Reflect And Construct

In contemporary world, one of the important tendencies of every country in running universities is to pursue and to form its distinguished characteristics. This is also a significant research project drawing universal attention in higher educational field. Nevertheless, what goes against this trend in our country is that it is increasingly conspicuous for the universities to lose their traits and fall into some similar modes or features and some universities even have no specialities absolutely in any sense. Therefore, we can't evade from an indispensable and unavoidable problem that is how to transform such homogeneous running mode as "one thousand universities take after only one style" and facilitate universities to survive and develop safely and soundly with unique characters in this heatedly competitive society. The issue of universities' running characters is basically not only a theoretic problem but also an important practical one. In other way, it is not only regarding to reality but also belongs to history in some significant sense. Correspondingly, this dissertation will begin its study with three dimensionalities of theory, practice and history. First of all, the author conducted an analysis to and discernment of the primary connotation of universities' running characters and reached to a proper definition to it as the base to dissertate and explore the theoretic footstone of universities' running characters from a multidisciplinary point of view. The following is to summarize and epurate the historical experience on creating universities' running characters both at home and abroad, and from the reflection on historical experience some inspirations are drawn on the level of methodology. Finally, the dissertation turns its aim at the reality of constructing our universities' running characters and makes an profound analysis to the problems existing in current universities' running characters in order to search some relative countermeasures to resolve such problems.The dissertation is composed of five chapters as main body besides preface in structure. These five chapters can be divided into four sections according to some certain logic.In the preface, the study background together with research literature, contents and study methodology is introduced. A necessary interpretation and definition to the relative conceptions is also displayed.The first section includes chapter2 functioning as the basic part of the whole passage which goes forth to a profound analysis to the conception of "Universities' Running Characters". The dissertation argues that the logic starting point of theoretic thinking on universities' running characters can be constructed only by analyzing the nature of "characters" on the level of dialectical materialism. Thus, this section firstly undertakes an analysis to the question of "what are characters" with combination to the status quo of universities' running, and comes to the definition of "what is universities' running" from the view point of heckling the existing research, rethinking some greatly controversial issues, distinguishing the fundamental nature of universities' running characters and it is not some certain things and so on. The dissertation deems that universities' running characters refers to unique and steady styles and features of universities which are formed during the longtime process of talents cultivating, scientific research and social service and displayed on the whole acknowledged by the society and superior to other universities to accords to the need of social development, to promote human's development and to be beneficial to the surviving and development of universities themselves through embodying in ideas, actions and materialized lay.The second section consists of Chapter3 and sets off to seek relative supporting theory for constructing universities' running characters from a multidisciplinary view point. The discussion is deployed in the following four aspects: firstly, exploring the necessity of universities' running characters from the view point of higher education based on the theory about higher education popularization. On the one hand, it is inevitable that higher education popularization should lead to the diversification of higher education and thus makes it possible for universities to establish running characters; on the other hand, it is the necessity to meet the demands on the development of higher education popularization and diversification. Secondly, pointing out the foundation of constructing universities' characters from the view point of economics and management science based on the theory of Core Competitiveness. Establishing universities running characters is an important approach to improve their core competitiveness while the construction of running characters demands the promotion of universities' core competitiveness to function as foundation. Thirdly, exploring the principal strategies of universities' running characters and drawing out relative inspiration from the view point of ecology based on Econiche Principle. And lastly, providing a new angle of view to understand and establish universities' running characters by reflecting philosophically existing thinking modes in the field of post-modernism. The dissertation indicates that the possibility to establish universities' characters successfully lies only in radically reforming conceptions as to make universities transferring from dependence and adherence to independence and self-determination, for unification to diversification, from hierarchization to equalization.The third section is just Chapter 4. It makes a relative review to the historical experience of universities' constructing running characters both at home and abroad, carries out a reflection on the problem how universities should establish their running characters on earth from the level of methodology. The dissertation views that the exterior conditions to establish universities' running characters mainly includes relatively independent running self-determination, well-found appraising system to social running universities together with powerfully financial support; as to the interior conditions of constructing running characters, highly clarified universities' running ideas are basic preconditions, actively responding to the demands of the society and ear is the fundamental strategy, Principal, Faculty and students are the subjectivity in constructing and embodying the running characters, while a full-order system is the ensuring mechanism. After further reflecting the historical experience mentioned above, the dissertation argues that establishing universities' running characters should not only meet the demand of society, the more important is to preserve the relatively independence of universities' own from the dimension of value-orientation; establishing universities' running characters depends not only on the construction and perfection of material condition and system circumstance, meanwhile it also relies more on the shaping and growing of universities' spirits from the dimension of material and spirit; forming universities' running characters is not only the result of the support from government, but also the fruit of universities' self-cumulated development from the dimension of interior and exterior causes; constructing universities' running characters not only has the necessity to learn and draw lessons from the exterior universities' running experience, but also needs to persist in self-selection and preserve or develop good traditions of their own from the dimension of subjectivity and objectivity.The Fourth section is made up of Chapter5 and Chapter6. This part puts the study emphasis on universities' running practice and proposes relative resolving strategies based on the analysis to the primary problems and the causes to them in establishing universities' running characters in our country. The dissertation points out the principle problems in establishing our universities' running characters at present: severely blind-minded copying in running universities, relatively conspicuous phenomenon of "only for the sake of characters", comparably widespread constructing phenomenon of "to weigh heavily the visible while lightly the invisible", obtrusively confused phenomenon between "characters establishment" and "first-rate construction". In order to discover the real subjectivity in charge of such problems and find the effective methods to resolve the problem, the dissertation sets about to analyze some special causes which are the main elements influencing universities on establishing running characters such as different lays of government, society, traditional culture and university itself. Among them, the wrong of the governmental lay mainly lies in the highly-totalitarianization of higher educational management system, simplex appraising mechanism to universities and misleading through the policies of investment and encouragement; the improperness of social lay is the ill-found mechanism in employing and incomplete-built social competitive mechanism; the lagging-behind of traditional culture mainly roots in the strictly hierachical idea, the value orientation of weigh collectivity more heavily than individual and self-reliance agricultural traditional culture; the mistake of universities' lay rests mainly with the lost of running idea, the similarity of running idea, the personality-lacking of universities' managers(especial the principals) and the scarcity of programming in establishing universities' running characters. Aiming at this, the dissertation argues that first of all the governmental educational function should be adjusted, that is to say, to innovate with higher education management system, to expand and put universities' self-determination into effect, to reform the selection, the tenure and appraising system of principals, to give a right guidance to appraising universities running level, to set a distinguishing appraising system proper to different types of universities and make scientific and rational policies in governmental investment and encouragement; and meanwhile reinforce social directing function, that is to say, to form scientific and rational social employing mechanism, to perfect social competitive mechanism; to exert universities' positivity and activity, namely to improve universities' sense to establish running characters, to form modern universities' idea and system and to program reasonably the construction of universities' running characters.