The Exploration Of Ideology And Practice On The Innovative Characteristic Of Higher Education In The U.S.

Innovation is the source of human civilization, and the motive role of innovation to economy and society nowadays is far more powerful than before. Therefore, improving our nation's innovative quality has become a great and urgent task of education. Since higher education is the direct conveyer of talented persons, its innovation is particularly decisive.The innovation of higher education embodies in two aspects-to develop college students' innovative capacities and to innovate knowledge. There certainly are some drawbacks in our education, that's why education reform should be carried on. It is generally acknowledged that American college students have better innovative capacities and American colleges have got brilliant success. This article focuses on the innovation of colleges in the U.S. in order to provide our higher education reform with enlightenment.American colleges' brilliant success gets in close touch with American culture. The main current culture in the U.S. is composed of religious culture, republic culture and individualism culture. They all play important roles in American colleges.Affected by American culture, American people formed the ideology of cherishing academic freedom and bold in making innovations, and the practice of curriculum and teaching in colleges is the reflect of this ideology.Seen from post-graduate education, undergraduate education and technical education, American colleges of different types carry out different curriculum and teaching models to develop their students' various innovative capacities.This article reaches four pieces of enlightenment on the reform of Chinese higher education. They are the followings. 1. Education reforms should be based on the culture of our nation; 2. To fulfill the three functions of modern education;3.To construct multi-element curriculum system; and 4. self-teaching model and science study should be involved in the teaching process.