Right Appealing And University Governance

In the course of the reform of higher education, university governance becomes more and more important, which is one of the core issues of modern university institution. University governance, in the essence, refers to the distribution and exertion of university autonomy. Now, the Chinese universities are getting more and more autonomy, but the power structure inner university has no change, which means the power is centralized and the faculty has no power in hand. What behind power are interests, the inner relationship between power and interests changes my focus from power to the interests expressing of faculty. Staff and Faculty's Representative Congress (SFRC) and Academic Committee are two basic structures for interests expressing of faculty. This study referred to the historical background, organizational structure and function of the two institutions, through which, explained the characters of the interests expressing of faculty, the structure of organized interests, and the function of the institutions of interests expressing.This study used empirical paradigm. Firstly, it explored the history, situation and problems of SFRC and Academic Committee, and then, used the case study to present the organizational structure and the institutional running of the two institutions. At last, it summarized and drew the conclusion.The appearance of SFRC was not only the outcome of the devious development of the intellectual policy, but also the result of learning from the Staff and Workers' Representative Congress in workplace. SFRC had affinity with the construction of the regime. The state hoped SFRC to organize the faculty, through which the state would control the grass roots. The organization of SFRC reveals that it isn't a true institution representing the faculty, it also includes lots of administrators, furthermore, though it is organized by labor union, the labor union doesn't represent the interests of faculty, and it is the agency contacting the faculty and the administration.The state empowers SFRC to supervise the administrators in the university, but the administrators have the power to control SFRC, for the contradiction of the power structure, the supervising function of SFRC gets into disable. The administrators hold utilitarian attitude, which means that they want SFRC to insure the political safety, but at the same time, they reject the inefficiency of SFRC. Under the manipulation of the administration, SFRC becomes the legalization program of reform, the public opinion-votes program, and the symbolic program. From the perspective of the faculty, SFRC is the way of interests expressing. The interests that SFRC deals with, include social welfares and recourses for activity, which are divided from the type of the interests, and from the subject of the interests, are interests special to faculty and interests shared by faculty and university, furthermore, the interests special to faculty refer to the social welfares, and the interests shared by faculty and university are recourses for activity. When SFRC strives for the interests special for faculty, the interests expressing takes on class-structure, and when it strives for the interests shared by faculty and university, the interests expressing takes on department-structure. The realization of interests relies on the administration, and what the administration takes into account are the intension of the demands and the ability that they can afford the resource. The demands by many represents and the administration can fulfill will be realized preferentially. But lots of interests demands get only symbolically reply.The Academic Committee is the institution expressing of academic interests. The academic interests are the special interests in the university, and they are the value identity of the academic community, the core of which is academic freedom. The history of Academic Committee reflects some important problems of the university governance: the university autonomy came through a course of lose and regain, but the power of faculty had lost and never been gained again. The emergence of the Academic Committee was not to differentiate the power.The Academic Committee isn't the representative institution of faculty, and it is made up of "dual identity person", who has the dual identity of faculty and administrator. So, to some extend, the organization of the Academic Committee is administrative extensive. The duties of the Academic Committee are discussion, assessing, and consultation of the academic affairs. This study compared the faculty employment and appointment system of American university and Chinese university, through which, it discovered the basic problems in the university governance in china. In the Academic Committee, the dual identity of the member causes the problem of role-conflict in the decision-making, and in the concrete situation, the role of administrator suppressed the role of scholar, which reduced the Academic Committee to express the interests of department. Between the struggle of faculty and administration, the power of administration is uttermost, and the realization of the academic interests has no special power to ensure. The unbalance of power structure will make for the cultural crisis of university.The organization, expressing and transmission of interests in the university can be concluded as four aspects, which are dual institutions of interests expressing, the matrix structure of organized interests, the administration controlling interests expressing, and the defending function of the institutions. SFRC emphasizes the interests of matter, and the Academic Committee stresses the academic interests. There have dual structures of organized interests, which are department-structure and class-structure, and they both constitute the matrix structure. The interests expressing is controlled by administration. To the whole system, SFRC and the Academic Committee take the duty of transmission interests demand, but they are not the maker of pressure, but the defense of the crisis. Compared with SFRC, the Academic Committee is more symbolic.With the development of the reform of economic system and political system, the political role of university will be weakened, and the cultural function will be strengthened. The university governance will tend towards to differentiating the power. Construction the university governance structure with high efficiency is the must way of building modern university institutions.