Government, Market And University Autonomy

Ever since 1999, the university expansion reform has been underway. The scopes of the expansion, the volume of the growth and the scale of the impact have all hit the record of the university development of our country. It's one of a kind on a world scope as well. What pushed it from behind? What is the relationship amongst the policy intentions, market needs and academic pursuits?The study sets our country's university expansion as a object and the University of Shi Hezi as an example along with the theories of a series of western education expansion as reference It sorts out and analyzes the various statistics regarding university expansion since the founding of our country and if focuses on the number of faculty, the number of students (those on-campus and graduates), the number of universities and the funding of university education. Based on the above, it divides the expansion into three phases and measures the compatibility between the university expansion and social economic development in these phases using the "grey system"When it analyzes the stimuli behind the expansion, it summarizes the factors as government, market, and university autonomy. As the society progresses, the three come into one as it stands. The study used the above as the assumptions and together with the related regulatory and legal documents put forward by the government after the founding of our country to discuss the reasons for the scale of university expansion dynamics.According to the research, university expansion has been divided into three stages since PRC was founded:1949-1976: This stage features by the great fluctuations of university scales, which developed rapidly during the "Great Leap Forward" period and fell into stagnation in "Cultural Revolution" period.Dominance of government, as the major reason of the phenomena, has weakened the authority of market and university. University scale, as a result, is stochastic due to the influence of politics. Government at that stage was inclined to nurture political elite. The standards are "both famous and expert".1977—1998: Scales of university gradually complied with development of society and economy, which accords with "human capital theory" in Theory of Education Expansion. Changes of government preference accounted for the major reason of the development of this stage. Market power was rising and autonomy of university came into being. The orientation of the government towards education was based on economic development.Great shift has taken place from elite education to public education since the university expansion in 1999 featured by its large scale, rapid speed, low cost and compulsoriness. This stage was oriented towards both politics and market. Crisis that have been inhibited for a long term gradually appeared such as high unemployment rate of college graduates, dominance of the concept of University as a Tool due to longstanding lack of university autonomy, and financial crisis among universities owing to long-term dominance of government.The study concludes that since 1949, China's higher education has gone from "political elites" through the "economic elite," to public education that was oriented to both politics and market. Higher education, with its consistently scale expansion, has been dominated by government ever since. Along with emerging social change, the strength of market increasingly pick up accompanied by university autonomy's birth from scratch. Government's value orientation in different historical stages led directly to the strength and dimension of autonomy of universities and the market factors in the scale expansion of universities: Scales of university and development of society and economy was incompatible with each other during the period from 1949 to 1976 as well as the period from 1999 to now, while they went together harmoniously from 1977 to 1998.Result of western education expansion theory and gray analysis has illustrated that market and democracy orientation is essential to university reform in the development of China's higher education. In other words, the government, the market and the autonomy of universities should maintain a dynamic equilibrium. Of course, these issues are to be studied later.In a certain sense, the development of Shihezi University has kept a harmonious development since 2001. It has avoided lots of crisis and may be a classic case for maintenance of the balance between the three elements.