Study On Discipline Construction Strategy Of Universities For Nationalities

Since the implementation of the policy of reforming and opening to the outside world, and the proposition of "Orient education towards modernization, globalization and future construction" policy, the mission of higher education has become a focus of both the state and society, and the strategic status of disciplines construction has been increasingly highlighted in the development of universities. In the recent ten years, under the effective leadership and support of the education administrative departments, most colleges and universities have attached more importance to disciplines construction. As a kind of overall infrastructure, the disciplines construction of Universities for Nationalities (UFNs) plays a very important role in achieving ethnic higher educational goal, guaranteeing the developing direction of UFNs and promoting the development of economy and society in ethnic regions. To study the strategy of UFN’s disciplines construction is of great significance for positioning the disciplines construction and realizing the leap-forward development of UFNs.UFNs were mostly built In the1950s by the Party and state in order to implement Chinese ethnic policy and solve the problem of minorities. So far16UFNs have been established in our country. Based on the needs of different ethnic regions in terms of politics, economy, culture, science and technology in different periods, UFNs have always been adjusting their teaching guidelines, educational objectives and teaching programs, and have also fostered multitudes of cadres and specialists for the modernization of ethnic communities and regions. The disciplines development of UFNs can be divided into four stages, i.e. the preparation stage, the preliminary development stage, windingly developing stage, steadily proceeding and reforming stage. At present, UFNs have achieved the following outcomes in discipline construction: discipline quantity has been increased, the discipline coverage has been expanded, discipline structure is tending to be more reasonable, discipline characteristics are more distinctive, etc. Due to the economic and social progress in ethnic communities, the development of socialistic market economy system, the adjustment of state economy structure and the implementation of West Regions’ Development policy, the requirements for talents of different disciplines in the ethnic regions’ have changed a lot. But currently, the UFNs still lack disciplines which can match with the national economic development, the discipline standards are still low, and graduates from UFNs are still not competitive enough. These all reflect that there are still many problems in the disciplines construction of UFNs, such as there is no overall strategy for discipline construction, the discipline development targets are not clear enough, the discipline structure is unbalanced, the optimization of discipline construction is neglected, the discipline construction level is somewhat low, the discipline team building is not effective, the environment of discipline construction has not been paid the due attention to, and the investment in discipline construction fund is not sufficient.It’s very necessary for the UFNs to identify the major factors which affect disciplines development, to analyze the interactions and conflicts between these factors and accordingly seek countermeasures to solve those problems according to every UFN’s own objectives. Since the disciplines development of UFNs is greatly affected by the inner logic of scientific development, social needs, governmental interference and scientific organization, therefore, UFNs have to face the conflicts of gratifying the market need or abiding by the government planning, meeting the need of talent education or meeting the need of scientific research, meeting the need of scientific development’s inner logic or meeting the need of social development. To be more exact, those conflicts can also be illustrated as follows:conflicts between disciplines construction and specialty construction, conflicts between priority discipline development and overall discipline optimization; conflict between following the discipline mainstream and determining the discipline leading direction; conflicts between discipline leaders and discipline innovation team; conflicts between software construction and hardware construction.The top priority of disciplines construction in UFNs is to rationally position their disciplines construction. These aspects like functions, objectives, present situation, future targets, and current problems in discipline construction should all be taken into consideration. The UFNs should target at serving the ethnic communities and regions, strengthening the construction of disciplines with obvious national characteristics, drastically developing the applied disciplines, trying to construct disciplines with a long history or rich accumulation, and also establish corresponding measures to ensure the discipline construction.Leap-forward development strategy should be taken in disciplines construction of UFNs, because this is also the necessary choice for the UFNs to build high-standard UFNs. Disciplines construction of UFNs should undergo the model of leap-forward development, in some special stages, institutional innovation and technological innovation should be enhanced so as to realize the fast development goal. Because disciplines construction of UFNs have the advantages of backwardness in ideals, policies, technologies, systems and drives for development, the UFNs should adopt the following strategies to realize their strategic objectives:unbalanced-development strategy, clusterization strategy, opening-up strategy and innovation strategy.In order to achieve leap-forward development in disciplines construction, UFNs should accordingly take strategic measures, such as adjusting the layout and structure of disciplines, cultivating disciplines characteristics, focusing upon key disciplines, setting up administrative organizations, accelerating disciplines team construction, strengthening disciplines infrastructure, facilitating the international cooperation and exchange.