Study On And Learning From Benchmarking Activities Of University System Of Georgia In America

Benchmarking is an instrument for an organization to carry out self-assessment and self-improvement, i.e., to analyze and examine its internal working procedures firstly, then seek for the "best practices" that is relevant to its procedures in other organizations in or out of its industry, lastly apply those "best practices" into its own organization after being adapted so as to improve performance. While in the business world benchmarking is well-known as the most effective tool to improve performance level and competitiveness of an organization, in the field of education, with the increasingly obvious trends of popularization, pluralism and internationalization of higher education and the fiercer and fiercer competition among the universities, some institutions are beginning their attempt to use benchmarking to improve their teaching and management performance so that they would obtain competitive advantage in the world.Beginning with the definition of benchmarking, this thesis firstly introduces the emergence and development of benchmarking in business world as well as the development of the application of benchmarking in higher education abroad. After that, it expounds in detail the benchmarking activities of the University System of Georgia (USG). By taking the successful and practical experience of USG as reference, it establishes a benchmarking system of performance indicators for institutions of higher education in China based on the consideration of the developmental level of higher education and general managerial operations in these institutions. This benchmarking system is not only a systematic one with several factors consisted of more than thirty benchmarks, but also a practical one. In order to prove its feasibility, this thesis has designed application procedures for it as well. In addition, to make up for the gap of case study existed in previous studies which only stressed theory introduction, this thesis specially selects Northwest University as the subject to apply these procedures in order to provide a specific and practical way for higher education institutions to use the tool of benchmarking. Then it predicts some difficulties that may exist in the course of benchmarking application. Finally it makes conclusions for the above practice and looks into the future for the application of benchmarking into institutions of higher education in China.