How realistic are the long-term goals of Catholic universities? One of the main characteristics of Catholic universities is that quality and innovative culture can promote the continuous reform of organizational structure and teaching courses. Catholic universities also have outstanding performance in many fields. For example, in the Higher Education Supplement of The Times in 2005, Catholic universities ranked 48th among the humanities and arts disciplines in the world. There are exciting steps in science, technology and postgraduate education. In the process of pursuing excellence, Catholic universities do not adopt other new strategies, but only strive to achieve excellence as much as possible in the traditional areas of academic development, including recruiting the best teachers, attracting top students, improving the quality of education, promoting scientific research, establishing contacts with industry, and striving to increase funds and diversify sources of funds.
Teachers and students
In the past 20 years, Catholic universities have invested a lot of money in the development of teachers, sending most young teachers to top universities in the United States and Europe for postgraduate degrees. As far as medical schools are concerned, the result of this policy is that 90% of teachers have obtained overseas postgraduate degrees or received doctoral education overseas. Although this ratio is quite good by the standards of this region, there is still much room for improvement. Apart from quality, the main challenge facing the Anglican University is to double the number of full-time teachers, which is currently 65,438+0,066. Because there is a shortage of teachers in many disciplines in Catholic universities, and the current workload of teachers is not conducive to the output of scientific research results, this task requires a lot of money and great energy.
Catholic universities are very successful in attracting top students. This year, 55% of high school graduates who scored the highest in the national college entrance examination were admitted to Catholic universities. In a country with 63 public and private universities, this is a shocking achievement, and high-level teachers and students are valuable assets for the present and future development of the school. Under the guidance of this concept, Catholic universities only accept foreign exchange students whose grades are in the top 30% of their classes. Last year, 65,438+0,000 undergraduates from American and European universities met this requirement and studied in Catholic universities for two semesters.
A new way of education
Catholic University is carrying out an important curriculum reform, aiming at providing students with a more flexible, comprehensive and useful educational experience. Curriculum reform includes: new general education courses, compulsory English learning courses, Spanish writing courses and community service learning opportunities. The school also offers a variety of extracurricular activities for students to choose from, including church activities, community affairs, sports and art. In addition, the school also trains teachers to master innovative teaching methods, and is building a teaching center that provides advanced information technology education tools.
In order to test the quality of each teaching major, Catholic University hired quality certification institutions in the United States and Britain to evaluate its undergraduate education. So far, journalism schools, architecture schools, medical schools and engineering schools have successfully passed the evaluation.
Enhance the ability of scientific research and innovation
While increasing investment in basic scientific research, the Chilean government is making efforts to promote joint research projects between universities and industry. This promising new environment is very beneficial to Catholic universities, which can get extra funds to hire new teachers with scientific research potential and improve the equipment of laboratories and other facilities.
Donation income and funds
Chile's economy has been developing healthily in the past 20 years, becoming the only country in the region with sustained socio-economic development. Moreover, Chile has a good future development prospect. Universities will benefit greatly from the healthy and stable development of the economy. Due to the collection of tuition fees, the increase of government subsidies and the great improvement of the government's ability to provide competitive funds, the funds of Catholic universities have increased by 1 times in less than 10 years.
Compared with American private research universities, Catholic universities still receive a small amount of donations. The school currently has a donation of $200 million, including TV network equipment owned and put into use by the university. Schools should greatly increase their donations to get a lot of extra income. At present, in order to increase investment income, many assets of the school, most of which are unproductive fixed assets, are being used for reinvestment.
conclusion
It is a challenging but attractive task to build Latin American research universities into world-class universities. No matter what the final result is, the construction of a world-class Catholic university is in this best development environment.