| Elites have always been the pillars of a society, playing an important role in promoting the development and progress. Although the connotative meaning of "elite" differs in history, the word is closely related with "outstanding", "brilliant" "top", "excellent" etc. Today the word "elite" is tied with "innovation" and refers to "top-notch innovative talents". "Needham Puzzle" and "Qian Xuesen’s Question" both focus on how Chinese mainland universities can cultivate top-notch innovative talents. One of universities’ tasks is to cultivate talents and it is an important criterion for any university in the world. Therefore, the everlasting theme for universities is to improve the quality of talents and help them to adjust to the time. In the background, the study on elite cultivating model in contemporary Chinese mainland universities is both theoretical and practical meaningful. This study is from theoretical basis, historical review, investigation of present situation, problems and reasons analysis, others’ experiences, and relative suggestions, to summary and vision. The adopted research methods are literature survey, factor analysis, comparative analysis, historical research and questionnaire.The theories are chosen from pedagogy, talents and psychology. The growth laws of elite talents whose features are defined as Creative Personality are advantage accumulation, individuation and the best age as well. It is idea for elite cultivating model to be consistent with the above laws and features. What’s more, because of the nonlinear relation between elite cultivating model and elite growth, the former’s function should be evaluated objectively.The Chinese history of elite education can be divided into three parts:the Ancient(before 1840), the Modern(1840-1949), the Recent(1949-before the mass higher education). In the Ancient the education is for emperors, associated with family background, but some means are worthy of inheriting; in the Modern democracy and science are added to the education, the Liberal Arts education and academic freedom help to make the achievements; in the Recent the education experienced complications, from professional education to education distortion, and to the return of liberal arts education.The commonness of Chinese mainland elite cultivating models are: undergraduate tutors, general education, small classes, individualization, teaching attached with scientific research, internationalization. And all the Chinese models can be divided into three types:free liberal model, wide discipline model, "X+Y"model. The present problems of Chinese models are:the misunderstanding of the goals; the excessive subjects; the singularity of selection criteria; the improvement of conditions; the incompletion of the content; the singularity and rigidity of evaluation system. The reasons for the above problems are:the lack of relevance, systematicness and direction of related policies; the lag behind of the supporting policies; the homogeneity tendency of the university development; the overstatement of education’s function as tool and practicability; the influence of traditional culture.This study picks the elite cultivating models of United States, United of Kingdom and Hong Kong for reference. In American model, teaching is attached to scientific research, helping students to master methods and teamwork and trying to find new and potential forces. In English model, the tutorial and college system outweighs others, trying a lot to ensure academic freedom, autonomy, competition, diversity and comprehensiveness. Hong Kong’s model is distinguished as internationalization, making its elite education keep up with the times and bring up resources. These models share the similarities:the goal is updated in time; pay much attention to the enhancement of faculty, facility and environment; emphasize individualization; strengthen the international strategy.The following are the suggestions:enhance the top-level design of the elite education and emphasize the supporting policies; promote related laws; help universities to be no dependent, utilitarian and short-sighted; improve the academic environment; emphasize the potential of the youth; combine higher and basic education; improve elite quality; establish multi-criteria evaluation system; promote people-oriented elite cultivating model. |
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