On the one hand, the main source of university leaders is administrative, and the appointment of the president has become the monopoly resource of the education authorities, and the president frequently "communicates" with the officials of the education departments. The emergence of university presidents in China is basically handled by party and government cadres and directly appointed by superiors. Among them, 38 well-known domestic universities in the "985 Project" are directly managed by the Central Organization Department. It is more normal for department-level officials of the Ministry of Education to be directly sent to subordinate colleges and universities as principals. Ji Baocheng, president of China Renmin University, Zhong Binglin, president of Beijing Normal University, Zhou Qifeng, president of Peking University, Yang Wei, president of Zhejiang University and other famous university presidents have all served as ministers of education.
On the other hand, in response to the launch of the "985 Project", a number of deputy ministerial-level cadres began to appear in Chinese universities. At present, the party secretaries and principals of 365 and 438+0 universities are all deputy ministerial level. Some experts suggest that in order to improve the status of universities, the level of school leaders should be further raised to the ministerial level.
Universities should be autonomous, first of all, the president should be autonomous. It is not entirely undesirable for officials to become presidents, but the presidents are all appointed by the administration, with a single source, especially the lack of channels for open selection by independent selection expert committees, which is bound to promote the official standard of universities.
Second, the administrative allocation of resources.
On the one hand, the central ministries have the power to allocate resources to schools. For this reason, universities have to "run money" like local governments, and even award titles such as doctors in exchange for the support of officials; On the other hand, in schools, the "official" controls everything, and leaders at all levels enjoy "privilege" in the distribution of important academic resources such as professional title evaluation and subject declaration, while administrative leaders often occupy limited academic resources. These leaders hold the power, and decide teachers to take topics, evaluate professional titles and other matters. According to a questionnaire survey conducted by the Jiu San Society, 62.6% of the respondents believe that the academic committee, which should play a major role in the allocation of academic resources, is only decorative, or can only provide reference opinions on major academic affairs of the school.
Third, the evaluation mechanism is unified.
A prestigious educational scholar said that although he has won applause from public opinion for so many years, he has hardly won any official awards. The current situation is that various major topics and awards are mostly set by the government. Winning these awards means that your academic status is recognized; Failure to get these awards means that you are excluded from the mainstream academic circle. As the scholar said, it is a good thing for the government to reward academics, but taking this as the only evaluation criterion is not conducive to academic autonomy.
Fourth, the professor's personality is dwarfed.
A scholar who has studied in the United States for many years calls himself a "professor of forms", because in the nearly five years since he returned to China, he spent a considerable part of his energy on filling out forms-the first-class discipline declaration form, the research base declaration form, the key discipline declaration form, the social science fund declaration form, the unit evaluation appointment form and so on. This is also the result of administration, because how many first-level disciplines, how many research bases, how many social science funds are obtained, and how many papers are published are the achievements of school leaders at all levels. It is under such utilitarian pressure that we see the strange status quo of personality dwarfing such as professor plagiarism. It is hard to imagine that a professor who is busy filling out forms, completing tasks or even plagiarizing will become an academic master one day. Without academic masters, where can the so-called world-class universities start?
Fifth, students are sophisticated.
It is inconceivable that an official-oriented and utilitarian university can cultivate students who "think independently and express freely" as Premier Wen said. As a professor criticized: "Now society says that students are unjust, smooth and unprincipled, and just want to live comfortably by themselves. This is all taught by the university. Students don't like this when they enter the door, and they have to open a plenary session when they go out. " Undergraduate students learned to bribe teachers for credits, while graduate students were too busy working on projects for their bosses to study. Some student groups have almost become "bureaucratic experimental fields" or "mini vanity fair".
In fact, the Higher Education Law passed by 1998 has clearly stipulated that colleges and universities have seven autonomy in running schools, including making enrollment plans, setting and adjusting disciplines and majors, making teaching plans and conducting scientific research. Only after more than ten years, these autonomy rights have basically not been implemented. University management is not loose, but increasingly strengthened.