In recent decades, personnel and performance appraisal system reforms have been implemented in higher education across the world. These reforms have brought about profound changes to China’s higher education system, including an increase in qualitative job insecurity among faculty teaching staff at Chinese colleges and universities. Faculty teaching staff must strive to meet the tenure standards or suffer a reduction in salary level, promotion opportunities, and other valued features of their jobs. Through the lens of conservation of resources and regulatory focus theories, we examined qualitative job insecurity and its consequences among a sample of 228 faculty teaching staff of higher education institutions in China. Our results showed that qualitative job insecurity was associated in this population with lower levels of work motivation, work adjustment, and life wellbeing. Furthermore, staff who had a higher promotion focus reacted more negatively to qualitative job insecurity, as evidenced by an even greater decrease in work adjustment and life wellbeing.