Higher Education And The Development Of Regional Interaction

It is addressed in the first International Conference on Higher Education that the essential mission of the universities is to give impetus on the sustainable development and progress of society. In the coming age of knowledge economy,higher education will move from the margin to the center of society and become the engine of social development. The history of western advanced countries shows that the mutually promoting relations between higher education and regional society are necessary for the both to develop jointly.In China,with the deepening of the system reform of economy,science and technology and higher education,the spread of the ideal of life-long education and the coming age of mass higher education,there has been a favorable opportunity and policy environment for the mutual promotion between higher education and regional society. And distinguished results have been achieved in this kind of reform,which include:More subjects take part in the mutually promoting process. Governments,industries,universities,institutes and banks are cooperating more closely.The regional limit in the mutually promoting process is broken and cross- region cooperation is expanding rapidly.The industry concerning higher education is becoming the effective way to reinforce the regional economic strength. Etc.In spite of these results,we have to admit that there remain many problems during the process:Universities and industries are still separated seriously.The investment of government in higher education is insufficient while the government intervene too much in the development of universities.The mechanism of mutual promotion is not perfect and the regulationsconcemed need to be amplified and carried out effectively.There is great gap in the development of higher education in different regions.These problems hinder the mutual development of higher education and regional society and are unfavorable to the improvement of regional comprehensive strength.Innovations of organizations,mechanisms and regulations will be the effective ways to solve these problems and promote the common progress. The innovation of organizations is the basic prerequisite of the reform in the mutually promoting process,which includes:to improve the ability of universities to create knowledge-based industries;to build and perfect the intermediary organizations of technology;and to formulate a running system of higher education which includes both public and private institutions. The innovation of mechanisms,the core of the reform,includes:to adopt the idea of common progress;to improve the mechanism of risk investment by stock and bond;To reform the flexible mechanism of personnel mobility by taking the ability as the most important factor;to perfect the incentive mechanism by policy guiding;and to make use of the intermediary organizations of evaluation and reform evaluation system. As the final insurance of the mutual promotion between higher education and regional society,the innovation of regulations includes:to improve and put into effect the regulations concerning hi-tech industries and risk investment;build a learning system favorable to the widening of access to higher education;and to reform the personnel regulations,etc.