Research On Stratification Of American Academic Profession In Different Types Of Higher Education Institutions

With the propelling of the strategical idea of developing our country through cience and education, higher education has made great achievements. To build up a strong country through education, to better the quality of higher education, it is teacher that we should rely on as basic and core. The system of academic professional stratification in America facilitated the prosperous of its higher education. At present, being compared with America, we need to innovate the post allocation and management in higher education institutions. This is the essential point related with our teaching resources in colleges and universities. Therefore, how to build up a teaching group under regulations and make it diverse to adapt to the development of the society, has become the critical task in the innovation of higher education.This research firstly clearups the history of the American academic professional stratification's system, and reveals the trace of it as:from the Middle Ages' professionals to the first contemporary professor appeared in Harvard 1722; in the late 18th century tutorship came into exsitance; then in the 19th century, instructors came to stay in the middle of professors and tutors; later tutorship had been canceled and followed by the appearance of assistant professors and associate professors, which altogether formed the ranks of the academic professional stratification, and developed into tenure track and non-tenure track in academic profession in higher education institutions. Through the history, the regular patterns of American academic professional stratification can be found as being closely related with academic degrees; under "double-tracked" system, which is alternative; being self-independent while sharing autonomy under a layer structure; enjoying an undemanding hierarchy among different levels of academic ranks.To be followed, this research studies the current classifications of academic ranks, standards of its appointment and promotion, analyzes the inner and extral reasons of academic professional stratification in American higher education institutions:first, laws and rules regulate that the academic profession needs stratification; second, the market mechanism stimulates the academicians to be more sufficient through stratification; third, the protection of academic freedom regulates the academic profession with tenure and non-tenure tracks; fourth, academicians need the promotion provided by stratification to get higher social status, prestige, and payment in their own professional developments.In addition, this research uses the case study method, based on the most influential Carnegie Classification in America, to compare specific arrangements under the system of academic professional stratification in these four kinds of higher institutions, which shares similarities with those in our country:doctorate-granting universities, master's universities and colleges, baccalaureate colleges, community colleges, and summarizes the regulations and features of them respectively.Comparatively speaking, at present, the allocation of teaching posts in higher education institutions in our country has problems as being strictly controlled by administration, without reasonable structure of stratification, with many problems caused by over-detailed stratification of 4 levels and 13 layers, and undound managing system. To these problems, based on learning the experiences from America, this paper gives some optional advices as:wipe off the administrative mind and leave the post allocation right to higher education institutions, set up the third party title evaluation system, manage reasonably under hierarchy with different classifications, avoid the over-detailed stratification, better the standards for appointment and promotion, build up the incentive mechanism according to different posts, the obsoleting mechanism, and the flexible mobility mechanism.