Government And University Autonomy

The conflicts and contradictions between government administration and university autonomy is a sticky issue that is quite common all over the world. However, the education giant, the United States of America, is relatively successful in dealing with this issue, which is a salutary lesson to us. The system of government administration is similar to the regime of the USA, which is separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers. There is the U.S. Department of Education that is responsible for macro-governance as well as Office of Education in every state that is to execute the concrete work. It appears that there is no relation between the federal government and the universities. In fact, the federal government has issued many higher education acts that are directly relative with the universities, especially after World War II. All of the acts have powerful impact on the universities. It is just under the unconsolidated governance way that the universities have achieved great success, which can be owing to the wise federal government. As a result, it is a salutary lesson for our higher education administration to study the relationship between the federal government and the universities. The meaning of the study is as follow:help us deeply find the historical evolution and inevitability of the success of the U.S. higher education; help us discover the basic principles that the government and the universities get on well with each other; help us scientifically look on the success and failings during the development of the American higher education.The key clue of this study is the federal higher education acts, and from the perspective of the content and effect of the acts this study is to analyze the relationship between the federal government administration and the university autonomy, and also their historical development. There are six sections in the whole dissertation. The first section is the introduction and the last one is the epilogue. The second section is to analyze the relationship between federal government and the universities, and to explore the historical origin of government administration and university autonomy and also how the federal government began its higher education administration during the period from American Independence to the time before the Civil War. The third section is to analyze the changes of the federal administration on the universities during the period from the Civil War to World War II, and to explore how the principles of academic freedom was claimed and took effect. The fourth section is to analyze the changes of the federal administration on the universities and the power distribution between federal administration and university autonomy after World War II, and to explore the process that the federal administration become stronger and university autonomy become weaker. The fifth section is to analyze and conclude the successful American experiences of harmoniously dealing with the relationship between federal administration and university autonomy:apply different governing strategy in different phase and leave enough space for university autonomy; make use of the mechanic of market competition and prompt flexibly the micro-measures to coordinate with the macro-measures; take the proper time to action and perfect the legislative system and the administration system; decrease the conflicts and contradictions between the federal and the universities through the non-government organizations; universities positively react to federal policies at proper time to get mutual benefit; universities strive to collect asset from more channels other than the federal government and to decrease their reliance on the federal government.