A Research On Institutional Agents In The Transformation Process Of Local Undergraduate Institution

Among all universities and colleges in our country,nearly half of them are local undergraduate institutions.The transformation development of those institutions is a supply-side structural reform in higher education.Essentially it is a organizational and institutional change of university.A research based on institutional agent will deepen our understanding of this question.A historical review of the transformation course shows that the transformation development originated in several local universities and colleges.This process can be broadly divided into three phrases.The first phrase is from the year 2000 to 2010,in this phrase the world "transformation" has not been put forward clearly and literarily.The second phase is from 2010 to 2013,in this phrase some local institutions in several provinces began to take the road of transformation development and the world"transformation" became more clear and common.From the year 2014 on,more and more local universities and colleges involved in the transformation development.From the view of subject of the transformation,we find that four types can be identified clearly:transformation driven by university itself,transformation driven by local government,transformation driven by central government and transformation forced by local government.As for transformation elements,it can be divided into two types:all disciplines transformation and particular disciplines group transformation.In general,this course is both inductive institutional change and gradual institutional change.The reason why those local universities and colleges take the road of transformation is that they cannot meet the stakeholder's need.So those higher education institutions are suffering a crisis of legitimacy.In order to regain legitimacy,they have to change the way of teaching,researching and serving.As for the local universities and colleges,the legitimacy of transformation includes four types:political legitimacy,pragmatic legitimacy,normal legitimacy and cognitive legitimacy.Institutional agent is people or organization that plays a role in the process of institutional construction and change.In this transformation process of local universities and colleges,there are mainly four institutional agents:government,market,professionals and association of universities.The government is the main source of the legitimacy of higher education institutions,especially political legitimacy and pragmatic legitimacy.By the means of leader;s speech and enacting some policies,the government confer the legitimacy of the transformation.Be different from the government,the mechanism of action of the market is demand guiding.As for the professionals,their weapon are thought and theory.In the process of this transformation,the professionals are mainly experts on higher education and local university leaders.The former is also a important giver of the transformation of local universities and colleges and the latter is a determinant for the institution he in charge.The association of university is the forth institutional agent.generally speaking,they play their role mainly in three means:by participating in policy-making,building an exchange platform and deepen normal legitimacy.In a word,the transformation of local universities and colleges is a game process of all institutional agents.