systemic Conflict

Abstract

This study takes one of the earliest Sino-foreign universities in China as an example to investigate why the Personal Tutor System (PTS), transplanted from the British higher education context to the Chinese context, functions below expectations despite its intended role in supporting students’ academic and personal development. Most recent existing research simply attributes the system’s underperformance to Chinese students’ cultural backgrounds and low motivation to seek teachers’ help. However, little attention has been paid to tutors’ perceptions or the Chinese institutional environment in which the system operates. Using a qualitative approach, this study conducts semi-structured interviews with a group of students and tutors to compare their expectations, understandings, and experiences of the PTS. Three key problems undermining the system’s effectiveness emerged: 1. Unclear definition of roles; 2. Mismatch between tutors’ academic backgrounds and students’ actual needs; 3. Absence of compulsory attendance requirements. All these results show that the PTS at this university has only been transplanted in a procedural manner, operating with low efficiency and poor quality. Hence, the study provides some advice to reform this system, including clearer role communication, implementing a bidirectional tutor–student matching system, and enforcing evaluation mechanisms.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jinlu Liu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/07
TI  - Understanding the Ineffective Transplant of the Personal Tutor System at the Sino-Foreign University
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 12th International Conference on Digital Humanities and Frontiers in Social Sciences (DHFSS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 50
EP  - 59
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_7
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-611-6_7
ID  - Liu2026
ER  -