Research On The Development Of Agricultural And Forestry Universities And Colleges In China

As an important part of Chinese higher education framework, Agricultural & Forestry Universities and Colleges (AFUC), despite of their limited number, have played an irreplaceable role in solving the problems about agriculture, country and peasantry in China. But the current 38 agricultural & forestry higher institutions are now facing difficult situation in student enrollment, graduate employment, disciplines and subjects setting and fund investment, etc.It is intended firstly in this dissertation to review the history of Chinese AFUC from the beginning till now, with two phases before and after the establishment of PRC. At the same time, five models are summed up to describe the development of these institutes which are "independent-merger/independent" and "comprehensive-comprehensive" model before 1949, "independent - independent" model of the early 1950s and the current model of "independent-comprehensive" and "comprehensive-independent". Then the basic status of AFUC is provided, including the compositions and distributions, disciplines and subjects, characteristics and superiorities, as well as development goals. It is pointed out that although the current AFUC have already become multi-discipline universities and are developing into comprehensive ones, this is basically resulted from the adjustment of discipline setting carried out by the State Ministry of Education, which leaded to the appearance of agriculture and forestry related disciplines in engineering, science and administration. This is also the result of rapid expansion of student enrolling, in the course of higher education mass. And the advantage of agricultural and forestry universities and colleges still lies in the traditional agriculture field. Then, the social adaptability of AFUC is analyzed according to the external and internal factors. The influence of external environment includes the economic situation, the educational policy system, as well as the macro education development and population. After that, from the aspect of social function of the universities and colleges, it is analyzed from the internal factors, including the contribution and the shortage of AFUC in talents training, scientific research and social services. On the basis of the above analysis, it is brought forward, both from the side of AFUC and government, the policy and countermeasures to solve the current disturbing problems. It is concluded that the problems can not be solved all by AFUC themselves, but also the finance as well as policy support by the government. AFUC should also emphasize and try to make profit from the characteristics when they are going to become comprehensive. In the last part of the dissertation, the experiences of five AFUC are described as the verification of the aforementioned conclusion.The innovation of this dissertation lies in the all-around analysis of the development of AFUC in China, summing up the five development models and using the external relation rule to assay the development of AFUC. The countermeasures and policy suggested are, at least in the eyes of the author, quite practical.