Research On Institutional Transformation Of Independent Colleges In China

The independent colleges are a new system design in the field of higher education in China. With both Chinese characteristics and the mark of the times, they have experienced over a decade of hardships, and advanced rapidly in the voices of doubt. They have not only promoted the development of higher education in China, but also managed to seek a pivotal position for themselves in China’s higher education.With the emergence and rapid development of the state-owned private secondary institutes, the independent college system gradually comes into being in a specific period of time, and goes through subsequent institutional adjustment before it grows to the scale today. However, their special identity and unclear ownership have always been criticized by the public. Their existence and development once fell into a "crisis of legitimacy", and their future is of wide public concern.When independent colleges faced a dilemma in their development, governments, out of their own responsibilities as well as consideration of protecting current higher education results, carried out the necessary administrative intervention and macro-guidance, and provided a series of system design and policy in favor of their development. Nevertheless, institutional transformation, as a system design of the greatest potential also strongly encouraged and promoted by the government, has not been widely welcomed by Independent Colleges. Because each stakeholder has some "core concerns" and "core values" and the system design does not offer a good solution and coordination of the interests conflicts among different parties, the implementation of the policy falls in a deadlock and the rate of transformation remains low.Current institutional arrangements has not achieved expected role in promoting the development of the Independent Colleges. On the contrary, it even makes them confused. At an important historic juncture in their development, independent colleges are faced with three choices. To offer an effective solution to the difficulties in their development and the plight of policy implementation, active exploration should be made again in institutional change. For those few that have already finished institutional transformation and those that are still hesitating or refuse to transform due to various reasons, there is a common desire-they hope that the education authorities can offer differentiated and categorized guidance for Independent Colleges in different regions, models, types and in different levels of development.Therefore, the follow-up system supply and policy design are vital important. Based on fully respect the "core concerns" and "core values" of various stakeholders, our country ought to properly revise "Measures for the establishment and management of independent colleges", fatherly establish and perfect the transformation policy environment, fully demonstrate and set the "reasonable return" proportion region, actively promote exploring diversified motivating channels, quickly improve the construction of property right system in order to reduce the resistance that constrains an effective implementation, and completely give play to the function of the corporate governance structure which regards the board of directors system as its core, so that it is able to contain dynamically and keep the game power balanced.The transformed independent colleges, whose development faced plenty of challenges, should set the development model on the basis of science, and insist on the school-running core goal of undergraduate education. Apart from the transition from the cultivating quality to connotative construction, those colleges should also adhere to the school-running direction of "two wins", highlight the public service, stick to active service in harmonious development of regional economic society, draw support from local governments and persist in building a sound social environment for sustainable development.Undoubtedly, the independent colleges will choose what kind of development path, no matter whether they are transformed or not, not only depend on the national education plan arrangement, but also rely on its own promising development. As the most sparkling star under the reformation and renovation of the secondary education system, we don’t only anticipate the established development achievements can be protected, but also look forward to more positive reformations and creations with the cooperation of all parties involved.