Study On The Cultural Logic Of British University Organization Reform In Victorian Era

The essence of the university organization reform is to find a dynamic equilibrium between the external environment and the university tradition.However,some studies do not pay much attention to the aspects of tradition,custom and symbol of the university and only focus on the description of the facts and ignore the discussion of the value and spirit of the university.The university is essentially the field of culture,and the culturality is the internal attribute of the university,the characteristic that the university differs from other social organizations,and the driving force and dependency of the university organization reform as well.In this sense,this study focuses on the cultural logic of the university organization reform.It does not negate the important or decisive influence of political and economic conditions on university organizations,but brings the political and economic logic into a more profound and complicated cultural field to explore the internal provisions of university organization reform.In the Victorian Era,British university organization reform had provided rich and enlightening samples for the discussion of how culture influences the reform,no matter in the macro relationship between the government and the universities,the meso management system,the micro discipline evolution or the conceptual change.Therefore,on the basis of the summarization and analysis of relevant literature and concepts,this study takes the theory of organization reform and the theory of university organization culture as its theoretical basis,the unity of history and logic as its methodology,and uses the historical literature method and comparative research method in the process of dialogue with the relevant educational facts to systematically form the analytical framework of the cultural logic of the university organization reform which is an interdependent,complementary and mutually reinforcing cultural ecological complex that takes the academic culture as core,the institutional culture as linkage and the social culture as molding.The main findings are as follows:Firstly,the academic cultural logic,which is mainly composed of discipline culture and enterprise culture,is the core organizational characteristic and element forthe realization of university cultural selection and creation function.In the Victorian Era,scientific culture gradually replaced traditional academic culture that is the religious,concrete and non productive by its open,rational,abstract,value-free,verifiable and utilitarian cultural characteristics.The evolution of discipline culture has gone through five stages: cultural edge and leading,culture conflict and fusion,culture selection and integration,culture generation and carrier,clture expansion and transformation.The stages embodied in five aspects: the scientization of knowledge model,the cooperation between science and humanity,the diversified evolution of discipline system,the systematization of knowledge,and the application of scientific research achievements.There are four aspects of enterprise culture: the fading of classical college system caused by the anomie of traditional college culture,the students' association becoming the enlightenment activity besides the tutor system,the combination of teaching and scientific research that is the result of cultural acculturation,and the change and identification of school running mode that implies cultural generation gap.Secondly,the logic of institutional culture,the value and behavior mode derived from institution but higher than institution,is a kind of "intermediary logic".It is a bridge,a link,a transition and a catalyst between the internal integration function and external adaptation function of university organization.In Victorian Period,the institutional culture of university organization reform can be divided into three levels from the internal academic culture to external social culture: first of all,with the academic situation of the college and the internal logic of the discipline as the lattice,the basic-level organization of the University had constructed a cultural difference pattern in which the two coexist;then,academic power and administrative power produce cultural differences in the increasing management activities.Universities adopted decentralized governance and transferred differences,and made up the differences through the role of the president,so as to realize the speech of scholars as the main body in the decision-making process;finally,"Procedure precedes rights" and "Proper citation of precedent" are the cultural connotation of the legal person system of British universities.The evolution of the corporate legal person and the continuation of the trust system in this period provided the legitimacy of the legal theory for the establishment of the new universities.The classical universities reformed legally according to the procedure: royal investigation to parliamentary legislation to university constitution revision.Thirdly,social culture has characters of relative independence,strong historical inertia and imbalance with economic and political development,which can directly or indirectly affect the development of higher education.The gentlemanly culture in the Victorian Period showed the long national character of England,which included or partly absorbed other cultural forms.In terms of direct function,the gentlemanly culture,as a kind of moral pursuit,led the university to think about social responsibility,which was manifested in scholars' debate on free education and promotion of University promotion activity;as a goal orientation,it was the driving force of the times for the civic colleges to advance continuously.In terms of indirect function,as a restrictive factor,it was not only the guarantee mechanism for the gradual development of British universities,but also led to the "academic drift" of civic colleges,the dilemma of “academic gold standard” and the limited attention of secular governments.In other words,under the influence of multi-dimensional cultural interests,university cultural consciousness was the internal driving force of university organizational reform in Victorian Britain.In this sense,university organizational reform also led to the progress of society and national culture.The "To Be" of university organization reform was also clear from the perspective of culture.