A Study On The Strategic Plans Of Six American Research Universities

Along with the great changes in the international and domestic environment, the competition among universities is increasing. Strategic planning is one of the very important ways to help universities identify their strategic goals and develop suitable and feasible strategies therefore enhance their core competitiveness. Research university is an important indicator of the level of one nation's higher education and its scientific research. China is planning to become an innovation-oriented country in 2020, so we must strengthen our research university building, and to that end, research universities need to develop strategic plans that can meet their own specific development needs as much as possible. American University strategic planning process started early, and has formed a number of mature experiences, so the author selects six different types of universities from the three levels of American research universities, two of each level. After translating and collating the strategic plans of each university, the author has a comparative analysis on these strategic plans expecting to draw some reference.With the methods of comparative study and content analysis, the author does the study in two ways: examines the strategic plans of the six different universities during the same period, finding the differences and similarities; examines the strategic plans of one university in several consecutive periods to see the continuation and transformation of the university's strategic plans. The study founds the strategic plans of the six universities all have clear structures and focuses; Each school has a good self-awareness and positioning, has their distinctive strategic plans which well reflects the environmental changes; Strategic planning of each universities during the same period is influenced by the university's own foundation and tradition, the nature of university organization and outside higher education environment; The strategic plans of one university in several consecutive periods is modified according to university's development and the external changes, while carrying on some fundamental missions and traditions. Based on the above study, the author proposes some thoughts on the strategic plan formulation of Chinese research universitie with respect to the objective needs for strategic planning, the guiding principles of strategic planning formulation and the details of the text.