A Study On The Power Of Students' Participation In University Governance

The power of students' participation in university governance is an essential requirement for students' becoming the core stakeholders in universities, as well as a starting point and a foothold for talent cultivation and university governance, which is of great significance to the realization of educational function and good governance of a university. By comprehensively using the methods of documentary analysis, questionnaire and investigation, case study and comparative study, this dissertation fully analyzes the fundamental rules and specific practice of Chinese university governance, including the origin and characteristics of students' power and the mechanism of students' power in university governance. Then the author explores the historical and existing problems of students' participation in university governance, finally makes an in-depth analysis into the implementation path of students' power in university governance.Based on students' power, this research defines students' participation in university governance into two aspects:students' self-government (negative power) and their joint execution of governance rights (positive power) as a social aggregation. Students' power must be guaranteed by their participation in university governance and the implementation process of their power is virtually the redistribution of a university's policy-making power.The power operation of students' participation in university governance can be classified into three models:market model, academic authority and state power model. In the first two models, students' power can be guaranteed by law at the state level and it can also be realized by student representatives and student organizations at the university level. But in state power model, students actually can not implement the power of their participation in university governance. The power implementation of students'participation in university governance is mainly affected by the following factors:the relationship between the university and the country, which is closely connected with university autonomy; university administrator and faculty's attitude towards students'participation in university governance; student's personal factors, including the available resources, participation incentives and participation abilities. However, the intensity of students' power must be set in a proper threshold level. By applying the resources, incentives, capabilities and the support degree of interested parties as a framework, the researcher takes University of Bologna, European universities in 1960s, three American universities and Tsinghua University as examples, deducing the historical origin of students' participation in university governance in medieval universities, modern western universities and Chinese contemporary universities. In this process the production and development of students' power are clearly revealed and the influence of students' participation in university governance to the university development is disclosed.Meanwhile, the author selects six universities in Beijing, Hubei Province, Zhejiang Province and Yunnan Province as his investigating objects on the basis of his first-handed materials on college student management work in the past nine years. By distributing questionnaires and in-depth interviews, the author finds that students' participation in university governance is not implemented very well in many universities. When the university party-government leaders carry out the university's overall management on the premise of the State-controlled university powers, the university is apt to be controlled by internal people and the organizational bureaucratization and the abnormal governing structure will hinder students' participation in university governance. Because of the restrictions of historical tradition and centralized governance structure, students' power can not develop in a broader space and it lacks institutional assurance to a certain degree. In the government hierarchical system, the function of student organization is deviated and students even give up their power.With the transformation of university-running ideas among the government, society and university, students' participation in university governance possesses logical consistency with our national developing goals and inner legality. Paying to go to college and selecting universities globally make students obtain the qualification of participating power game. By analyzing the opportunities and development space of the power implementation of students' participation in university governance, the author of this dissertation puts forward the concrete implementation method as follows:by using the functional coupling principle in Systematology and spillover effect in the Economics, the organization system of students' participation in university governance can be established in macroscopic, mesoscopic and microscopic scale, in which the university governance committee, university administration committee, school and department coordination agencies and class committee will form a organizational power system by supporting each other. Only in this way, the essential endogenous mechanism in Chinese university reform and innovation can be built so as to optimize the university governance structure as well as promoting the education level of Chinese universities.