The Feasibility Study On Enrollment By Interview In Chinese Higher Education Institutions

The enrollment and testing system of higher education institutions is an important constituent of the higher education system. It is very important for a country selecting and developing people of talent. The reasonability of an enrollment and testing system determines the quality of college students. It not only relates to the quality of the higher education directly, but also affects the elementary education directly. Reviewing a hundred years history of Chinese modern higher education, the enrollment and testing system has changed several times. There were two main methods: the college independent enrollment and unified entrance examination. The unified entrance examination occupied the dominant position, playing the significant role for guaranteeing the education fairness and improving in the reform. But no matter how much the unified college entrance examination improved, it played a directing function as before; the student still bore pain of exam and therefore was seriously criticized by many experts and populaces. In March of 2006, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Fudan University implemented Enrolling Students by Interview, broke the aspect that the current unified entrance examination controlled the whole country, and obtained many universities' response. Enrollment by Interview came into people's focus and evoked hot discussion. Enrollment by Interview was vitally significant for advancing quality education, raising innovative talented people, lightening the study burden on students and promoting education fairness. But where is the historical origin of Enrollment by Interview? Where does its education theory rest? How can its fairness be guaranteed? How economically efficient is it? Can it be popularized and substituted for the unified college entrance examination? Presently, there is no Chinese or foreign research answering these questions or studying this change systematically. So, this thesis aims to fill this void using a multidisciplinary approach by systematically researching Enrollment by Interview in higher education institutions.This thesis is divided into seven chapters with structure of"general comment─analysis─summary". The first chapter talks about the appearance of Enrollment by Interview in the Chinese higher education system. Then, it proposes questions about Enrollment by Interview, the significance of the research and clarifies the thought process in the research: From the longitudinal question proposed (historical recollection), the crosswise question analysis (pedagogy, politics, economic, policy study viewpoint) to the solution of the question (sociological viewpoint). In order to explore this conveniently, the author distinguishes between oral examination and interview, Enrollment by Interview and Independent Enrollment, university and higher education institution. Based on the fragmentary study by the predecessors, the author makes more thoroughly researches Enrollment by Interview with the method of multi-disciplinary and multi-angles.From the second chapter, the author utilizes the concrete discipline research technique to carry on the analysis. It is very easy to think of the history viewpoint first. Using the historical method, the author combs the historical vein of Enrollment by Interview in the higher education institutions, verifies the influence of Enrollment by Interview in the higher education institutions from the social politics, the economical, the cultural development from the historical viewpoint. Because modern Chinese universities have developed from foreign countries, there is no relation with Chinese ancient higher education, meaning we must review Enrollment by Interview in foreign universities to study enrolling students by interview in Chinese higher education institutions. According to the history of Enrollment by Interview, there are four stages: seed and development time, prosperous time, decline time and revival time.The third chapter discusses educational ideas of Enrollment by Interview. Reforming the traditional college entrance examination and implementing Enrollment by Interview reflects one kind completely different educational idea with the college entrance examination. What is the core of this kind of educational idea? How does it come from? What is its scientific basis? These questions are answered from the pedagogy standpoint. This chapter researches how education appraisal science influence the test methods of recruiting students, what is the ideas of raising and selecting talented people through Enrollment by Interview, and what is the relationship between university's intrinsic development logic and the ideas of Enrollment by Interview.In chapter four, the author thinks that Enrollment by Interview is a partial victory regarding the gamble between university autonomy and state power; it is also a victory between academic authority and administrative authority. Regarding the former victory, the author pays attention to education fairness with more words to analyze. After detailed analyzing the relation between Enrollment by Interview and education fairness, the author constructs a tripartite-in-balance mechanism to guarantee fairness for Enrollment by Interview. At the end of this chapter, the author carries on the preliminary forecast to this mechanism development tendency. The fifth chapter analyzes economical logic of Enrollment by Interview. The author takes the supposition of"economic man"as a foundation. Firstly takes Williams' funds assignment pattern as the breakthrough point, then it discusses the influence from funds assignment pattern of higher education to the policy of Enrollment by Interview: The bureaucrat pattern selects a nationally unified entrance examination and enrollment; The institute pattern has university autonomy right,recruits students in their own ways, like Enrollment by Interview, the application matriculation; The market pattern implements the matriculation exempt from taking an examination, the opening enrollment system. After macroscopic analysis, the author analyses Enrollment by Interview with market economy and institutional economy. He believes that Enrollment by Interview is a market economy behavior and that it is for gaining more high quality resources in two big markets (consumer market and colleges market) to gain more superiority in colleges'competition. Through the institutional economy analysis, the enrollment reform that happened in universities in Shanghai must pay the high cost and the inevitably great price for the system vicissitude.The sixth chapter elaborates upon Enrollment by Interview through policy analysis. First, it analyzes policy value orientation of Enrollment by Interview, emphasizing fairness first while giving attention to the efficiency. Then, it analyzes the policy's main body, the object and the environment one by one in its policy system, pointing out that you must begin with these three aspects if you want to make reform smoother. Finally, it uses three dimensional combinational theory with the depth, breadth and level of the transformation to judge promotion possibility of Enrollment by Interview. The author thinks that Enrollment by Interview belongs to the reform with great depth, narrow breadth, colleges and universities level. This kind of reform can obtain success frequently. But it is extremely difficult to spread all over the country, because the transformation will happen with great depth, wide breadth, higher education system level. The"veto spots"of this kind of reform are the most and the resistance is the biggest. Of course, the author also points out that it is not absolute. The reason is simple─beside three dimensional reforms, there are many factors that are affected in the implementation process. For example, the time and environment dimensions of policy implementation will change in addition to its difficulty level.The seventh chapter analyzes the stratification of Chinese higher education system with some sociological theories. It induces four attitudes of the society to lamination of the higher education system (the view of unify person with outstanding ability, person with outstanding ability pluralism, equal unification views and equal pluralism) and three kinds of survival ways of Enrollment by Interview. Finally, it promulgates the development conditions and space of Enrollment by Interview in the higher education system with different levels.Lastly, this thesis uses three conclusions to summarize the multi-discipline viewpoint above: Enrollment by Interview is a historical progress, Enrollment by Interview will be helpful to enhance the education fairness and benefit of running universities and Enrollment by Interview needs the discrete implementation. Then the author proposes reform process of enrollment and test for Chinese higher education institutions.