Application Undergraduate Education In Popularization Of Higher Education

From1950s to1960s, higher education in developed countries expanded at a great speed, under the push of scientific and technological developments, national transformation, and democratization of educational trends etc. Based on the systematic study on developments of American higher education, U. S. sociologist Martin Trow puts forward the theory of higher education Massification. He points out that the quality of higher education is definitely going to transform because of the expansion of quantity. This theory fully explains the developments of higher education and therefore becomes the early-warning theory that guides different countries to deal with the expansion of higher education.With higher education developing from elite education to massification, those receive higher education tend to be diversified. The main body of higher education is not elite talents, but application-oriented and professional talents. As the basis and core of higher education, profound knowledge tends to be practical. Moreover, with the advancements of modern science and technology, the requirements of social positions become higher, so that there is clear division between technical personnel, some focusing on scientific and technological research and new technology design, and some focusing on technology development and application. The talents who focus on technology developments and application have become independent group, in which demands for higher level application-oriented talents appear. Therefore, the traditional higher education knowledge model which centered on scientific paradigm can not satisfy and adapt to the requirements of developing application-oriented talents of the engineering and technology type. Scientific, technological and social developments require that higher education go out of the Ivory Tower, follow the rules and requirements of the market, re-consider its orientation, and expand its functions. In this way can it develop the type of researchers who can "discover" and "invent", and can be engaged in application field of work so that the diversified requirements of talents can be satisfied. During this process, an important trend is that developed higher education countries and areas adopt the dual structure that elite higher education institutions and massification higher education institutions co-exist. At the same time, it is a pluralistic, multi-level and multi-standard system. During the process from elite to the mass higher education, the focused applied science universities, community universities, technical colleges, and original multi-disciplinary universities of technology all belong to the vocational higher education system in Germany, the United States, Britain and Taiwan of China and other regions. Although there are different definitions and concepts on application-oriented undergraduate education, we can find, through study and research on the characteristics of the above-mentioned institutions, that application-oriented undergraduate education is the inevitable result of popularization of higher education. It is different from the traditional academic-oriented higher education and the core of it is to develop application-oriented professional and applied type of higher education. Furthermore, it is the compound of academic education and vocational elements and it plays an important part in the process of massification of higher education.At the turning of the century, higher education in the mainland of China is experiencing a great and profound change. In the name of promote of popularization of higher education, higher education expands quickly and achieve its developments at a short time. During this process, with the fast developments of Chinese society and industrialization, especially the high requirements of application-oriented talents from the local and industrial economy, a group pf new undergraduate university puts forward the "application-oriented undergraduate education" in the process of their developments. By practice, they are developing and becoming an important part of higher education in China and becoming the direction and trend of Chinese local undergraduate universities.However, due to the different misunderstandings towards massification of higher education and the typical Chinese characteristics of application-oriented undergraduate universities, there are two points that we need to pay attention to. On the one hand, we have to understand and reflect the influence of massification of higher education on application-oriented undergraduate education. On the other hand, application-oriented undergraduate should get the support and help of the country and the society so that the developments of application-oriented undergraduate education can be promoted, and finally form a popularization of higher education system which has its Distinguishing Chinese Characteristics.