A Study Of Ashby's Idea Of Ecology Of Higher Education

By the enlightenment from study of ecology, Ashby did the research of universities in Britain, British India, and part of the modern western developed countries respectively. And accordingly he published his works of Ecology of Higher Education. Based on three of his relative books, this thesis did some tiding, induction and analysis about his basic thought of ecology of higher education. This thesis considers that there are two major questions solved by Ashby's theory of ecology of higher education. They are as follows: how the university formed, and how the university should develop itself? To answer these two questions, Ashby assumed a hypothesis, which is that the development of university is akin to the evolution of life and it also has to experience the process of inheritance and aberrance. Through the analysis of Ashby's studies of "ecology of university", the thesis demonstrated his assumption that there are both inheritance and aberrance in the development of university. What's called inheritance is the internal logical power, which keeps the stable development of university. However, Due to the new demand created by the unceasing change of environment, university has to reform accordingly to cater to the society where it exists in. And it is so-called aberrance.Despite of the demonstration of how Ashby proved his theory, which is that "universities of various kinds are all the results of inheritance and environment", this thesis also summarized the common rules of university development that is showing in his research fruits. These rules are as follows: university does not change environment to facilitate its development but adapt itself to the environment by its internal reform; to its advantage of the stable development, the university transform must be done by the accelerating speed and based on its intrinsic tradition, and the massive transforms often bring threat to the existence of university, and etc.At last, thesis analyzed and valued the Ashby's ideas of ecology of university based on the reality of contemporary education. From the interdisciplinary perspective, author of the paper considers that Ashby revealed some common rules that should be obeyed in the development of university. And both of his methodology and views have the importance of reference for today's institution research. Furthermore, the systematic research of his theory of ecology of higher education would be very useful for us to explore the paths for the reform and development of university in the new environment.