Study Of Legality Of The University’s Executive Power In China

When it comes to the relationship between the academic power and the executivepower given to a university, the latter has always been subjected to criticism. A logicalprobe into the question whether a university’s executive power is legitimate or not is ofmuch necessity for a better university administration.With the development of the university and the evolution of the society, auniversity’s executive power was alienated by the scholars’ power; meanwhile, thegovernment must authorize the university for a certain degree of public management,which is decided on by the university’s legal status representing the public. Hereby, theuniversity’s executive power comes into its logical and historical being with the demandof the university itself as well as the government’s authorization.Existence does not necessarily mean legality, which includes legality both in forceand in form. Constructing the base that the university’s executive power is legitimateentails both the university rules on which depends the legality in force and theuniversity regulations on which depends the legality in form, for legality entitled to theuniversity’s executive power is described as the unified requirements made for themembers at a certain level or position at the organizations or the university communitywho enforce their powers in accordance with the university rules and the universityregulations. Due to the fact that the university’s executive power takes the publicresponsibility on the part of the university and administers the university in accordancewith bureaucracy, and the fact that political legality and resources supply are two factorsessential for the university’s existence and development, the university’s executivepower is supposed to lay its foundation from the following four aspects: publicresponsibility, bureaucracy, political legality and resources dependence.The “context”, university, must be taken into consideration in the process in which the university’s executive power constructs its legitimate foundation. When exercisingits power, the university’s executive power will be confronted with crises such ascultural identity, organizational identity and recognition program if the university’sexecutive power goes beyond the university’s nature of knowledge and violates thebasic domain of academia in the name of exercising public responsibility, intending toexecute both “university will” and “academic will” in this Academic-AdministrationCommunity; if the university’s executive power places excessive weight on bureaucracy,paying no attention to the fact that the university is a loosely organized institution,which results in its managerial uncertainty, its dispersion embodied in its managerialobjectives, its diversity of the power structure and its private nature and internaloversight of the executive power itself; if the university’s executive power takes itspolitical legality as a primary objective and a major pursuit by adhering to the politicalphilosophy of higher education; if the university’s executive power plays “a key andirreplaceable role” in distributing material resources necessary for the normal operationof the university and academic resources needed for the development of academicdisciplines.Legality entitled to power does not necessarily mean that power has been legallyenforced. With an analysis of the university circumstances, under which the system wasfounded, the organizational structure, which was based on the system, and the powerrelations in the organizational structure in the following four historical periods: the endof the Qing Dynasty, Republic of China, National Government and the establishment ofNew China forward, there are many disadvantages in the universities in China such asexecutive power dominance, utilitarianism orientation, traditional lack of autonomy andlagging in institutions, which bring about the fact that the university’s executive powerhas been excessively reinforced, bureaucracy has improperly functioned, politicallegality has been extremely highlighted, the government has been heavily dependedupon in the allocation of resources. All these leave the foundation of legality in collapse, and consequently, crises arise from the legitimate exercise of executive power.Confronted with crises, while transforming public corporation, the universityexecutive power, which on one hand is a reasonable existence, should on the other handintegrate legality in force with legality in form by recognizing heterogeneity ofbureaucracy in university administrations.Under the circumstances where thegovernment’s power and the university’s power are not distributed in a balanced wayand also the executive power and the academic power are not evenly matched with eachother, the balance in distributing the powers to the university and the government on onehand must be kept with the guarantee that university automomy should be implementedby law, on the other hand, the practice should be objectively acknowledged thatacademic power and executive power recyle their own legality by taking advantage ofeach other. Meanwhile, tension balance will be formed in the process of correcting thetendency that academic power is transferring its focus on acdemia to power and turningits pursuit of truth to the pursuit of profits.