TITLE:
An Examination of the Current Condition and Potential Reforms of China’s Higher Education Management System
AUTHORS:
Zurui Wang, Shen Gao
KEYWORDS:
Higher Education, Management System, Reform Path, Administrative Documents
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.12 No.10,
October
17,
2024
ABSTRACT: The governance structure of higher education is centered on the interaction between government bodies and academic institutions, involving hierarchical supervision and the delineation of administrative authority. Essentially, this connection relates to the function of the government in managing. This study specifically examines the often neglected yet essential component of China’s higher education governance: administrative paperwork. Our objective is to perform a textual analysis of these texts in order to broaden the research on governance systems in higher education. Administrative documents consist of three dimensions: the manifest dimension, which represents the explicit content expressed in the documents; the central dimension, which abstracts the common characteristics and qualities of the management content and methods reflected in the manifest text; and the logical dimension, which explains the governance system, addressing the logic and characteristics of management within the higher education context. The core and logical dimensions form the foundation of the manifest dimension and serve as the main focus of this study. An examination of 331 administrative documents pertaining to teaching and 623 documents pertaining to research, issued by the educational administration to a provincial university from 2017 to 2019, reveals that the primary approaches to management are incentive-based allocation, regulatory limitations, and organizational facilitation. Government entities initiate competitive dynamics by implementing incentive-based distribution methods, which involve the creation of different titles, competitions, and initiatives linked to economic resources. Regulatory constraints encompass the creation of rules, enforcement of monitoring, and assessment of performance to both restrict and enable institutional activities. Organizational facilitation occurs when universities need to efficiently and speedily carry out activities by assigning them, collecting data and information, and providing operational support services due to conflicting incentives. The combination of incentive-driven allocation, planning, performance assessments, surveillance, information management, task deployment, and service provision creates a structure of interests and resource dependence that influences the development and research direction at higher education institutions.