The Study On Duderstadt's Ideas Of Higher Education

James J. Duderstadt (1942—) is president emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan. There he has been dean of the College of Engineering, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. Then as the eleventh President(1998—1996) of the University of Michigan, he worked both to position the university as a leader in higher education and to transform the university into a new institutional "model" for higher education—an institutional model that could readily adapt to the changing needs of society. All of these experiences influenced the formation of his profound ideas of higher education.The dissertation gives a full exposition of Duderstadt's main ideas of higher education, and the lessons learned from his ideas in regard to the improvement of current higher education in China.Duderstadt's main ideas of higher education are discussed as follows:1. The forces of change for higher education: financial imperatives, societal needs, technology drivers and the emergence of a commodity market;2. The education in university: undergraduate education and graduate education;3. Financing and governing the public university: the challenges of finance, the importance of diversifying the revenue base and reserves, resource allocation, cost containment, financial management and decision-making authority, the process of governing the public university, the challenges to effective university governance and some prescriptions for change;4. Diversity in higher education: the reasons for diversity and the guidelines on implementing diversity;5. Transformations for the 21st-century university: the imperatives, the challenges and the proceedings.Duderstadt's idea of higher education is rooted of American society and took on distinctive American style, but the regularity of education is the same and different countries can learn from each other. So higher education in China certainly can learn something valuable from Duderstadt's idea of higher education. To sum up, there are two points of the lessons learned. Firstly, higher education should adapt actively to change in a world of constant transformation. Secondly, the scientific management is crucial to accord development of higher education.