Study Of Legality Of The University's Executive Power In China

When it comes to the relationship between the academic power and the executive power given to a university, the latter has always been subjected to criticism. A logical probe into the question whether a university's executive power is legitimate or not is of much necessity for a better university administration.With the development of the university and the evolution of the society, a university's executive power was alienated by the scholars'power; meanwhile, the government must authorize the university for a certain degree of public management, which is decided on by the university's legal status representing the public. Hereby, the university's executive power comes into its logical and historical being with the demand of the university itself as well as the government's authorization.Existence does not necessarily mean legality, which includes legality both in force and in form. Constructing the base that the university's executive power is legitimate entails both the university rules on which depends the legality in force and the university regulations on which depends the legality in form, for legality entitled to the university's executive power is described as the unified requirements made for the members at a certain level or position at the organizations or the university community who enforce their powers in accordance with the university rules and the university regulations. Due to the fact that the university's executive power takes the public responsibility on the part of the university and administers the university in accordance with bureaucracy, and the fact that political legality and resources supply are two factors essential for the university's existence and development, the university's executive power is supposed to lay its foundation from the following four aspects:public responsibility, bureaucracy, political legality and resources dependence.The "context", university, must be taken into consideration in the process in which the university's executive power constructs its legitimate foundation. When exercising its power, the university's executive power will be confronted with crises such as cultural identity, organizational identity and recognition program if the university's executive power goes beyond the university's nature of knowledge and violates the basic domain of academia in the name of exercising public responsibility, intending to execute both "university will" and "academic will" in this Academic-Administration Community; if the university's executive power places excessive weight on bureaucracy, paying no attention to the fact that the university is a loosely organized institution, which results in its managerial uncertainty, its dispersion embodied in its managerial objectives, its diversity of the power structure and its private nature and internal oversight of the executive power itself; if the university's executive power takes its political legality as a primary objective and a major pursuit by adhering to the political philosophy of higher education; if the university's executive power plays "a key and irreplaceable role" in distributing material resources necessary for the normal operation of the university and academic resources needed for the development of academic disciplines.Legality entitled to power does not necessarily mean that power has been legally enforced. With an analysis of the university circumstances, under which the system was founded, the organizational structure, which was based on the system, and the power relations in the organizational structure in the following four historical periods:the end of the Qing Dynasty, Republic of China, National Government and the establishment of New China forward, there are many disadvantages in the universities in China such as executive power dominance, utilitarianism orientation, traditional lack of autonomy and lagging in institutions, which bring about the fact that the university's executive power has been excessively reinforced, bureaucracy has improperly functioned, political legality has been extremely highlighted, the government has been heavily depended upon in the allocation of resources. All these leave the foundation of legality in collapse, and consequently, crises arise from the legitimate exercise of executive power.Confronted with crises, while transforming public corporation, the university executive power, which on one hand is a reasonable existence, should on the other hand integrate legality in force with legality in form by recognizing heterogeneity of bureaucracy in university administrations.Under the circumstances where the government's power and the university's power are not distributed in a balanced way and also the executive power and the academic power are not evenly matched with each other, the balance in distributing the powers to the university and the government on one hand must be kept with the guarantee that university automomy should be implemented by law, on the other hand, the practice should be objectively acknowledged that academic power and executive power recyle their own legality by taking advantage of each other. Meanwhile, tension balance will be formed in the process of correcting the tendency that academic power is transferring its focus on acdemia to power and turning its pursuit of truth to the pursuit of profits.