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On The Cultural Transformation In The Development Of Universities For Nationalities In China

Posted on:2007-08-22Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Q CaiFull Text:PDF
GTID:1117360242962967Subject:Higher Education
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The relation between higher education and culture is one of the elementary theory questions discussed by the academic circles in the recent years. Culture is the combination of mental and practical ways that people take in the process of dealing with the relation between human beings and nature and also the material and mental products they create. It is also the dialectical unity of ways and products of activities. Culture can be divided in both generalized and narrow sense, the culture in generalized sense includes material culture, institutional culture and mental culture; the culture in narrow sense refers in particular to the spiritual culture. When we talk about the relationship of politics, economy and culture, culture just means mental culture in the narrow sense, while politics and economy are regarded as typical model of institutional and material culture. And it is considered as culture in a broad meaning, so the higher education should be positioned in the category of culture, not politics or economy, and it is the logical basis for the research of cultural transformation of UFN (short for universities for nationalities).The cultural transformation in society is a great historical revolution, the interior power of social development and the interior logic of social transformation. It means that one kind of mainstream cultural model recognized and adopted by a special group of people during a special period of time is replaced by another new one. There exists cultural transformation in many organizations in their process of development and evolution in social system, and the cultural transformation also has its special connotation and plays great roles since the higher education institutions are a kind of special organization.The essence of transformation of universities and colleges in their development is institutional culture transformation, which means that the connotation of institutional culture changes. Institutional culture is the organization culture whose essence is academic value, the unity of commonality and individuality of academic organizations. When we talk specifically about a kind of universities, even one special university, it is demonstrated as one model for running schools under the direction of spirit of running schools. The cultural transformation just means a kind of mainstream spirit and model of running schools transforms into another new one. Institutional cultural transition leads to the institutional transformation, so it is the deep logic of institutional transformation.UFN were built in the 1950's and they were the product of the special historical backgrounds of China. Now we have got many UFN after more than 50 years'development. The universities have played great role in promoting national solidarity and common prosperity, prompting the development of ethnics, propelling the research on national culture and problems, so it's regarded as the prototype for building UFN in the world. UFN are founded for special political and economical aim, so ethnic problems are the essence of their spirit of running schools and the nationality-based feature is the regularity for them. Special aim, unique disciplinary group, multicultural backgrounds and special political significance are the embodiment of nationality-based feature in these institutions. With the social development, they face many difficulties in student enrollment, educational quality, disciplinary construction, funding, graduates'employment. The key of building our UFN is to adapt to the trend of the development of higher education and solve the problems.The prevalent viewpoint in academic domain is that the status and use of UFN is irreplaceable, but this kind of viewpoint only emphasizes the nationality-based feature of the UFN, but ignores the common regularity that UFN should be a kind of higher education institutions, and also ignores the fact that UFN need to adjust their ideal and behavior so as to conform to the changes of external circumstance. Profound academic culture and ethnic culture are the two essential factors of the organizational culture in the UFN, and this also reflectsthe universality and individuality of the culture of UFN, and makes up the whole connotation of the cultural logic of UFN. If UFN want to go through the predicament, they are supposed to change their spirit and culture of universities. The transition from planned economy system to market economy system and some new characteristics in ethnic regions can be considered as the external circumstance of the development of UFN. UFN are confronted with both challenges and opportunities. While realizing the cultural transformation of UFN, the key is to understand the cultural logic in an all-round way, and cope with the relationship between universality and individuality very well.The conflict and assimilation of multi-ethnic culture and the contradiction between ethnic tradition and modernization push the ethnic culture to develop. In the process of cultural transformation, UFN should abide by the regularity of the development of ethnic culture and then serve the development of economy and society in the ethnic regions on the basis of inheriting and innovating ethnic culture. Abiding by the culture logic of its own, UFN should accomplish the transition from political culture to academic culture, from multi-culture to inter-culture. And then UFN will build their new ideal and model of running schools. For UFN, inter-culture in higher education is the realistic choice in their process of cultural transformation.
Keywords/Search Tags:Universities for Nationalities, Institutional Culture, Ethnic Culture, Cultural Transformation, Inter-culture
PDF Full Text Request
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