The Career Study Of Research University Presidents

The elite university presidents could build world-class research universities, which have been proved by a large amount of historical and current cases. How are the careers of these elite university presidents developed? How are their careers managed? What are the characteristics of China's research university presidents in their career development and management? How could their selection, employment and assessment be improved effectively and legitimately? In this paper, research university presidents are studied on their career managements and developments.The career managements of research university presidents are inspected from Macro-level, Meso-level and Micro-level. Firstly, career management on Macro level is Leadership Scope. Considering higher education development in the globalization background, the innovation influence of research universities in nations, the driving power of research universities and the school-based requirements, the Leadership Scope of university presidents are classified as: Global Scope; Outside higher education Scope; Inside higher education Scope; and School-based Scope. Secondly, career management on Meso-level is the strategic leadership. Based on organizational strategic theories, the Leadership Stages are classified as: Institution Conceptualization; Vision Formulation; Strategy Formation; Tactics Implement; and Result Evaluation. Thirdly, career management on Micro-level is the Leadership Functions. By applying the power theories, combing the five powers of leaders, the Leadership Functions are divided into five aspects: Organizational Operation; Student Cultivation; Academic Research and Scientific Transfer; Outside Relationship; and Institutional Moral and Culture.According to the three-dimension career management model, the characteristics of career management are quantitatively surveyed by analyzing 83 literatures of 18 research university presidents in US, 172 literatures of 12 research university presidents in China and 685 activities of two case presidents in China. The research findings are followings: 1) Research university presidents in US obtain intense global competition sense; achieve social responsibility; advocate the cooperation among higher education system; keep visions; implement strategic leadership by empowering the administration teams; devote to the outside relationship; symbolize the spirit and culture of the institution. 2) Research university presidents in China achieve intense global cooperation but limited competition sense; hold strong national responsibility; confirmedly execute national policies; devote to institution administrative management; continuous passion on academic researches; concentrate on institution traits.To explore the origins of presidents'leadership characteristics, presidents'career developments are introduced to explain the grounds of various features of career managements. President's career developments are analyzed through applying theories of career mobility, career development and career management. The typical type of research university presidents is Scholar; their career path is dual path from the academy to the administration; their career stages are classified to six stages: Career preparation, Academic maturity, Career path transformation, Administrative maturity, Career fastigium and Career decay. After quantitatively surveying 103 research university presidents in China and about 200 research university presidents in US, their characteristics show as followings: 1) Research university presidents in US are Scholar type with long-time faculty experience; highly educated with diverse discipline backgrounds; selected from various labor market and wide horizon; generally moving downwards; moving upwards with star experiences. 2) Research university presidents in China are from relatively narrowed discipline; obtain native experience on education and employment; selected from limited labor market; moving among similar universities; greatly varied on individual factors among different institution types.In the final chapter, ten suggestions have been proposed on the selection, employment and assessment of research university presidents.The innovative points of this paper are as followings: 1) From the research angle of career management, the self-organization theories, the organizational strategy theories and the power theories have been applied to the career management of research university presidents, and the three-dimension career management model has been established; 2) Based on the career management model, the characteristics of current research university presidents have been analyzed by discourse analysis through examining their literatures and reports and the daily activities; 3) On the basis of related theories of career development, the career developments of 103 China's research university presidents have been studied and analyzed in the quantitative method.