Research On The Academic Senate Of American California University

Noted American higher education thinker Burton R.Clark once stressed that"modern universities'crisis is in many cases due to the declining and dislocated academic power". The significance of the universities'academic power in the development of the contemporary universities has become a common concern to higher education circle of the world. The development of the modern universities is mainly represented by the improvement of the subjects and the advancement of the academic level. The key to keep the academic level advanced is to bring the dominant role of the academic power into full play so as to make the idea of professors managing the university being well carried out and implemented.Nowadays, the status and the academic achievements of the American universities and colleges in the higher education circle of the world cannot be surpassed by other countries'universities, while the management mode of the American universities has been actively followed by other countries. After a broad overview being given to the development history of America's higher education, it is found that a vital organization having being played a crucial role to the success of the American universities, and that is American universities'academic senate. Of the different types and administrative levels in American universities, the academic senate as a standing body has guaranteed the leading role of the academic power in universities, giving full play to the predominance of professors managing the universities. Moreover, the California University's academic senate is such a model to be followed by other American academic senates, which guarantees the California University academically advanced, properly developed and effectively ran to become the world high-class one.This paper starts from the angle of history and makes a comprehensive research on the California University's academic senate with the method of case analysis .It aims at revealing the academic senate's role played in the development of California University to be a world's first-class one and gaining helpful revelation for china to construct more world first-class universities.This paper firstly defines the connotation of academic senate, outlines its concept and elaborates the professor's management, academic power and academic management so as to give people a comprehensive introduction. And then it presents three major modes of academic rights existed in the world's universities and differentiates the effects and advantages an academic organization can make in different mode of academic right. Consequently, differences in academic power between the American academic senates and other countries'academic organizations could be seen.On the basis of the introduction to the connotation and mode of academic senate, this paper subsequently expounds professor's practice, theory foundation and social setting from social and historical angle in order to know the origin of academic senate and social impetus. And it takes the replacement of California University's principals as a clue, and divides the historical development of California University's academic senate into four phases so as to make its evolvement and development clear. Then the writer made a thorough inquiry about California University academic senate's internal function, personnel composition, power and status, organization and structure, operation, feature and so on. And using narration and comment to lay out the senate's inner structure advantage, seek ways how the senate displays academic power and what active role it plays in the operation of the California University. Therefore, by researching the California University's academic senate from different angles, a thorough understanding of it could be gained. Finally, according to the whole research on California University's academic senate, this paper finds out instructive revelation for our country's management of higher education.