Recently, six departments including the Ministry of Science and Technology ("MOST") have jointly issued the Several Opinions on Granting Institutions of Higher Learning and Scientific Research Academies More Autonomy in Affairs Related to Research (the "Opinions").
The Opinions outline measures for "improving the administrative mechanism for operation of institutions", "optimizing the scientific research management mechanism", "reforming the approaches to human resources management", and "improving the means to distribute performance-based wages", and support institutions of higher learning and scientific research academies to exercise their autonomy in scientific research in accordance with laws and regulations. According to the Opinions, the scientific research expenditure management mechanism will be improved; to be more specific, the ways in which the indirect expenditure budget is prepared and distributed will be reformed, and such budget will no longer be prepared by the project heads and instead, the project management departments (entities) will directly assess the budget and then go through formalities to directly allocate funds to the entities undertaking the projects. Furthermore, the Opinions call for practically delegating the authority for professional title evaluation and stress that institutions of higher learning and scientific research institutes are allowed to provide fast tracks for professional title evaluation for urgently-needed high-level intellectuals they introduce and talented people that have made prominent contributions, under the evaluation criteria without limits on their seniority or period of services, as long as the criteria and procedures for such evaluation are made definite and relevant information is published.