Research On The Conflict Between Academic Power And Administrative Power In Higher Education Institutes In China

Academic power and administrative power are two basic powers in higher education institutes, and the conflic and harmony between them exist in the development of higher education institutes. The distribution of powers in higher education institutes, which has been long influenced by the political and economic systems and the traditional mode of management, is under a model that based on administrative power. This kind of model has some problems, such as: administrative power is abused and centralized upwards, administrative power and Party Committee power cross in exercising, the influence of academic power cannot be reflected, which lead to the inefficiency of work, the lack of democratic management, the limitation of free learning, the inflexible of academic creation system, and the lack of competition. And these problems also make the conflict between academic power and administrative power become more and more obvious. This paper aims at exploring a way to solve the conflict between academic power and administrative power in higher education institutes, based on the study of them.This paper analyzes the relationship between academic power and administrative power in higher education institutes in and abroad, summarizes the characteristics of organizations and the mode of powers in higher education institutions, and redefines the concepts of academic power and administrative power in higher education institutes by using the methods of literature search, history study, and contrastive study. Besides, this paper makes a conclusion of the following issues and puts forward the author's point of view. The first issue is the root of the conflict between academic power and administrative power, that is, the characteristics of organations in higher education institutes, the objectivity and subjectivity of the two powers and their interactions, the concept and objective of the two powers, the root of the two powers, and the atmosphere and tendency of the two powers will lead to the conflict. The second issue is the manifestation of the conflict between academic power and administrative power, that is, the misplacement of management body, the objective deviation of the power, the power is centralized upwards, and the powers cross in exercising. The third issue is the system, history and conception reasons that cause the conflict between academic power and administrative power.At the end of this paper, based on the mode of powers in western higher education institutes, a guiding thought and principle of the solution to the conflict between academic power and administrative power, the principle of the proper crossing of academic power and administrative power, the principle of transfering academic power to a lower level, and the principle of power diversity are put forward. And some suggestions of solving the conflict between academic power and administrative power are brought forward, such as, to make a further study of theory, to have a thought of the power system, to found a comprehensive academic organization and make a full use of it, to properly deal with the relationship between university and department, to distribute powers reasonably, to strengthen the education and election process of leaders, to consolidate its role of bridge of solving the conflict of powers, to strengthen system construction, to perfect the supervision and security system of the powers.This paper is based on the previous studies, makes a conclusion of the conflict between academic power and administrative power in higher education institutes, and sets a foundation for a further study. Because of the limitation of the author's ability and the lack of research, however, there are some deficiencies in this paper and some issues need further study, such as, the mode of distribution of academic power and administrative power in different higher education institutes, the supervision and security of the powers, and the power operation system and so on.