From Government To Governance

The problem on relationship between the government and universities has undergone a long history, and has been paid much attention by our nation's higher education administration reformers as well, though it has never been addressed smoothly. In this dissertation I try to explore this problem at a unique perspective of governance theory. By introducing a tertiary organization into our research, I tend to form a 3-D research field including three subjects, namely government, universities and the Third Sector so as to break the researching stereotype on the relationship between the government and universities which is either only from the point of the governments or only from the universities, and to demolish all the previous arguments based on the relationship of the dominating and the dominated and establish a newly cooperative relationship instead. We sincerely hope that my research could help to create a favorable external system for the sound development of our nation's academes. Amid this time of grand transformation, both internal and external environments for higher education development are undergoing profound changes. It is an inevitable trend for higher education to be internationalized, to be commercialized and to be massed. The reform of higher education administration system is progressing rapidly. There is an increasingly louder voice for the establishment of a modern system of higher learning institutions. Paces are quickened to build world-class universities. Under the new situations and backgrounds, it is increasingly imperative to establish a harmonious and reasonable relationship between the government and higher education institutions. Since there has been no institulized regulation to define and guarantee this relationship, for years, the government with an upper hand has often arbitrarily interfered with the routine affairs of the institutions and encroached on their autonomy in running the institutions. Higher education institutions fall into non-government, non-profit organizations rather than administrative bodies. The mission of higher education institutions is to explore, develop and create knowledge, so the government should administer the institutions according to their essence as organizations and with a purpose of providing services to promote their healthy development. To attain this goal, the government inevitably needs to adopt a fundamentally different mode in its administration of higher education institutions, that is, to shift from its past mode of "government" to a new mode of "governance", so as to create a favorable external environment in terms of institution for the development of higher learning institutions. "Governance" here is defined as the various individual or institutional ways of running a public or private organization as a whole, including the enforcement of formal institutional arrangement or agreed upon informal institutional arrangement. The shift from "government" to "governance" is a trend and direction in the reform of the government's administration of higher education as well as other public affairs. A government of "governance" type is a definite and effective one, rather than an "omnipotent" one. The "governance" of higher education needs to reform the past monopoly of the government and combine other social forces in its "governance". In the West, the relationship between the government and higher learning institutions has experienced different modes in different periods of history. Owing to the changes in social backgrounds and the expansion of the functions of the governments, this relationship has undergone different modes, and the mainstream development style vary from autonomy of universities, to involvement of governments, and to increasingly stronger control by the governments. Now the relationship is entering a thorough new era, representing by the "governance" mode based on cooperation. However, because of the pluralistic trend of international politics and economy and the differences on every country's circumstances, the governments display pluralistic characteristics on the higher education governing mode with market, involvement, deregulation and flexible "governance" as its varieties. Under planned economic system, the centralized control of the government has resulted in various drawbacks to the healthy development of higher education institutions. With the establishment of the socialist market economy and the shift of the functions of the government, the relationship between government and the higher education institutions also shift from that of a direct line to that of a triangle, and the autonomy of the institutions is guaranteed and expanded by means of co-constructing, adjusting, cooperating, amalgamating. In the new era, the government should shift from direct management to indirect administration of the institutions with a primary function of creating a market competition environment for the institutions. The specific way is to cultivate market subject, promote the formation of the market system, and facilitate the uniting competitive market of home and abroad. In providing services to higher education, the government monopoly should also be replaced by market at large, so as to form a pluralistic and coexisting situation of higher education service system which means the publics have more selections. On a "governance" horizon, a long-term trend is to shift the relationship between government and higher learning institutions from a relationship between the ruler and the ruled to a relationship of cooperation. To attain this goal, we must change the existing institution identity of universities and colleges by changing the university as a role of government-sponsored institution into public entity; establish their status as independentlegal entities to run universities facing needs of the society and market independently autonomously ; restructure the government's power on public affairs by way of overcoming the current situation of government monopoly and entitling parts of rights to the university and society; implement a mode of multi-center "governance" and make the third party organization to be the fundamental one in this governance; form a consultation and participation mechanism among the government, universities and colleges, and social organizations in order to systematize and legalize the cooperative relationship between the government and universities to guarantee the legal rights and interests of the latter.