Teachers Participate In The Research On The Representative System Of University Internal Governance

The administration of universities,as an intractable disease in China's higher education,is a result of the intertwined combination of administrative power's strong interference and academic power's self-weakening.Overthrowing" landlords”does not always mean freeing "peasants".Even if the administrative body returns academic affair management rights to the academic circle,the de-administration reform is difficult to be truly put into place if the faculty community cannot effectively undertake them.Faculties' highly involving in internal governance of university and effectively exercising decision-making powers relevant to academic affairs is the key to universities' de-administration reform so as to keep a certain tension between academic power and administrative powerAt the beginning of the university,the faculty community was directly in charge of the all affairs of governance power;later,administrative power "derived" from the inside of the university and faculties handed over their power of managing administrative affairs;when the powers of the government and the market entered universities,the university became jointly governed by both the inside and the outside bodies.Throughout the evolution of the university and their internal governance bodies,faculty's power of governing the university was" both handed-over" that from the group relation,the faculty community handed over the governance power of administrative affairs to the administrative community,and from the inner-community relation,the direct governance power of the academic affairs was gradually concentrated in professors who was the elites of this community.Based on direct democracy,the form of faculty governing university internal affairs evolved an indirect democracy in which faculty chooses representatives to govern on behalf-of them.The "both handed-over" of faculty's right of governing the university is a self-adaptive mechanism established by the university in a complicated external environment,as well as a system-related evolution carrying the concept of university autonomy and academic freedom.Internal shared governance of universities refers to a process that different stakeholders make independent decisions on affairs within their respective fields based on their divisions of labor and responsibilities so as to achieve their respective goals and shared visions.Shared governance is focused on how different stakeholders establish their relations of labor division.negotiation,and cooperation and form a multicenter governance structure differs from the "center-edge" structure.Faculty's participation in the internal shared governance of universities refers to a process that the faculty,as the core stakeholders of the university,focuses on the academic affair decision-making power,equally and jointly participating in the internal governance of the university with other stakeholders.Only the learned person can be the governance body of academic affairs.And the faculty's academic rights is a natural extension of faculty's participation in the internal governance of the university.Faculty's participation in the internal governance of the university includes direct participation and representative participation.Representative participation refers to a representative system in which the management systems of the faculty choose representatives participates in the internal governance of the university and its operational process.Representative participation does not deny the direction participation,but a system evolution making up its defects,which solves the problems of large quantity,decentralization of interests,difficulties of collective action and teachers rights unable to be fully,reasonably and effectively expressed and negotiated resulting from this.It conforms to the development of university becoming the center of the society and a indispensable system arrangement in which the faculty participates in the internal governance of the university,safeguards their rights and insists university academic feature in an complex interests environment.The academic nature of university and the particularity of faculty's interests show that faculty's interest can only be expressed and realized by faculty's representatives who should not be heterogeneous groups such as administrative staff.The representative model of faculty's participation in the internal governance of the university are mainly decision-making participation and supervision participation,that is,the duties of faculty's representatives are deciding academic affairs and supervise administrative affairs.Representatives are a structure consisted of representatives,represented area and representing channels.To study representative structure,we should figure out how to find faculty representative with high representativeness and representative power,which affairs should be governed by them and in which channel representative interests could be represented.And this consists of the basic framework of the faculty's representative's participation in the internal governance of the university.This paper argues that faculty representatives should be a "miniature" group featuring high representativeness and able to reflect the diversified characteristics of the faculty community and academic elites are the best choice representing faculty's academic interests.Internal affairs of universities put f-orward in this paper include pure academic affairs,administrative affairs,and "academic-administrative"overlapped affairs.The main areas participated in by faculty representatives on behalf are mainly pure academic affairs requiring independent decision-making process,as well as”academic-administrative" overlapped affairs the decisions of which are jointly made by them and representatives of administrative staff.This paper puts forward channel quadrant structures for faculty representatives' participation in the internal governance of universities based on two variables,namely,"organized" and"institutional",with the forier referring to whether faculty representatives act individually or as a team and the latter referring to whether universities set up institutions accepting faculty representatives' participation demands or whether universities develop rules related to f-aculty representatives' participation.Meanwhile,the foregoing channel quadrant structures include" organized-institutional channel,"unorganized-institutional" channel,"organized-un-institutional" channel,and"unorganized-un-institutional" channel.According to cost-benefit analysis,the effectiveness of the above four channel types is weak progressively,which suggests that"institutional" is a sensitive variable influencing the effectiveness of faculty representative participation channels.This paper analyzes such theoretical issues as the evolution of relations between faculties and internal governance of universities,changes in the system of faculty's participation in the internal governance of-universities,and the representative structure in which faculties participate in the internal governance of universities,based on which,it conducts surveys on the current status of the representative system in which faculties participate in the internal governance of-universities by means of case study and it discovers that faculty representatives' participation is a picture of"distorted participation" that faculty representatives are at the periphery of the decision-making structure,difficult to give"voices" in the internal governance of universities;the fields participated in by faculty representatives are limited to a small number of”academic-administrative" overlapped affairs.losing the independent administrative power in pure academic affairs:and the channels through faculty representatives can participate in the internal governance of universities are blocked by administrative power.All in all.faculty's participation right is not manifested.aind faculty representatives' participation is distortced as a legalized tool for administrative decision-making and power excise processes.Instead of being described as "faculty's participation",it is more suitable to be called "faculty's presence”which only represents the "attendance" and "presence" of faculty representatives and erodes faculty's subjectivity,actions' enthusiasm,rational interactions between different bodies,the possibility of facilitating universities to move towards good governance,and other connotations and values that should be contained by "participation".Institutionally,the distorted participation of faculty representatives is mainly caused by the empty and un-practice of the system as well as its malfunction due to resource restrictions.To correct distorted faculty representative participation and promote faculty's participation requires optimization in the basic systems,procedural systems and protective systems related to faculty representative participation.The optimization of the basic systems includes clarification of attributes of faculty's participation rights,establishment of a compatibly system of faculty representative participation and direct participation,improvement of education resource allocation methods,perfection of universities' internal information disclosure systems,and establishment of the system of listing academic powers.The optimization of the procedural systems is to establish a faculty motion system for universities' internal decision-making process,improve the system of selecting faculty representatives and placing representative responsibilities,and perfect the transfer mechanism of academic decision-making process.The optimization of the protective systems is mainly to establish the relief systems for faculty's participation rights and the preventive systems for faculty representatives' excessive participation,as well as to develop a habit of conducting cooperation between academic bodies and administrative bodies.