The Way of Operating a Modern University

Author: Xu Tongwen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: As the president and Party secretary of a comprehensive university, with over a decade of management experience and rational reflection in higher education, coupled with visits and research at over a dozen universities in Asia and Europe, I have increasingly come to realize a fact: Chinese universities are in a critical period of reform and transformation in terms of educational philosophy, development orientation, development models, educational systems, and internal management systems. In other words, Chinese higher education reform is entering a critical phase, and Chinese universities, after their journey, are now at a crossroads. Of course, we cannot be like Yangzi in the Warring States period, "crying at the crossroads because it could lead south or north." Chinese universities urgently need deep reform. Their fundamental task and goal is to build a modern higher education system and modern university system with Chinese characteristics, which is our only unavoidable path.
1. Socio-Economic Transformation and the Choices Facing University Education
The path taken by modern Chinese higher education, overall, has been one of learning from and innovating upon Western capitalism. Chinese higher education has always strived to find a model that suits its own development, a process marked by gradually strengthening subject consciousness. In recent years, with the transformation of the socio-economy, issues such as the scale of higher education development, massification of higher education, the impact of joining the WTO on higher education and countermeasures, and how higher education can deepen its institutional reform have emerged. In my opinion, these issues are typical of the local characteristics in the development of Chinese higher education, reflecting the strong local awareness and subjective reflection of Chinese higher education researchers. Every higher education manager and researcher, whether explicitly or implicitly, feels the following issue: Chinese universities are facing three major choices.
(1) Conceptual Choices During the Transition from Elite to Mass Education
The massification of higher education in China, which began in the late 20th century, not only reflects the continuous expansion of educational scale but also the greatly increased attention to higher education. In the elite education era, people's attention to higher education was more external. In recent years, the expansion of higher education scale and the increase in its variety have provided a material foundation for meeting people's educational needs to a large extent, thus promoting greater fairness in higher education. However, the task of Chinese higher education is far from simply increasing educational resources. Chinese higher education has already passed the period of rapid expansion, and this expansion has gradually shifted the landscape of higher education from the elite era to the mass era. But we must also be clear that this rapid expansion has, to some extent, affected the guarantee and improvement of educational quality. In the mass education era, learners have more choices in education—the right to choose high-quality education that suits them. Facing these choices, Chinese higher education has two paths: one is to define its position accurately; the other is to enhance its core competitiveness. Regardless of the level of higher education institutions—whether it is prestigious universities like Peking University and Tsinghua University or a large number of private universities and vocational colleges—they will all face this severe issue. In this context, Chinese higher education will fully enter the era of quality, moving from an emphasis on expansion to an era of building substantive depth.
(2) Management Model Choices During the Transition from a Planned Economy to a Market Economy
The transition of higher education from a planned economy to a market economy can be described as a relatively long process, closely linked to China's economic system reform and development and beyond the control of individual will. The shift in management models from a planned economy to a market economy primarily involves a transformation from management to operation. Whoever achieves a rapid transition in the management model during this period will seize the opportunity for development; whoever passively waits for the transformation will miss the chance. P21-22