The Organizational Transition And Features Of Chinese Private Higher Education

Chinese private higher education has been changing in its organizational structure during the development, from the self-study facilitating institution and academic diploma pilot institution at the beginning to today's private advanced vocational institution and affiliated institution, and each stage the orgazizational structure has its own features.From the perspective of institutional transition, this research reclassifies our private higher education development stages during the past twenty four years (from 1982 to 2006) after its reemergence, and finds out the features in each stage. Through the analysis of the different stages, I explore in-depth reasons of organizational transition of private higher education.On the basis of the population ecology in organizational sociology, I employ theoretical, comparative and case-study approaches, and analyze the rise and fall of the self-study facilitating institution on the second stage. The analysis shows the effect of dependence and independence on the organizational transition, and sums up the reasons of the organizational transition from resource, environment, and policies and rules of the private higher education.According to the new institutionalism, I employ theoretical analysis, case study and statistical analysis, and demonstrate the diversity and isomorphism of the private higher education on the third stage. Through the analysis, I find that the mimic and normative rationales of organizational isomorphism are true for our specific case, and coercive rationale leads to diversity instead of isomorphism.On the basis of the Cameron's research on effectiveness of higher education organization, I analyze the questionnaire data from the thirteen private higher education institutions in Shanxi Province to categorize those institutions according to its level, establishing time, whether it has the initial investment. Through analysis, I find that the private higher education institutions have isomorphism in public feature and imitate public institutions in superior academic position, and they have diversity in enterprise feature. Different institutions will face different issues in management; however, they are challenged by both insufficient financing and low competence in management.My research objectively draws the developmental track of the private higher education during the past twenty four years after its recovering. I propose that the private higher education should be divided into for-profit and non-profit organizations, and government should provide financial support to those non-profit ones. My research also gives theoretical support to managers and practitioners in private higher education.