The Preliminary Study On The Sustainable Development Of Local Comprehensive Universities

As a result of the global ecological crisis caused by scientific and technological advances and industrial civilization, there arises a new viewpoint of development stressing the harmonious development of human and nature, which gives rise to the fast-developing theory of sustainable development. Up to now, the theory of sustainable development has become a dynamic and comprehensive one involving economy, society, culture, technology and natural environment, a guidance of the development of different fields.Higher education has undergone the deepening of reform and fast development ever since the third national educational conference in China. Developing fast in this time of highly development of institutions of higher learning, local colleges and universities have become distinguished due to their amazing progress. As a part of local colleges and universities, local comprehensive universities are in the fast lane of development, which satisfies the need of local people to receive higher education, promotes the development of local economy and contributes to the advance of society and the inheritance of culture. However, the sustainable development of local comprehensive universities encounters limitation in the aspects of governmental support, the share of excellent resources, the service offered to the region and school orientation and features.Based on literature study, comparative study and guided by the theory of sustainable development, this paper chooses Ningbo University as a case for study and examines the three stages of development of Ningbo University, namely, the quality-controlling stage, the mutational development stage and the extensional stage. It probes into the development of Ningbo University and the problems which arises in further progress.By analyzing the problems facing Ningbo University in its different stages of development and the solutions it has used, the resources it can turn to and the possibility of sustainable development, this paper has discovered some useful practices for reference, such as making plans for educating talents to meet the needs of the region , student-oriented mode of cultivating talents, reforming to keep up with the development of institutions of higher education, and improving teaching quality under the pressure of teaching evaluation by experts.At the same time, this paper points out as follows the problems hindering the further development of Ningbo University: it is difficult to scrape up money for the university; the current mode of managing talents fails to motivate talents and induce them to make greater contribution; certain curricular courses are not practical and prevent the cultivation of creative talents; it regards research as superior to teaching and regards research as superior to improving local economy; and the power distribution of university and faculty is not reasonable and leads to inefficiency of the allocation of resources.Besides, this paper also discusses countermeasures to the problems mentioned above:The university can serve the local economy better through building up key disciplines characteristic of the region, expanding the fields of serving local economy and social development, and establishing mechanisms for serving local economy and social development.The university can deal with the financial problem by collecting funds through different ways and optimizing allocating structure. It should improve the efficiency of using funds.The problem of human resources can be solved by cultivating talents on campus, hiring part-time professors, and optimizing human resources on campus.The university may improve its ability to cultivate new talents by offering students more options, replacing the old teaching contents with the new, improving teaching methods, enriching specialty and activities of second classroom and combining research with teaching.The administration of university can be improved by perfecting its inside managing system like the cooperation of different departments and reducing the cost of management.